rights, protection, and privileges of public domain, as their ancestors had enjoyed. The public granaries were kept full against the time of famine. The timber and fire-wood on the hills was not given over to any one who could bribe or cajole the corrupt officials; and the line of demarcation between royal and popular rights was more clearly drawn and better understood. But now all this was changed for the worse. The King declared himself the sole and private owner—to dispose of as he saw fit—of all the properties which had formerly been considered as belonging to the state. Low-born favorites appropriated or laid waste the public domain. The country’s resources were wasted; the people were subjected to new and irregular exactions, levied by irregular people for illegal purposes. A succession of the most consummate rascals which ever afflicted any country came into virtual control. They were endowed with offices purchased or extorted from the head ruler. Eunuchs were sent out from the palace on “still hunts,” so to speak, to discover any kind of property which, by any pretext whatever, could be claimed; and to seize such property in the name of His Majesty, or of the King’s concubine, Lady Om, or of some one of the Imperial Princes. Laws which were intended to promote the ends of justice were twisted from their purpose and made to serve the ends of plunder. Such privileges as that of coining and counterfeiting the currency were sold to private persons. Then began also that squandering of the nation’s most valuable resources which, under the name of “concessions” to foreigners who generally allied themselves for this end with corrupt Korean officials, has continued down to the present time; and the adjustment of which is still giving the Resident-General and his judicial advisers some of their most serious problems. To quote the description of this period by a distinguished foreigner, long in the Korean service: “Nothing in this country is safe from the horde which surrounds His Majesty and seemingly has his confidence. Public office is bought and sold without even the pretence of concealment. Officials share with the palace the plunder which they extort from the people. So and So (naming a prominent Korean Official) is said to owe his influence there largely to the fact that out of every ten thousand _yen_ which he collects he surrenders seven thousand to the Emperor, retaining only three for himself. With his colleagues it is usually the other way, about.” According to the same authority, many kinds of property which were formerly regarded as belonging to the state were now being appropriated to the Emperor’s use, or to that of his favorites, without any pretext, under the rule that “might makes right.” Torturing, strangling, and decapitation, were no infrequent methods of accomplishing the imperial will; though it should be said that these favors were somewhat impartially distributed. Sometimes it was the secret