The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1875-03-20
The Late Empress of china-Her Suicide.

A London dispatch, on the authority of the
Pail Mall Gazette, announces that a private
telegram has been received from China confirm
ing the reports of the death of the Emperor, and
stating that the empress, overcome with grief,
had committed suicide. The death of A-Lou-Te,
the empress wife Of the late T'oung, Chi, emper-
or OF China, follows the death of her husband in
natural and inevitable sequence. He was the
nominal head of a government by ministers. She
was selected to share the faminine half of the
imperial and religious titles that attach to the
sacred ruler of China as the representative of
what foreigners style the literary gentry of the
howery kingdom. By the same principle which
makes annual examinations in the Chinese classics
the stepping stones to rank and distinction, the
regents, or Prince Kong acting through them,
chose for the honorary rather than the honored
wife of the young ruler the daughter of Kh'oung-
XIII, chief of the Pekin academy, and ten years
ago at the head Of the Han-lin examination lists.
She was well educated, and as scholarship In the
Chinese of the word can scarcely be expected of
an absolute prince, it was something to have
sharing the throne, one to whom the sacred
classics were familiar. By birth and descent and
aside from her training, she was connected with
the reactionary party in China, and her selection
by a liberal prince, like the prime minister, could
only be explained by the fact that be chose her
from a family weakened by past disaster and una
bic to do present harm. Her father was the son
of Sals-hanga, one of the military chiefs who sur
rounded Hsien-feng in the early and successful
years of his reign, but failing as did every Chinese
general who followed him TO defeat Hung Sin
tsuen, the leader of the Tapping insurgents, be
was disgraced. The life of the defeated general
was spared and his property was untouched, but
he lost his Offices and honors. This was in 1852;
ten years later, when T'oung-chi succeeded to his
fathers throne, severe repressiye measures were
adopted against all who were identified with the
reactionary policy of the last reign, and among
others Saishanga lost his property by confscation.
In his retirement he had identified himself with
the factions whose counEels precipitated the war
with the allied powers and who had attempted,
by an imperial rescript appointing eight of their
number the councillors Of the infant prince, to
make their power permanent. Sais-hanga's pun
ishment was due quite as much to the marriage
he had just been contracting between his son
Kh'Oung-khi and q daughter of Tsian-Hua, one
OF the eight councillors just alluded to, as to his
own position in Chinese politics. Death at the
hands of the executioner or suicide was the only
alternative left to the leaders of the conservative
party after Prince lungs success, and Tsian Hua
ayailed himself Of the last privilege, as his grand
daughter has Just done, doubtless, if the truth
were known, for much the same reason. At the
time of her future husbands accession to the
throne the fortunes Of her family were at a low
ebb, but they continued steadily to improve from
that tine, and when the empress dowagers were
in 1879 for the young girl to whom the
golden tablet and seal should be sent, no better
for the honor was presented than A-lou-
te. She was then only eighteen, two years older
than T'oung chi, but natural talent had been
aided by a careful training, and there seems to
be no reason to doubt that by Chinese standards
she was rightly considered a gifted woman. She