October 11th.—Wu Ta-ch 'eng acknowledg ges the receipt on the 11th September of an Imperial Decree enclosing copies of the above and another Memorial, in which charges have been made against Ni Wen-wei and his colleagues, and reports the result of minute investigation which he has held on the subject, Immediately on assuming his present office, he made a personal in-paction of the condition of the river and had all the correspondence on the question of repairs brought before him and carefully examined. By this means and by closely interrogating the officers concerned, he learned that the water in the river was unusually low at the beginning of the present summer, and that the failure to com: plete the work was due to the following circumstances. In the first place the extent of the work was very great, and the continual beating of the water against the breach rendered the execution of it extremely difficult. A second cause was the lateness of beginning the work and the great scarcity of materials, In accordance with the practice followed in a similar case in 1840 the materials were procured through the district officers, and as Ni Wen-wei thought they would act more promptly if they received their instructions direct from himself, he assigned them a limited tine within which to procure the necessary quantity. The result was that the district officers entrusted the matter to their underlings, and no doubt considerable hardship was inflicted on the people. Memorialist himself on his way tprobgh the province from Kuei-te Fu heard man references made to the subject, but though he instituted careful enquiries he could not ascertain definitely the name of. any district or any village in which the people had suffered oppression. He, himself, has established Government agencies for the purchase of materials, and has issued proclamations which will,'be hopes, do away with any abuses of the kind in future. On-vai Lin, the officer denounced in the Cen Memorial, had previously held successive offices in Honan for a number of years, and certainly does not enjoy a very goud reputation, but there is not sufficient proof that he had acted dishonestly in the collection of materials. The outery against him at present is rather to be ascribed to the jealousy occasioned by the fact that he was transferredfromanotherprovince. He will, however, de removed from his present post and sent back to Kiangsu, The charges against General Ts'ui_ T'ing-kuei are held to be unfounded. The work of excavating the drainage channel was not let out to him by contract. The channel, which was dug out by soldiers under the General's command, is divided into 96 sections and is 3,000 chang in length, and cost Tls. 700,000 and not Tls. 1,200,000 as stated by the Censor. Detailed accounts of the whole expen. diture were furnished at the time. Memorialist has had the channel accurately surveyed, and finds that, far from doing silted up as stated by the Censor, it is navigable for small boats throughout its entire course. At its mouth it is from 8 to 10 feet deep, while in the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.