(1) That the Japanese and Russian governments should unite in advising the Korean Government to suppress all unnecessary expenses and to establish an equilibrium between expenditure and revenue. If, as a result of reforms which should be considered indispensable, it should become necessary to have recourse to foreign debts, the two governments should of a common accord render their support to Korea. (2) The Japanese and Russian governments should try to abandon to Korea, in so far as the financial and economic situation of that country should permit, the creation and maintenance of an armed force and of a police organized of native subjects, in proportion sufficient to maintain internal order, without foreign aid. (3) Russia was to be permitted to establish a telegraph line from Seoul to her frontier; the Japanese Government being allowed to administer those lines already in its possession. (4) In case the principles above expounded require a more precise and more detailed definition, or if in the future other points should arise about which it should be necessary to consult, the representatives of the two governments should be instructed to discuss them amicably. The Protocol of June, 1896, was no sooner signed than Russia proceeded to violate its terms. In the same month she tried to gain control of the Korean army by placing it under Russian instruction and discipline; in the same year, she urged the request that the disposal of all the Korean taxes and customs be placed in the hands of M. Kir Alexeieff. This plan was partly carried through the following year, and Mr. J. McLeavy Brown was dismissed from the position of Financial Adviser and General Director of Customs for Korea, although he was soon after formally restored to the latter office, the control of which he had never been, in fact, induced to surrender. In August of 1897, M. de Speyer succeeded M. Waeber as the Representative of Russia (_Conseiller d’Etat_) in Korea; his conduct of Russian affairs, which seems to have been quite devoid of the conciliatory policy of his predecessor, lost for his country many of the advantages which had already been secured. Besides the inducement from this fact, the recent acquisition of Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan seemed to make it desirable for Russia, for the time being at least, to conciliate Japan. And Japan, on her part, definitively committed herself to the effort to conciliate Russia, while at the same time safeguarding her own important, and indeed essentially vital, interests in the Peninsula. Accordingly there was concluded between the two nations the Nishi-Rosen Protocol of August 25, 1898. That instrument was as follows: