From a memorial presented by the Governor of Kuangsi it appears that among the troops serving in that province is a Hunan contingent which has been stationed there for many years. The officer who was formerly in command of this force has represented that there are large arrears of pay owing t There was a considerable sum due to it from the Government as long ago as 1864, but this was written of by a special arrangement which will be described below. Since that date the force has taken part in more than two hundred combats large and small. By the time when the said officer retired from the command, arrears had again accumulated and had' mounted up to a sum of Tls. 760,600. The commander had conferred with the offices and men of the force, and they had declared themselves perfectly willing that the sum should be cancelled as before. This had been represented once to the Government, but nothing had then been done, because the accounts were not yet passed by the Board in Peking. Now, however, they had been found to be in order, and therefore the commander begged to renew his application.
The memorialist referred this statement to the local Board for the Restoration of Order. The Board in reply announces that the averments of the commander are perfectly correct. There were certain war expenses incurred in the province between the summer of 1864 and the end of 1875, at which latter date the Board replaced the previously existing; Military Supply Committee. In 1878 an 1880 the Board made out full accounts of these expenses, dividing them into three series according to the campaigns to which they related, first included the sup-session of the Taiping rebels under Ssu: Jen-kuang, and of certain banditti at T'ai-ssu Chen; the second, the suppression of banditti round Ssu-en, Wu-chou, Liu-chou, and Ch'ing-yuan, an exped ion against the rebels in the province of Kueichow and the protection of the navigable rivers; the third, operations against insurgents near Kuei-lin and other cities, two expedition: across the border into Tongking, and frontier defence on the Right and Left Branches of the West River. These accounts have now all been passed by the Board of Revenue. In each series there are sums for arrears of pay; and in the first one they amount to Tls. 864,300. It is now requested that the Tls. 760,600 due to the Hunan troops may be written off therefrom. It was formerly announced by the Board of Revenue that, for the sum of Tls. 300,000 subscribed by the people of any province for military expenses, the number of successful candidates at the provincial examinations, both civil and military, should each' be increased by one for ever afterwards, and, for Tls. 100,000, a similar favour should be accorded at the next examination, for one time only. In pursuance of this arrangement, the Kuangsi Government prays that, in return for the cancelling of the Tls. 760,600, two civil and two military graduates may be added for ever to the present number in the province of Hunan, and, for the balance, one of each at the coming examination only.—Referred to the Board concerned.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.