Twose of our readers who have taken the trouble to plod through the curious correspondence between Mr. Takezosé, Into Japanese Minister at Seoul, and the authorities of the Foreign Office, now being published in these columns, will have been struck with the singularly rambling and inconsequent tenor of the @espaiches of the Corean Ministers, The style of despatch-writing among ital nations is different from that which prevails in the West. Instend of the terse, straightforward, businesslike phraseology employed by Earopean atatesmon, we find a circumlocution, a tendency to raise unimportant side-issues, and a roundabout method of expression, which go fur to detract from the point of an otherwise plow blo argument; and while this defect arises in no small measure from the character of Orientals themselves, it seems occasionally as though it were actually cultivated us a diplomatic accomplishment, useful for enabling the writer to avoid the mum points on which the whole discussion turns. Th peculiarity is, we think, observable in the present correspondence upon both sides; but, as might have been expected, {t is the Corean Ministers who make out the weaker case. In fuct the Japanese Minister, though by no means a master of diplomatic controversy, trips them up again and again, and shows clearly enough that the charges they bring against him are incapable of being sustained. To do this, indeed, was no difficult task, There is something childlike in the way in which Foreign Office Ministers, in their por~ plexity and indignation, contradict themselves, They do not deny, for instance, that, on the night of the mas-snore, urgent messages, purporting to to his assistance, But they blame Mr, Takezosé for not sitting down and entering, there and then, into a corre pondence with the Foreign Ofice, order to know whether he was to go or not; and this when the King's life was in imminent peril, and the delay ofan hour might have attended with most disastrous results—when every moment was of value! But, say the Corean Ministers, the Foreign Office takes cognizance of everything, and all communications with foreigners puss through it, This statement is not only irrelevant under (he circumstances, but absolutely false in fact; the Japanese Minister having, in a large pro. portion if not a majority of cases, received official intimation through the Board of War and verbally through members of the royal household. In one sentence, again, the Ministers charge Mr. Takezoyé with having taken forcible. possession of the King and butchered six members of the Government, In another sentence, forgetful apparently, of what they had just written, they begin to excuse themselves, and beg his Excellency to forego nil grudge against them! This is rather a strange attitude to assume towards a man they have just accused of a diabolical crime 5! and what is the epithet they apply to that crime themselves—how do they characterise it? His Excellency, they hint gently, acted in " rather a thought. less" manner; he lent "too. ready an! ear" to those who were bent on deceiving him; he allowed himself "too easily" to be taken in the snare Inid for him by the conspirators; he was "too confiding." Nor does the charge that the Japanese Minister burnt down his own Legation—a charge bused solely "on report"—fare mach better, The Minister disposes of it by the simple assertion that he left the house with his retinue at half-past two o'clock, and Unat it was not till five o'luck, when he was miles away, that the place was fred and whau we consider that it was surrounded by a mob of Coreans discharging fire-arms into it, there seems no difficulty in accounting for ils destruc. tion, especially as this fact is borne out by the testimony of eye-witnesses, Quo very ludicrous pnasage in the despatch of President Chao is that in which ho blames Mr. Takezoyé for tuking his soldiers to the Puluce. He lays stres upon the wording of the Decree, " Let the Japanese Minister come and protect not a word about troops! The King of Coren must indeed huve had a wonderful iden of the Jupanese Minister's prowess if he thought that he could, single-banded, " protect" his royal person against some thousands of ixsargents. It is absurd that Mr. Takezoyé should have been called upon to defend himself against charges so puerile, so evidently the outcome of sheer perplexity nud terror. But he uses the clu quogue argument with excellent effect. He slows that the) Government was aware of the attack to be made on the Jupanese, and did nothing to prevent it; that no warning was given to him as Minister; that, while attempting to escape, he and his countrymen were made the targets for stones, darre, and bullets; thnt many of them were killed; and that "your honourable soldiers" fired upon him incessantly as he was crossing the Seoul river in a boat, We have not, course, sufficient space to analyse the correspondence point by point. But, as far as it hus been published hitherto, the cases we lave adduced may be accepted as a fair sample of the whole, It is not too mach to say that in every instance in which n charge has been brought against the Japanese Minister by the Coreans is cither transparently false or easily refutable. This, it may be said, is because the Coreans are simple folk, unused to diplomacy, while Mr, Takezoyé is an eminent scholar, It is, however, scarcely necessary to rend Mr. Ta-Keznyé's despatches to sev through the flimsy texture of the accusa= tions levelled at him, for the reason that most of the accusations refute themselves. Que example of this will suffice. Mr. Takezosé is charged with having been deceived by a forged decree. He is also charged with bav= ing been in longue with the conspirators, and having. committed wholesale assassinations in the Palace, Now if he was in league with the conspirators it is clear that it would have been unnecessary to forge a decree summoning him to the Palace; he would have gone there by appointment, If, on the other hand, he was deceived by the decree, it is equally clear that he could not have been in league with the de. ceivers, Mr. Tnkezosé may be a monster of wickeduegs and cruelly, but certainly his accusers have not proved single crime against him. Their evi" deuce breaks down on every point.
In conclusion it is necessary to refer to one other matter only, Unt a matter of no small important We Inve seen a document, purporting to have been addressed by the King of Coroa to Li Hung-chang, in which His Majesty, in an account of the currence which is strangely at vane ance with that of his own Ministers, accuses Mr, Tokezoyé of having insti" gated the massacre, and implores the Imperial protection. This reads very peculiarly side by side with the accepted version of the story, according to whiok the King clung whimpering to the Japanese Minister's cent-table like a frightened child, begging his Excellency not to leave him one minute, imploring to be taken to his mother the next, and behaving in a way not only unworthy of a King bat oven of any grown-up man, We hope that thia miserable document will be proved a forgery. Two things way be mentioned in cone nection with it, First, it appears to have been written during the of the Chinese Commissioner, and, supposing it to be genuine, was most likely extorted by him from the cowardly monarch, Secondly, two days after the massnore, the King of Coren sent a massa; Mr. takezoyé by General Foote, United States Minister, expressing his thorough satisfaction with the assistance he had rendered, and his regret that his Excels lency bad been repulsed by the Chinese army. It seems'clear from that the King of Corea is the most despicable of men, or else that the document in which he accuses the man to whom he owes the preservation of his life, of having been conspirator in chief, is an impudent forgery.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.