A customs service had been begun by von Mollendorf on an independent basis but in July of 1885 he was dismissed from service in the Foreign Office and two months later he was relieved of work in the Customs because of unwarrantable schemes into which he had drawn that department of the government. The whole service was thereupon put under the management of Sir Robert Hart the Inspector General of the Chinese Customs. An entirely new staff of men was sent from China. H. N. Merrill was made Chief Commissioner and Chemulpo, Fusan and Wŭnsan were put in charge of men directly from the Chinese Customs staff. This was a guarantee of excellent management but it proved to be the strongest lever China had in the carrying out her ambitious plans in the peninsula. Before the close of the year Gen. Foote without giving specific reasons retired from the United States Legation and returned to America, Ensign Geo. C. Foulk becoming Charge d’Affaires. In the early months of 1886 Yi To-jă, Sin Keui-sŭn, Hong Chin-yu, An Chŭng-su and Kyöng Kwang-guk were banished to distant islands for complicacy in the plot which led to the emeute of 1884. In February the king by royal edict abolished the hereditary transmission of slaves and the use of slave labor by the guilds in the work on the palaces. This was a measure of far-reaching import had it been carried out in full; but we find that it had to be re-enacted in 1894. The government desired to secure the services of a foreign expert as adviser to the Home and Foreign Offices and with the sanction of Li Hung-chang, the Chinese Viceroy, Judge O. N. Denny, ex-Consul-general of U. S. to China, was called and he arrived in the spring of 1886 just in time to be present at the signing of the treaty with France. He had for some years been on rather intimate terms with the Great Viceroy and it is probable that the latter hoped to use the Judge in forwarding Chinese interests in Korea. If so he found himself grievously mistaken for the United States as well as Japan and France, had recognized the independence of Korea, and Judge Denny devoted his energies to the maintenance of that independence. Yuan the Chinese commissioner had taken up his residence in Seoul and had dubbed himself “Resident” in opposition to the Korean claim to independence. The Peking government, forgetting or ignoring the fact that whenever Korea had gotten into trouble she (China) had always disavowed responsibility and had practically disclaimed suzerainty, now began to bolster up her claims and to use every means to make good her pretensions. The dominant party which had ridden into power on the shoulders of the Chinese put no obstacles in the way and thus Judge Denny found himself blocked in his efforts to better the condition of the country.