Somzraine more than a month ago we published in these columns a contributed article with the above heading. In the September issue of the Corean Repository, which has just reached us, we find an edi editorial article headed "Along Progessive Lines," in which there is some criticism of our article. The writer in the Repository begins with.a reference. to his lamentations a month earlier over the. reactionary spirit that was'too much. in evidence in the Court and Government of Corea, while: the orders and Royal edicts in the Offcial Gaxette " undoubtedly indicated the presence of a forward movement." We see with pleasure that the Editor. of the Repository is auxious in September to mitigate the force of his August lamentations. " We gladly recognise," he says, "the existence of the Progressive party and the good work it is aiming to do. The 3) widening and repairing of the main streets of the capital; the careful expenditure of government money under.the direction.of Dr. McLeavy Brown the presence of capable foreigners in the Law, War, and Police Departments the dismissal of supernumerary not to say incompetent clerks and other attendants from the various offices the redistricting of the country into thirteen provinces and the fixed salaries of the Governors and magistrates, together with the limits of their power and privileges; the estab-
ing the extension, of the Royal Postal lishment, or more properly speak~ Service so that now there are, or will be soon, first-class post offices in. eleven principal cities, and second-class. offices in fourteen smaller towns; these and other changes mark substantial progress of the Government, and we. sincerely congratulate the men through. whose influence these wholesome changes are effected."
So far the Editor. of the Repository now agrees with our contributor, but he objects to our contributor's contrasting these reforms with those introduced by the Japanese. 'I'he Editor enumerates the principal reforms proposed by Couné Inouye, which our contributor is said to have stigmatised as "puerile and ridiculous but the former has to allow that "the changes proposed were so radical that the Count himself found it necessary later to modify them somewhat." It is uothing new that what seems only too radical to one seems puerile and ridiculeus to another, and yet both may be working together for some true result of good. The fact stated in the Repo-story that the present reformers " are moving along the general lines indicated in the recommendations proposed by Count Inouye and. accepted by the Corean Court" throws no discredit.on our contributor. With reform of all kinds, to use the philosophic refrain of old song, "it very much depends upon. the. style in which it's done." It was the style of the Japanese that frustrated their best intentions.
"Tt is a thousand pities," the Editor of the Repository goes on to say, Minister Miura ever came to Corea. A year ago last summer the reforms were progressing, if not as fast and satisfactorily as some hoped, yet they were progressing. With the withdrawal of Count Inouye, the downfall of the Minister of Home Affairs, Pak Yang Ho, the advent of Viscount Miura and his plotting, which finally ended in the diabolical. murder. of the. Queen and the usurpation of a. Cabinet. hostile. to.the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.