Instead of dispersing in compliance with the Imperial order the assembled Independents went in a body to the Police Headquarters and asked to be arrested. This is a peculiarly Korean mode of procedure, the idea being that if put on trial they would be able to shame their adversaries; and incidentally it embarrassed the administration, for the prisons would not suffice to hold the multitude that clamored for incarceration. The crowd was altogether too large and too determined for the Peddlers to attack and another concession had to be made. The Independents, for it can no longer be called the Independent Club, offered to disperse on condition that they be guaranteed freedom of speech. The demand was immediately complied with; anything to disperse that angry crowd which under proper leadership might at any moment do more than make verbal demands. So on the next day an Imperial decree granted the right of free speech. This concession, likewise, was followed by a hurried muster of all the peddlars and their more complete organization. Backed by official aid and Imperial sanction they were prepared to come to blows with the people who should assemble for the purpose of making further demands upon the Emperor. Shortly before this the Emperor had consented to the proposition that the Independence Club should choose by ballot from their own number twenty-five men who should sit in the Privy Council. This council had for a time exercised some influence during the earlier months of Dr. Jaisohn’s residence in Seoul but it had lost all power and had become a limbo to which were politely relegated those whom the government did not care to use and yet was unwilling to dismiss. The edict of the Emperor disbanding the Club would be supposed to countermand this order for election, but the Independents themselves did not so view it, and the day set for the election was November 5th. The conservatives now deemed themselves strong enough to try conclusions with the outlawed Club and before daylight of November 5th seventeen of the leading men of the Independence Club were arrested and lodged in jail, Mr. Yun, the president, narrowly escaped arrest. It was afterwards ascertained that the plan of the captors was to kill the president of the Club before he could receive aid from the enraged people.