statement made by Count Cassini himself, who, in 1904, referred to the treaty “giving to Russia railroad and other concessions in Manchuria,” which, said he, “I had the honor to negotiate [at Peking] in behalf of my Sovereign.”[166] The agreement of September 8, 1896, to which we shall presently turn, “giving railway and other concessions in Manchuria,” was concluded between the Chinese Minister at St. Petersburg and the Russo-Chinese Bank, and, unless Count Cassini negotiated it at Peking at the same time that the Chinese Minister did at the Russian capital, it may be inferred that the former, in his quoted statement, referred to a “Cassini Convention.” It is not at all impossible, however, that both he in China and Mr. Hu in Russia took part in the negotiations which resulted in the conclusion of the agreement of September 8, 1896. Taking all these indications together, it seems almost safe to aver that at least two important items of concessions—namely, railway grants and the use of some ports for strategic purposes—must in some form have been secured by Russia after 1896, and before the actual lease of Port Arthur and Talien-wan in 1898. It is needless to say that these two objects, railways and ports, possessed a political meaning of the greatest moment, the ports affording the Russian navy a commanding point on the Pacific coast, and the railways ultimately connecting that point with the army bases in Siberia and European Russia. Of these two items, it was the railways that first emerged from the state of a preliminary to that of a final agreement between Russia and China. And it was here that the Russo-Chinese Bank played a great rôle for the Russian Government, for the Agreement of August 27 (September 8), 1896,[167] providing for the construction by the Russians of a railway through Manchuria connecting the Trans-Baikal and South Ussuri lines of the Siberian railway system, was concluded between the Chinese Minister at St. Petersburg and the Bank. The latter undertook to organize the Eastern Chinese[168] Railway Company with its accounts separate from those of the Bank (Art. 1). It is instructive to note that it is stated in the preamble of this Agreement that the Chinese Government “intrusted”[169] the Bank to undertake the construction of the line, and that the government agreed to contribute 5,000,000 _taels_ toward the capital of the Company.[170] The Russian troops should be transported by the railway without obstruction and at half-fare (Arts. 8 and 9). Upon the basis of this Agreement were promulgated by the Government of the Czar Statutes[171] providing for the construction and operation of the railway. Nothing can better betray than these two documents, the Agreement and the Statutes, that the enterprise was only in a very limited sense an undertaking of a private company. In the first place, the capital of the Company was divided into share-capital and bond-capital, the former, not guaranteed by the Russian Government,