Ir is melancholy to see a man of education and culture like Ku Hungining, a graduate of a Scotch University, devoting the long letter which will be found in another column to a endeavour to whitewash the Empress Dowager for her action in reference to the unfortunate reformer Shen Ko-wei. The letter must surely have been written to please the well-known "Legation lady," who went to tea with the Empress Dowager as usual two days after the barbarity committed by Her Majesty's direct order, which has revolted even the members of the Diplomatic Body who wanted to surrender the "Supao" prisoners.
In the first place, we must take exception to Mr, Ku's claim that his letter is "a temperate statement of the case from the Chinese point of view." It is a statement from Chinese point of view possibly: but the Chinese in question is a disappointed man who has ever been taken by his superiors at his own valuation, and whose evident object is to curry favour with the powers that be at Peking. The last sentence of his letter is a sufficient key to his present position. In order to justify the Empress Dowager, Mr. Ku tells us that Shen not only confessed to having written seditious libels incite ing to rebellion, to being a leading member of a revolutionary society having for its object the overthrow of the Imperial Government, and many of whose members—were executed by Chang Chih-tung in a panic some three years 0 for being concerned in a comic opera conspiracy at Hankow, but that he "defiantly gloried in his crime." All this or may not be true, as the proceedings in the Board of Punishments, which Mr, Ku dubs (not sarcastically. we hope) the Department of State of Justice, are not public, but our readers can, and will be on surer ground if they do, rely on the description given in the account sent to us from Peking on the 3rd ult: "The unfortunate Shen was a scholar and gentleman and mixed freely with the better classes of Peking, among whom he had numerous friends.. The trial beyond a we that the by whom or of what came straight from her (the Empress he was accused, but Chinese-like of Dowager's) hand, for it is such a simple interrogation of the prisoner monstrous perversion of even Chinese with the instruments of torture ready justice, that only she whos word is to quicken his memory." Of course, law would have dared to doit. There knowing that he was to be killed in is no such punishment prescribed any ease, he confessed freely. in the Codes, even for high treason.
Mr. Kn goes on to admit that. the Tt is only for the eunuchs and slaves of the Palace—un for tunate who have order issued by the arbitrary will of the sovereign, that Shen should be no rights—that the punishment of beaten to death, was "illegal and beating to death is reserved." unconstitutional, which it is the duty Mr. Ku's explanation that the of the Court of Censors to guard foundation of Chinese justice is vairist." On the other hand revenge while that of civilised countries is to deter future possible that "the judgment of the King in council is the highest criminals, is interesting, but has law," so that the Court of Censors is bearing on the present case. His charged with a duty whose exercise advice to foreigners generally to dis-is entirely futile. Then Mi courage reform and reformers and excuses the Empress Dowager, whose Unk "up the Empress Dowager is unworthy of notice. We strongly action he has just shown does not by advice Mr. Ku to study the article need excuse, by: the precedent set by ica, who which we have extracted from the the authori South Afri Baltimore "Sun " on the "Scholar in illegally deported a pro-Boer English Politics in China." lady during the lute war.
Mr. Ku goes on to pallinte the severity of the punishment inflicted on Shin. He justifies the severity by
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.