April, 1893, the Viceroy Li Hung Chang granted the exclusive right
of the free importation of grain into Tien-Tsin to the China Merchants
Steamship Navigation Company. England protested against this monopoly,
because it was contrary to Article 3 of the Treaty of Commerce between
China and the United States, the benefits of which England could claim
in consequence of the most favoured nation clause in her own treaties
with China. The Chinese government answered that the United States had,
by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act, broken the commercial treaty
concerned, that therefore the treaty had come to an end, and that no
one could, under the most favoured nation clause, claim any longer the
benefits of a treaty which had ceased to exist. (See Lehr, in the
_Revue de Droit International et de Legislation Comparee_, Vol. XXV.
(1893), p. 313.)

99. _Russian Revolutionary Outrage in Paris._

The following appeared in the _Times_ of May 10th, 1909:

"A Russian, who described himself as Colonel von Kotten, chief of the
Moscow secret police, was shot at yesterday by an escaped Russian
convict, Michael Vitkoff, at an hotel in the Rue Bolivar, where the two
men met by appointment. According to the police officer's story,
Vitkoff was a Polish revolutionary who had been sentenced to
deportation to Siberia, but who had been reprieved upon volunteering to
act as a police spy on the movements of his revolutionary comrades.
Vitkoff subsequently came to Paris, and upon the arrival of the police
officer in the French capital a few days ago he induced Colonel von
Kotten to visit him upon the pretext that he had important information
to communicate. No sooner had the officer entered Vitkoff's room than
the latter fired several shots at him with a revolver, none of which,
however, took effect. A hand-to-hand struggle followed, in which
Vitkoff was worsted. The man succeeded in making his escape, but gave
himself up at the nearest police station, where he told his story,
which was confirmed by Colonel von Kotten, who arrived shortly
afterwards little the worse for his experience. Vitkoff was taken into
custody and will be charged with attempted murder.

"Minute details of the attack upon Colonel von Kotten are published,
but they shed little or no light upon the motives of the aggression. In
some quarters it is suggested that, unless Vitkoff's action was purely
personal, it may have been dictated by a desire on the part of the
Russian