It will be remembered that ever since the previous year Dr. Philip Jaisohn had been acting as Adviser to the Privy Council. This Council enjoyed considerable power at first, but gradually fell to a secondary place; but now that new conditions had sprung up, the element combating the Russian influence took advantage of the presence of Dr. Jaisohn and other Koreans who had been educated abroad. The Russians seemed to look with complacency upon this movement, and in the spring of this year seem to have made no effort to prevent the appointment of J. McLeavy Brown, LL.D., as Adviser to the Finance Department, with large powers; which seemed to bear out the belief that the Russian minister was sincere in his statement that Russia wished the King to be quite untrammelled in the administration of his government. It is this generous policy of Mr. Waeber that is believed to have caused his transfer later to another post, to be replaced by A. de Speyer, who adopted a very different policy. However this may have, been, things began to take on a very hopeful aspect in Seoul. Needed reforms were carried through; torture was abolished in the Seoul courts; a concession was given to an American company to construct a railway between Seoul and Chemulpo ; Min Yongwhan was appointed special envoy to the coronation of the Czar ; work was begun on the American mining concession granted the year before, various schools were founded, and the outlook on the whole was very bright indeed. It looked as if a solution had been found for the difficulties that afflicted the state, and that an era of comparatively enlightened government was opening.
For some time there had existed a more or less secret organisation among the Koreans, the single article of whose political creed was independence both from China and Japan, or, in other words, " Korea for Koreans." Now that the King had been relieved of Chinese suzerainty by the Japanese and of Japanese restraint by himself, this little society, under the leadership of Dr. Philip Jaisohn, blossomed out into what was called The Independence Club. The name but partially described the society, for,
