23rd May.
Tue Imperial Rescript, issued as 'a result of the representations made by the Ministers at Peking, and providing that the recent appointments of T. E. Tieh Liang and Tang Shao-yi_ as supreme Chinese heads of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service shall not take effect for the present, will be generally welcomed, on the principle that what is already well left alone as long us possible. In any other light than that, what has happened since the promulgation of the famous Decre+on the 9th inst, is neither very important nor! very conclusive. 'The routine the Service has not been disturbed in any way; in fact except through' the newspapers the foreigners engaged in it have had no intima!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.