May 30th.—(1) Li Hung-chang requests that certain changes may be made in the criminal law of the Province of Chihli, assimilating it to that of Feng-tien and the Canton Provinces, so that severer punishments may be inflicted in cases of robbery by men carrying firearms and in cases of som. eng-tien, in every case of rob-kidnapping for the sake of holding to ran-
Dory with violence, if even one only of the party of robbers is anned with a gun, nomatter what be the size of the party, or whether any one have been actually injured or not, every one of the offenders is condemned to immediate decapitation followed by exposure of his head. The Memorialist thinks this a very proper provision of the law, on account of the deadly nature of freams, which, unlike other weapons, will take a person's life scores of yards away; and in chihli, which is the Metropolitan Province, something should be done to check the shadows passed continuously over the hills—' of the magistrate, the other of the military audacious robberies now so often committed
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.