12th Feb.
Mr. Nicuotas J. Hanen, formerly of Shanghai, and now Judge of the British Court in' Japan, has been offered the post of Chief Judge and Consul-General at Shanghai. As usual, an attempt has been made and is still being made to keep the new arrangement and the names of the officials who are to suc~ ceed Sir R. J. Rennie, Mr. P. J. Hughes and Mr. R. A. Mowat, a complete secret; but this is a tradition of the Legation at Peking and the Foreign Office in was perhaps thought better not to make the change public, until Mr. Hannen had definitely accepted the ost, Nhe Consul and Assistant-Judge is to be Mr. George Jamieson. Both these appointments will be heartily "welcomed in Shanghai. We shall all) regret the officials whom the change displaces, and we adhere to our opinion that the new scheme has grave faults; but as it has been decided on, and new officials have to come, we are at liberty to state our opinion that no two more satisfactory aplutments could have been made. there have never been more popular, and justly popular, residents here than Mr. and Mrs, Hannen and their family, and Mr. and Mrs. Jamieson and their) family, and to have them back among us will do much to console us for the loss of those who leave us on their arrival, and for the defects of the scheme that brings them. There will be a! general wish that Mr. Hannen will accept, the position, and we can assure him that the news that he has done so will be received with universal satisfaction; only tempered by the regret we shall feel at the departure of the present Chief Judge, Consul-General, and Assistant Judge, and the disappointment that we cannot but experience that Mr. Alabaster, now Consul at Canton, is not to come back here as Consul-General. So strange is the scheme which the Foreign Office has matured, that even the Daily Press remarks editorially on the 4th instant, that it "cannot but think that the Daily News has been misinformed."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.