An old Chinese friend, who incidentally is one of the best trans-Jators in Shanghai, takes us to task over the translation of President Hsu Shih-chang's manifesto regarding the election of Parliament which we published on Tuesday, particularly with reference to the sentence:
"Phe Parliament is one of the three powers of the country (the President and the Cabinet being the other two)."" Our friend and critic write Without wishing to appear ical regatdiny the translation which contains most of the essential points, though nothing of the elegant and scholarly terms used in the original Chinese, I must beg Teave to disagree with you in the first sentence defining the meaning of the "Phreo Powers." I would interpret this term as standing for "Legislative, judicial and administrative powers" the three fundamental but independent powers or functions in a constitutional country. Parliament for the Legislature righ but neither. the President alone} nor the whole Cabinet can correctly be said to represent the other two powers, un-Jess you regard the President to be all powerful, monopolizing all three powers, which he is certainly not in the eyes of the Chinese.
Whether he might be all this in his own eyes is another matter, though one hardly thinks that solfdelusion could so far go. At any rate, we are not going to dispute the accuracy of our friend's reading.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.