tunity to obtain possession of the empire. In Britain a
kindred branch of the Norman family was on the throne, and William
the Conqueror contrived to give his invasion a colour of right, by
claiming the throne under an alleged bequest of Edward the Confessor.
The Manchus, though not invoking such artificial sanction, aspired
to the dominion of China because their ancestors of the Golden
Horde had ruled over the northern half of the empire. The Norman
conquest, growing out of a family quarrel, was decided by a single
battle. The Manchus' conquest of a country more than ten times the
extent of Britain was not so easy to effect. Yet they achieved
it with unexampled rapidity, because they came by invitation and
they brought peace to a people exhausted by long wars. Their task
was comparatively easy in the north, where the traditions of the
Kin Tartars still survived; but it was prolonged and bloody in
the south.

Both houses treated their new subjects as a conquered people. Each
imposed the burden of foreign garrisons and a new nobility. Each
introduced a foreign language, which they tried to perpetuate as
the speech of the court, if not of the people. In each case the
language of the people asserted itself. In Britain it absorbed
and assimilated the alien tongue; in China, where the absence of
common elements made amalgamation
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impossible, it superseded that of the conquerors, not merely for
writing purposes, but as the spoken dialect of the court.

Both conquerors found it necessary to conciliate the subject race
by liberal and timely concessions; but here begins a contrast.
In Britain no external badge of subjection was ever imposed; in
process of time all special privileges of the ruling caste were
abolished; and no trace of race antipathy ever displays itself
anywhere--if we except Ireland. In China the cue remains as a badge
of subjection. Habit has reconciled the people to its use; but it
still offers a tempting grip to revolutionary agitators. Every
party that raises the standard of revolt abolishes the cue; would
it not be wise for the Manchu Government to make the wearing of
that appendage a matter of option, especially as it is beginning
to disappear from their soldiers' uniform?

The extension of reform in dress from camp to court and from court
to people (to them as a matter of option) would remove a danger.
It would also remove a barrier in the way of China's admission
into the congress of nati