I, the Empress Dowager zo hsi-tuan-yn, ete,, ete., desire herein to point out to all my officers, high und low, that the most important duty to be observerd in the administration of the affairs of the people is to try every case as soon as it is brought notice, They should remember ay to show sympathy to settle their cases of litigation at the earliest opportunity, I have recently heard that officials have been in the habit always to defer all sorts of cases brought to them days and months. 'They have, to supplement that laziness, instituted such places as houses of deter min, houses to await trial, ote., in order that litigants may be made to await rheic leisure to tigate their complaints. Consequently many innocent persons' have been placed at the mercy of the extortionate demands of runners and clerks who purposely delay cases in order to bleed the litigants who approach the yamens. It is simply ible to name in a breath all the evils that have arisen though this delay in trying the cases of the people. Offic to think that when the head of ly becomes involved in a law suit and is confined in one of these houses of detention all the rest are put into 9 state of unrest and anxiety most pitiable to witness. Officials must remember that the common people of small and limited means have ino time to take up litigation unless forced to by acts of injustice, and for the officials to treat them with such levity and harshness is indeed unjustifiable and cruel to my people. I am, therefore, filled with indignation at all this and hereby command the Board of Punishments, the Court of Censors, and all the Viceroys and Governors of provinces to arrange a certain sot of rules for the guidance. of officials in judicial cases and a scale of rewards and punishments to be meted out to officials according as they show diligence or neglect
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.