“But do they have a notion of Justice?”

This paper argues that George Staunton’s 1810 translation of the ‘Great Qing Code’ can and should be read as a work which was meant to persuade its readers that the Chinese had a concept of justice, and that his end was accomplished by a variety of choices in the process of translating, editing, annotating and publishing the work. Staunton also engages in detail with earlier published accounts of China and addresses contemporary debates on the nature and function of law in society. Although contemporary scholars now see his work as too free, it is precisely in the freedom which Staunton takes with the text that he accomplishes his aims. The reception of the ‘Ta Tsing Leu Lee’, however, reveals that Staunton was not successful at convincing readers to accept his interpretation of what the code meant, despite the fact that they accepted his translation as accurate.