Secret Telegrams of national importance to the Central Government at Peking having of late been frequently betrayed to the newspapers and published, the Grand Council has informed the heads of the Chinese Telegraph Department that if, in the future, this occurs again the officials concerned will be cashiered and otherwise punished in accordance with the Gounell apparently desires to throw y of the offence. The Grand
the blame upon the Telegraph people, but they seem to forget that it is their own people—those connected with the secretarial staffs of the various Boards and Min'stries—who are the really guilty ones. These, owing to the meagreness of their salaries, do not hesitate to sell what they know in their official capacity to any one who wants information, so long as the remuneration offered is enticing enough.
The Persecution of Reformers inaugurated lately in Peking by reactionaries the capital, "seem to be going on merrily—in the latters' eyes, any way and a number of persons of various ranks known to favour progress and modern ideas are being denounced in vituperative language to the Throne. As the reactionaries are secking to get revenge for the terror they experienced in 1900 and 191 after the Boxer disturbances, for fear of being demanded for punishment by the Powers persecution of native Christians and mpathisers with foreigners, a Northern that the Foreign Ministers should send ive newspaper pertinently suggests
hint to the Grand Council that, if this persecution of Progressives be allowed to go on, the Powers would demand the punishment of such of the reactionaries whose names were in the list of guilty mandarins in 1900 but who had managed, in one way of another, to escape deserved punishment. It is further reported that 2 certain Foreign Representative has even made some such hint to the Wai-wuhu.
A Matter of Dynastic Importance, A private dispatch from Poking states that on the 6th instant a joint decree of the Emperor and Empress Dowager was denly issued commanding the presence toa secret council, at Eho Park Palace, of all the Imperial Princes of the Four Orders, Imperial Dukes, members of the Grand Council, and all the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the various Boards and Ministries. The proceedings were perfectly secret, but itis shrewdly conjectured that the subject of debate was about Manchuria, whether China should join Japan in fighting Kussia, or whether Russi should be allowed to occupy Manchuria without any opposition, or, finally, when ther China should remain neutral, should Japan go to war with Russia, and take whatever consequences the fates may happen to offer at the and of such a war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.