As a reward for assiduity in relief work, or for liberality in subscriptions, some 44 officials have been promoted on the recommendation of the Governor. Over 150 more will have some honorary degree or title conferred upon them, so that famine relief is a paying concern—especially since there is always a leakage into the administrators' pockets, These bogus degrees have received their death-knell so far as the fulminations of the vermilion pencil can exterminate a persistent custom of the kind. Ithas been officially decreed that henceforth no more ranks -will be sold.
The very measures for which the martyrs died some four years ago are now being re-enacted again. It is to be hoped that this time the Empress, having put her hand to the plough of reform, will not any more Took back. All reform and important measures affecting the State are to be promulgated from Hsianfu,.as any issued from Peking would be said to be enacted under the influence of the foreigner. This time it is the declared wish of the Court to show to the world that these reform measures are indigenous to the country—a position everyone would be glad to know was actually the ease.
1dth September.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.