Finally, after casting about hither and hither, it was decided to insist on the Coalition introducing a. bill for the immediate reform of the Upper House. The most radical features of this bill are that peers [shall not be permitted to sit as Hegislators in the Upper House imply because they are peers; that proportion of the seats be filled by: election methods similar to those of the Lower House; and lastly, that, {im the event of a difference of opinion between the Lower House and the Upper Chamber, a committee, composed of an equal number of peers and commoners and one high judicial officer (who will hold the casting vote in case of a dead-Hock) deliver a judgment, The Government issued a statement to the effect that it intended to effect a reform of the Upper House and had already appointed a Jcommittee to make the necessary vestigations. The "irreconcilable: were not satisfied, the and when ict met to-day demanded that Viscount Kato would reduce his reform bill before the House, and) {threatened to bring, for Government should acquaint it the methods it proposed to take reforming the Upper Chamber.
The Government posthaste plead-he leaders of the that they would their par isans to desist from thus embarrassing the Government, the latter all the time regarding the threatened resolut to a vote of non-confidence in the That nigh: the Lower House sat till close on midnight, and at the eleventh hour, the "irreconcilable: consented to postpone their resolu tion.
Still, the Kato Government is far from secure. The New Year holidays were largely used for political Canton, Jan, 2.
The price of firewood im Canton to-tay is nearly $3 a picul. The cause of this high cost is the lange: sums necessary to buy protection from the bandits and pirates along the route of shipment.
'A complaint from the Fire-Wood Dealers' Guild says that from Loo-pau to Siutong, a distance of less than 17 miles, five different protec: ion fees had to be paid and. their' total would amount to nearly $150) for each junk load of wood. Aside from this, the merchants assert, the? have to suffer the loss of their ear-oes by the authorities' commandeering as much of the wood as they desire for their personal use, There are to be sen 500 to 600 truck loads of wood from the North. River districts lying along the station yards of the Canton-Hankow Railway, awaiting shipment to Canton, but there are not enough trains.
By an order of the Commissary of Finance, issued on December 24, all junks, sampans, and othe ssscls within the jurisdiction of the Ganton "authorities "deeds" and every deed is to taxed according to the value of the Property it represents, January has been allotted to che water population for the taking out these deeds. A tax of 6 per cent, will be charged, and those failing comply with the order by the end lof the month will be fined from two to 10 times the amount they. should have According to the latest. statistics evailablo, there are some 58,857 per= sons living in 13,403 junks. of igus aizex in the Canton Harbour limit atone—Reuter's Pacific vie,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.