December 20th,—(1) Memorial from the Censor Tsai-tsai, urging upon his Majesty the necessity of issuing positive orders that a certain T'ang, an employe in the Imperial granaries at Peking, who has been arrested on serious charges of rapacity and embezzlement of public grain, be not suffered to employ the arts of bribery at his trial, or in any way to evade the punishment which is his proper due, Memorialist some time since read in the Gazette an Imperial Decree, directing the reform of various abuses connected with the issue of Government rice, and impressing upon the authorities the duty of exercising greater precaution to prevent their recurrence. In spite of this Decree it seems to Memorialist that a prisoner has now been arrested who, owing to his wealth and the artifices of which he is an experienced master, has a fair chance of escaping from the meshes of the law. The prisoner in question, who possesses a number of aliases, but generally goes by the name of 'T'ang Ying-ting, has been connected with the Imperial Granaries for twenty years, during which period he was once banishell for thieving, ut managed to escape from his keepers and retarn to his former employment under a different name. He has amassed a large fortune, the proceeds of a systematic course of theft, extortion, and corruption; is the owner of four residences in Peking, where he lives in ducal fashion, indulging in the most extravagant expenditure; and never goes out unless accom-anied by a budy-guard of some score or so of bullies. When the Government officers lately attempted to arrest him, he and his followers broke through their midst and made good their escape for the time, though eventually apprehended in a remote part of the city. Memorialist comments on the audacity thus displayed in openly resisting the police in the execution of their duty, and he proceeds to shew what arts the prisoner will probably employ to secure a favourable decision at the hearing. Bribery will be firat and foremost, and his wealth is prodigious; but he will attempt to prove an alias, to frustrate which design it would be well to send for the officer who actually arrested him to depose to his identity in court; and he will assert that he is over 70 years of age, (in which case torture is not applied to elicit confession). Memorialist expresses a strong hope that the prisoner will not be pormit~ ted to throw dust into the eyes of hia judges by any such pleas, and he begs that in order to the more effectual pre tion of such ruses, an extra number of of cers may be detached by the Board of Punishments to be present at and watch the trial, December 21st,—(1) Memorial from Ming-an, reporting sentence of death pronounced' on a prisoner who murdered a friend whom h ted of having committed adultery with his wife. Being confined in the prison at San-hsing, ho Inid a plot with another notorious criminal, to strangle one of the keepers and escape. Their plan proved successful and he took refuge in some neighbouring koa-liang field, but was eventually compelled by hunger to come into the village, where he was retaken.
(2) Ming An reports a case of adultery, in which the lawful wife drove her rival to commit suicide by upbraiding her with her crime, The guilty husband has been sentenced to labour on the post-roads, December 22nd.—Ming An represents that he recently deputed an officer to survey the conditions of the border land lying between Kirin and Corea. this officer now reports that, in obedience to the instructions given him, he proceeded from the Hsia Ka Ya River, by a series of very difficult mountain' passes, to the northern bank of the Tumen River at Kao-li Chen, a distance of some 209 li, At eight different points of the country traversed were found tracts of waste land, flanked by the river and enclosed on every other side by ranges of barren and inaccessible mountains, unexplored even by the inhabitants of the immediate vicinity. The land in question really forms part of Kirin, but, being divided from Corea only by a river, natives of the'latter country, in times of distress ocetsioned by drought or flood, have crossed over and reclaimed portions of it. The total extent of land that has thus been brought under cultivation amounts to some 3,000 acres, and the squatters number several thousand men, all of whom hold a written permission from the Corean Magis trate of the Hsien-ching circuit to cultivate
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.