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of the survey and to cancel the preliminary agreement.
Sir E. Satow thereupon wrote, on December 27th to
the Wai-wu-pu and requested that orders might be sent
to the Viceroy to give such positive instructions to
his delegates as would ensure the conduct of negotiations in accordance with the accepted rules of international business.
Later on Sir E. Satow learnt that the instructions sent by the Wai-wu-pu were not sufficiently explicit, and on the 12th of January addressed to them a strong note asking that the Viceroy should be definitively instructed to discuss the contents of the proposed final and working Agreements copies and translations of which had already been communicated to Tang Shao Yi.
Subsequently the Governor of Hongkong informed His Majesty's Minister on January 24th that the Viceroy had stated that if he found the text of the Northern Railways Loan Agreement of 1898, of which he asked for a copy, satisfactory, he would commence negotiations on the basis of that Agreement.
Sir E. Satow ...
3
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