With respect to our edict yesterday commanding the Ministers of the Presence to investigate the case of forgery in connection with a denunciatory memorial pu: porting to have been written by the Captai eneral of the Manchu Blue Banner charging a Colonel named Ying Hsien with various demranours, etc, a preliminary report by the said Ministers is now before us. They state that upon enquiry they find that the officer on duty on the 8th instant at the Palace as tran mitter of memorials and who received the forged memorial was Feng Sheng-pu. This ofter declares that the document in question was placed in a firmly-sealed Official cover, and, although having no official seal of the Blue Bapner Captain-General had the words, Seal stamped on memorial in accordance with etiquette" written on the cover where official seals are usually stamped. This being the period of the usual Tout holidays, at the end of the Chinese year, when tie official seals of every yaméniv the Empiteare placed within their respective seal boxes and not taken out until the end of the new year holidays, the officer in question (Feng Sheng-pu) thought that a declaration like the above on an official envelope was sufficient compliance with Palace and otticial etiquette. Hence, suspecting nothing unusual in the manner of presenting the memorial he received it with number of other covered memorials (come officially stamped and others with similar written declarations on them) and when his Majesty entered the Grand Council Chamber handed them up in the usual way. We, however, consider the said officer tobe guilty of gross oversight and carelessness. As a matter of fact, the custom in Peking whenever the legal holidays are. in force, and the official seals are laid by and not used for the usual thirty days (20th day 12th moon to the 19th' day of the 1st moon of th~ succeeding year), the womens in possession of official keale generally stamp a fewofficialenvelopes to provide for emergencies when memorials have to be presented to the Throne during the holidays. These stamped envelopes moreover, have the character wit written on them in order to denote that "preparation had been made in advance." Hence, for the officer in charge of the transmission of memorials to depend simply on declarations like the one nated is certainly a case of carelessness and oversight which must not be permitted to pass by without censure. Feng Sheng-pu is therefore handed to the Board for the determination of an adequate penalty and we now, once more, impress upon the officers of the Blue Manchu Banner to use every effort in trying to detect the perpetrators of the forgery in order that the guilty ones may be brought to condign punishment and the majesty of the law be vindicated.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.