One would have supposed that the enemies of the Queen would have been satisfied by her death, but not so. On the eleventh, three days after her assassination, an edict purporting to have originated with His Majesty and signed by the full cabinet appeared in the Court Gazette. In it the Queen is charged with having interfered in public matters, disturbed the government and put the dynasty in peril. It is stated that she has disappeared and that her guilt is excessive; therefore she is deposed from her rank as Queen and reduced to the level of the lowest class. There can be no doubt that this edict is fraudulent. The King never gave his consent to it and several of the members of the Cabinet knew nothing about it, notably Sim Sang-hun who had already thrown up his position and run away, and Pak Chöng-yang who denounced the nefarious business and resigned. It was put through by a few of the Cabinet who were thoroughly subservient to the Japanese. The Japanese Minister in reply to the announcement of the Queen’s degradation, affected to sympathize with the Korean Government but thought it was done for the good of the State. The United States Representative refused to recognize the decree as coming from His Majesty, and in this he was seconded by all the the other Foreign Representatives except one. Meanwhile the Japanese government began to learn something of the truth in regard to the Queen’s death and felt called upon to defend itself from the charge of complicity in the outrage through its accredited Minister. Consequently it recalled Miura and Sugimura and upon their arrival in Japan they were arrested and charged with complicity in the matter. The fact of their arrest and trial was a distinct disclaimer on the part of the Japanese government that it was accessory to the crime; and in spite of the utter inadequacy of the trial and its almost ludicrous termination we hold to the theory that the Japanese government was not a party to the crime excepting in so far as the appointment of such a man as Miura can be called complicity.