pacific means. It seems that the failure of Count Inouye to accomplish anything definite in the line of a settlement of internal dissentions at Seoul resulted in the appointment of Viscount Miura as an exponent of the extreme radical policy. He was supposed to do prompt work but what that work would be perhaps neither he nor his constituency saw clearly before his arrival on the scene. It would be going much too far to say that the assassination of the queen was once thought of, and yet it is more than likely that those most conversant with conditions in Seoul felt that by some means or other her enormous influence must be permanently checked and that affairs must be so managed that she should have nothing more to do in the handling of questions of state. How this was to be accomplished neither Miura nor any of his advisers knew until he came and looked over the field. For this reason it is easy to see how the ex-Regent would be the first man in Korea with whom the Japanese Minister would wish to consult, and it is certain that the Tă-wŭn-gun would have but one word to say as to the solution of the difficulty. His experience of twenty years had convinced him that there was only one way to accomplish the object which the Minister had in view and while Viscount Miura naturally shrunk from adopting that course it would seem he too was at last convinced that it was the only feasible plan. That he actually advised it in the first instance we do not believe, but that he fell in with the plan which others suggested and which they offered to carry through without his personal intervention there can be no doubt whatever. Nor can there be any question as to where the responsibility for the tragedy rests; not with the Japanese Government, surely, except in-so-far as its appointment of such a man to the difficult post of Minister to Seoul may reflect upon its wisdom. It has sometimes been hinted that Count Inouye upon his return to Japan advocated some such policy as that which was carried out by Marquis Miura but there is nothing to indicate that this is other than a libel, for the whole career of that able statesman gives the lie to such suspicions and his dispatches to his government show the very opposite spirit from that intimated in these slanderous reports. For instance we have the extract from his reports read in the Japanese Parliament in which he says: