If it were necessary to multiply instances of the injury done to the economic interests of the Korean people, and of the difficulty of adjusting in any half-satisfactory way the claims of foreign promoters and concessionaires, it could easily be done upon good evidence. But mention of a few such instances only—with the suppression of names and details, for obvious reasons—will suffice to convince the reader, however “patriotic” in such matters, who has even the semblance of a candid mind. Prominent among examples is that of a foreign company of contractors, who have obtained from the Korean Government a variety of claims, such as public-utility franchises, and a mining concession. Of the former, one franchise had cost the Privy Purse of the Korean Emperor not less than 600,000 _yen_ up to 1902; and when it was sold to satisfy a mortgage held by these same contractors, although Mr. J. McLeavy Brown, at the time Commissioner-General of Customs, who had been appointed to audit the accounts, recommended that items aggregating 1,100,000 _yen_ should be disallowed, and gave his judgment to the effect that foreclosure would be a grave injustice to His Majesty, the latter was induced to buy one-half of the property at 750,000 _yen_. The whole of the same property not long before had been offered at 800,000 _yen_! This public utility still fails to yield a dollar in dividends to the royal investor. Another franchise of this same company has been sold, without any investment of capital on their part, to an English company for £15,000 cash and £50,000 in fully paid-up ordinary shares. Under the apparent impression that they have even yet not sufficiently profited from the Privy Purse of the Emperor and the national treasury of this poverty-stricken land, the same company is bringing all possible “influence” to bear in order to validate their claims to a “Mining Concession.” With regard to this last claim, which is still contested, it is enough for our purposes to say that it was surreptitiously obtained; that the stipulation which required a capital of $1,000,000 fully paid up at the time of incorporation has been violated; and that the provision which guarantees that no other mining concession should be made to any one, native or foreign, until these concessionaires had made their choice, is plainly _contra bonos mores_. Moreover, negotiations have been entered into by this company for the sale of this concession to another foreign syndicate.