17 Wax by week we publish in these 18 columns an abstract in English of that 19 wonderful farrago of State papers, Court news, Edicts and Memorials, and records of cases in Provincial Courts, the Peking 21! Gazette, but we fear that we should be 24 flattering ourselves if we were to say that one in ten of our readers gues steadily through these translations. 'T'here are such bushels of chaff and so few grains of corn in the weekly harvest that fow newspaper readers stay to search through the former to find the latter; and when they have found the corn, they, cannot be sure that it is genuine. For 30 instance, not long ago an important memorial to the irone was printed, in which the writer, " high provincial 30 official, reported the suppression of a serious insurrection, explained what the 30] suppression had cost, and asked for 3 rewards and promotion for the civil and military officers who had restored tran-31 quillity to the district. lhe Imperial approval was signified as usual; and alittle while afterwards a thoroughly trustworthy correspondent, a foreigner, wrote 33 tous—and his letter was published in our columns—that he was at the very place where the insurrection was said to have occurred, at the very time when a small army was supposed to have been engag 1 suppressing it, and there was no surrection there at all or anywhere near there. Three soldiers had come, indeed, to the inn in which he was staying and told him that they were in gg pursuit of a robber whom the magistrate was anxious to arrest, and this was the whole foundation of the long and exciting story told in the Peking Gaxette.
Unreliable, however, as the memorials and reports printed in the Gazette may be; and ineffective as even the Imperial 44 decrees - too frequently are, none of 50 them being more amusing than those '92 in which the Emperor from time to, time denounces corruption and extort tion and insists on all his officials being men of impregnable virtue and indefatigable energy, they throw x good. deal of light from time to time on manners and customs in China. 'The abstract which we published the other day of the Gazettes of the 11th to the 16th of April last was remarkably rich in noticeable points, and we are sure it is worth our readers' while that we should call attention to them.
People outside China who hear of the horde of officials and their satellites that is maintained all over this Empire, might conclude therefrom that while perhaps the people are oppressed by those in authority, at least some order is kept in the country, some protection to life and property assured; and that even if this protection is not as perfect as it might bein the provinces, the capital at least would be safe. They would be a little surprised then to rend in an Imperial decree published on the 11th of April, that in the northern quarter of Peking "robberies and thefts occur in constant succession without it ever happening that the police succeed in making a single arrest of the guilty." This, says the Ewaperor, is a lamentable state of affairs, and the inference is that the police are in collusion with the robbers, "We are exceedingly angry at being informed of this," says the Emperor, and he orders an unfortunate gaol-warden to be cashiered, and a suitable punishment to be administered to the chief of the police, who probably had to make a handsome prevent to the Board of Civil Appointments, and there the matter ended. 'I'he police force in the southern quarter do not seem to be much more efficient than their comrades in the northern; for the second decree of the 11th of April orders the Board just mentioned to investigate a list which the Censor has just submitted to the Throne, "recommending extraordinary rewards for the gentry and headmen who lately distinguished themselves by their energy and diligence in capturing a number of bad characters infesting the said district." The third decree of the same date is an amusing illustration of the regular course of events when a breach occurs in the banks of the Yellow River, It may be premised that it is very well understood. that if the Yellow River did not occasionally break out of bounds, however satisfactory this might be to the country people, a large number of hungry
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.