Dec. 80.
THE news we receive to-day that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is trying to screw the Diplomatic Body up to cajoling the Municipal Council to pay $2,000,000 for the affair of May 30 will cause a very disagreeable sensation. Shanghai is entitled to feel that a better reception was due to its offer, which was not only liberal in itself, but entirely voluntary; and the only effect of the Waichiaopu's behaviour must be to make people regret that the Council offered spontaneously what there was not the slightest. compulsion upon it to offer at all, It must be plainly understood that, in the Council's grant of money to those who suffered on May 30, there is no room for Largaining, no admission of wrong-doing, no question of compensation, It is a compass! grant, which the Council made out of no necessity, but from simple human kindness and in token of its regret that Chinese living under its jurisdiction have, for whatever cause, met their death. When a Government makes a grant in aid because there has been an earthquake, flood or a famine, it does not admit responsibility for these Thenomena and no one thinks of blaming it for them. That is very much the position of the Council, A Commission of three independent Judges, after vestigating the affair of May 30 in the minutest detail, complete ly exonerated the Council and the police, One of the Judges added some criticism of the lat ter, but in the upshot he agreed with his colleagues in acquittal, In these circumstances the Council would have been fully justified in saying that there was nothing for it to do, But feeling now that it could well afford to be generous, and sincerely desir ing to be generous, it voluntarily made the grant, which the Waichiaopu has received rather in the style of a cook who has hia bills ""cut" than in a manner worthy of a dignified Power, We trust that the Diplomatic Body will lose no time in making the position clear to the Waichiaopu. And it may be added that nobody in or out of China has any power whatsoever compel the Council to pay a Fenny, In point of fact, it has acted technically ultra vires in making any payment at all and, if ratepayers chose to call a special meeting and throw out the Council for making this grant shout their direct authority they could do so, Of course, ratepayers have no idea of doing any such thing; they are every bit as anxious as the Council to settle the dispute on generous Ines and to satisfy Chinese feeling. And we believe that locally Jat any rate that feeling is satis" fied. We believe that Chinese of Shanghai will take a far juster jew of the situation than docs the Waichiaopu, for the initiative in the demand put forward comes from Peking not from this part of the world. Is it too much to hope that the Chinese of Shanghai, who we are sure are ready to let bygones be bygones, will privately inform the Waichiaopa that they are not in sympathy with a demand which, if persisted in, must put China in a very bad light abroad?
A Cutvese letter over a century ald with a tragic history has just een presented to the Pope by the Vicar Apostolic of Seoul. The let for is painted on silk and contains 13,000 Chinese characters. "Tt was written in 1801 to the Bishop of Peking suggesting plans to save the persecuted Church in Korea. was intercepted by the police, and both writer and bearer" were Fested and killed. Missionaries in China recovered the letter about thirty years ago when the police archives were dispersed,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.