15th Dee.
'THe Audience Question is settled at last. The late conferences of the Foreign Ministers at Peking have not been confined to questions of likin and transit passes. They have had a more weighty motive, and they have resulted in the Imperial Decree, a translation of which we publish to-day, that Audience is to be granted every China New Year. Sir John Walsham's tenure of the post of British Minister will after all have one memorable event in it; and this news goes to confirm the belief that the Emperor and his immediate family have more liberal views than the statesmen by whom they are surrounded. Something will still depend on the manner in which the decree is carried out; but it is one great point gained, and is reassuring to those who feared that with the death of the Marquis 'I'séng all progress at the capital had been stopped. The coming China New Year will be another important landmark in the history of foreign relations with China.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.