Is any collateral proof were required to show the unjustifiable harshness involved in the suppression by the Japanese Government of the Jiji Shim= po, it might be found in the arduous and painful straggles of the Japan Mail to defend the measure. Had the Government organ been a little wiser in its generation it would have preserved a judicious silence. But so extreme a step could, we suppose, scarcely have been passed over without comment, and the strained apologetics of our contemporary show only too clearly how utterly indefensible, even in the eyes of the Japan Mail itself, has been the action of the authorities. It is plain, in every line, that the editor's own senso of justice has received a severe shook, and that he is hard put to it to reconcile his duty with his conscience. The article in the Jiji which led to its forcible suppression strikes us as harmless and rather sensible than not, its keynote being the impossibility of Corea over prospering while under its present feeble and corrupt Government, and the strong advisability of its being placed under the domination of a stronger Power. The Japan Mail, however, declines to reproduce the article in its columns verbatim, " having no desire to take contumacious advantage of the immunity we enjoy under extraterritorial conditions." This ineffable tenderness of conscienco—to which we, alas! can lay no claim—ealls for the highest praise, and must have gone far towards assuaging avy feelings of irrotation aroused in the minds of the authorities by the manifest impotency of the defence set up in their behalf. The Mail, driven into a corner to find an excuse for so unexpected and arbitrary a measure, can only exclaim that the authorities must have acted with considerable reluctance and under a strong sense of necessity. This is the second occasion 9g which the Jiji Shimpo has been suppressed, and the Mail is fain to acknowledge that on the firstoccasionit was "notquitesure which of the Press regulations it [the Jiji] violated." It confesses that "it is a misfortune that the Press of Japan is not free—a very great misfortune." The Jiji article was "calculated to offend England, Russia, and Corea the idea of the British and Russian Governments caring one fig what a Japanese editor may write is exquisite—*the sting of the offence, however, being in the truth of the statements made." A magnificently plucky endeavour is then made by the Mail to show that many of the writer's expressions were really very improper, very unjustifiable; but the result is lamentably weak, and the defender of the Government gives up the task as hopeless. "After all," ho writes, "it must be admitted that the Jiji Shimpo's offence consists chiefly in speaking the truth too bluntly, A newspaper suspended for that sin must labour under a certain sense of hardship. Bat a newspaper like the Jiji -Shimpo owes a large duty tothe public,"—and then follows one last dying attempttoshow that the Government was not altogether without reason on its side in suppressing it, the transparent hollowness of the effort reflecting high honour upon the man who made it, The factisthatthe editor undertook too much im tackling this subject, He undertook the defence of a position which simply refused to be defended, and though he makes a painfully gallant fight for it his arguments are feeble, half-hearted, and forced. The Japanese Government would do well to lay this lesson to heart. Their Press laws are unwarrantably severe—so severe that even the ablest writer in Japan fails when he tries to defend their execution. And if there be a policy, a law, a measure of whatever sort, in Japan, that the Japan Mail is unable to defend, the Government may be perfectly sure that there is nothing to be said in its favour, and would consequently be prudent to abandon it, THE JEWS IN RUSSIA, Tas detestation in which Jews are held by the Russian Government appears to Lave led the authorities to extend their official recognition to a remarkable movement in the South of Russia which, in their view, will have a distinctly disintegrating effect on Judaiem, This movement is the recent establishment by four poor Jows of Elisabethsgrad—a tailor, a-cornechandler, a notary's clerk, and a schoolmnstor—of a seat called the Biblical Brethren, the aim of which is, apparently, to bring Jews and Judaism into greater harmony with the Gentile world at large. Now this project seems, in the eyes of very many excellent people, to be at best.a hopeless one. J
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.