FEAT is appointed Taotai of Lan-chow in Kansu.
(2) Memorial from Lin Shu, Vice President of the Board of Ceremonies, and Supervisor on the occasion of the recent examinations for the degree of chu jeu in Peking. The Supervisor is supplied with seal which is affixed to the paper of the candidates to avoid possibility of fraud, the seal being sent to him in the examination enclosure by the Governor of Shuntien, and returned by the Supervisor to that officer at the conclusion of the exam-ions. The usual course was followed this year at the first set of examinations for ordinary candidates, but at that for Manchus passing in the language of their own race, the seal was not sent to him, as
it was only after writing and applying for before, by the Governor of Shun-tien, and it himself that it was sent a day after he had entered the enclosure. Fortunately, progress of the examination was not hindered by this delay. On enquiry into the cause he was informed by letter from the Governor of Shun-tien that there was nothing in his records to show that it was the duty of the Governor of Shuntien to apply to the Board of Ceremonies for the seal in question and send it to the Examination Hall on the occasion of the Manchu Examination, this duty being, as far as he was concerned, confined to the ordinary literary examination. It was further' explained to the memorialist by the wei-yuan, who eventually brought the seal, that it had hitherto been the custom for one of the departments in the enclosure to send a written memo with a wei-yuan to the Board of Ceremonies applying for the seal as soon as the Supervisor had descended from his horse, the seal being returned by the same department when the result of the examination was announced; throwing the blame, in short, upon the proctors. The memorialist then gave orders for the examination records to be carefully inspected, but no record of the process detailed by the wei yuan could be discovered, and subsequent enquiry disclosed the fact that the procedure on each occasion had been most irregular, sometimes one course being adopted and sometimes another. As this irregularity is very apt to occasion delay: and mistakes, he would suggest the pr priety of issuing explicit regulations on the subject.
(3) The Governor-General of the Two Kuang provinces and the Governor of Kuang-tung submit a list of ayonts in the latter prov nee for the collection of contributions towards the Shansi Famine Fund, for whom rewards are solicited, the amount collected in Kwangtung feom the Ast of June, 1878, to the end of April this year, when the purelase system was abolished, was is, 446,100, november 5th.—(1) Memorial from Wen Hui, President of the Buard of Punishments, and his colleagues, reporting the existence of a diversity of opinion amongst them as to the penalties attaching to murder when the victim comes within the prescribed limits of relationship, Amongst the eases included in the condemned lists sent up this autnun for revision was that of Li Chin-mu, who had murdered a child for the sake of plunder, and waa condemned to death by the provincial authorities after the usual period of incarceration, Chun Mei-hsien, Director of the Imperial Stud Court, then objected to the sentence on the ground that no punishment was severe enough for so great a crime, and the ease was sent back to the Board, by Imperial decree, for reconsideration, when the sentence was changed to condemnation without possibility of reprieve. At the time, however, Chien Pao-lien, Senior Vice-President of the Board, was in the examination enclosure, and when he came out he objected to the decision on the ground that in con dernning Li Chin-anu to decapitation after the usual term of imprisonment—the sentence which was in the first instance passed upon-him—the law had been construed in its strictest sense, and it was not right to cut him off from reprieve as had been done at the autumn revision. He re resented these views to His Majesty, wh 0 issued a further decree directing the Board to consider a suggestion submitted by Oh'ien Pao-lien that a special law should be made to meet cases of this description. This question will form the subject of a separate memorial. The memorialists have further to state that they propose to affix the "circle" to the name of Li Chin-mu this day, ordering the sentence of death to be carried out, unless it is His Majesty's wish that the issue of this warrant be delayed until the Imperial commission of enquiry shall have been held. Ch'ien Pao-lien being a dissentient, his name, as is cus: tomary, is not appended to this memorial.
(2) The Court of Censors report the receipt of a petition from one Hsieh Fa, a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.