To the Editor of the Dear Si,—Your translator has, I think, failed rightly to emphasize the tru nificance of C Iw Chia-vii's memorial in the Gazette of August 3rd, giv-official promotion.—As how?-—In the word ing a scheme for quickening the rate of "nomination." There's the rub! What are these "nominees?" They are men who have earned promotion by actual service, Friend Hu is the mouthpiece of the Righer ranks of the service by proficiency entlomen who would like to get into the
in word-jingle, in penis thy as "bookishness,") by facility at ringing the changes upon themes selected from obsolete classics, Such do not like to see themselves crowded out by men who left toying with inkstones for the conduct of affairs, earlier than they,—and who most likely have rubbed shoulders with those gusset foreigners who are trying to turn ings topsyturvy. Ah'! and that Tsung-Yamen monopolizing the lion's share of fat Taotaiships! Does that upstart office think that its line of business is the moat important to the Empire? 'Treat with consideration those from afar?" Quite But that is a moral sentiment good as a tag to round a period, and is not to be taken as ruling out scholastic gentlemen, and changing a time-honoured system, I drop the attempt to' carry on their argument. I fancy. now that I see sume Pall-Mall Gazette writer pointing a neat paragraph on Ohina, after the longest experience of the competitive-examination giving it up as a failure." No, no, not #0 fast as all that! The extreme application of it is abandoned, and a resort
in at an earlier period, but the principle proving real business-capacity is brought still holds pretty firmly for the first steps to office, That sale of office-title system is an awkward innovation, but ils effects are counteracted by the year's probation before actual admission to the official line of promotion, There are still brilliant illustrations of the old system coming to the front, as witness the present Taotai of Shangh: who is a competition-wallah pure and si ple. And there have been several ignor ious failures among the nominees of the Tsung-li Yamen, who were supposed to have imbibed the true system of dealing with the foreigner in the Yamen at Peking, and discovered that a distinction held between the foreign official as soon there and as flourishing at a Treaty Port. (Vide Blue Books.) Yours truly, Miscellaneous,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.