Peking, January 1—The new Cabinet has been installed for exactly one week. Mr, Liang Shihyi, the Premier, is popularly known as the "God of Wealth." But in spite of the fact, the old year was allowed to pass away without anything being done to relieve the poverty-stricken Ministers. Mr. Liang even had to go back unau his word to the teachers of the Government Colleges to give them one month's pay before New Year's Eve, because his Finance Minister could not find him any money to tide over the year.
Tue Gop or Weatra.
When Chin Yun-peng's Cabinet fell, all Peking was glad, because it was corrupt, incompetent and financially incapable; but now that the "God of Wealth" is in power, everybody instead of becoming optimistic, is feeling suspicious.
ey ask what the New Cabinet is going to do, and why it came into ofice at all, since it seems to have no original plans of raising money to improve the situation. But before discussing this point it may be well to see how Mr, Liang came to have this appellation.
During Yuan Shih-kai's regime, Wang Hu, the present Civil Governor of Kiangsu, who was then a censor, preferred a charge of corruption against the principal officials of the five Government railways, and as Mr. Liang was the recognized leader of the Chiaotung or Communications clique the Chinese press alleged that he was amassing such a fortune for himself through these railways that might be called a Wu Lu Tsai Shen,—the God of Wealth of the Five Routes—the popular superstition regarding this god being that he is capable of securing money from all the four points of the compass as well as from the central point, from which the others radiate.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.