On the 26th of November in the midst of this chaotic state of things the Emperor granted a great general audience outside the great gate of the palace. The Independence Club was there in force, and foreign representatives and a large number of other foreign residents. It was a little Runnymede but with a different ending. Yun Chi-ho was naturally the spokesman of the Independence party. He made a manly and temperate statement of the position of his constituents. He denounced the armed attacks of the peddlars upon people who intended no violence but only desired the fulfillment of solemnly made pledges. He called to account those who imputed to the Independence Club traitorous designs. He urged that the legal existence of the Club should be again established by Imperial decree and that the six measures so definitely and distinctly promised by His Majesty should be carried out. There was no possible argument to oppose to these requests and the Emperor promised to shape the policy of the government in line with these suggestions. Again it was mere promise, made to tide over an actual and present difficulty. The Independence people should have recognized this. The Emperor was surrounded by men inimical to the reform program, they had the police and the army back of them as well as the peddlars. The Independence party had not a single prominent representative in any really responsible and influential government office. They simply had right and the precarious voice of Korean popular feeling behind them. What was necessary was a campaign of education. The program advocated was one that could be carried out only under a government whose personnel was at least approximately up to the standard of that program. This could be claimed of only two or three members of the Independence Club. Having secured this public promise of His Majesty the club should have waited patiently to see what would happen and if the promises were not kept they should have waited and worked for a time when public sentiment among the leading men would compel reform. But as Mr. Yun himself confesses, “The popular meetings had gone beyond the control of the Independence Club and in the face of strong advice to the contrary they were resumed on December 6th and their language became careless and impudent. On the sixteenth of December the Privy Council recommended the recall of Pak Yong-hyo from Japan. The popular meeting had the imprudence to endorse this action. The more conservative portion of the people revolted against the very mention of the name. Suspicion was excited that the popular agitations had been started in the interests of Pak Yong-hyo and they instantly lost the sympathy of the people.” The enemies of the liberal party had probably used this argument to its fullest extent, and when it was seen that the Independence movement had at last been deprived of its strongest support, the popular voice, its enemies came down upon it with cruel force.