proach of
Halley's comet. Probably famine precipitated the outbreak, which was
easily crushed, as was also a rising in May at Yung chow, a town in the
south of Hu-nan. Much mission and mercantile property was wrecked at
Changsha, but the only loss of life was the accidental drowning of three
Roman Catholic priests.

The regent's policy.

An edict of the 17th of August 1910 effected considerable and unexpected
changes in the personnel of the central government. Tang Shao-yi, a
former lieutenant of Yuan Shih-kai, was appointed president of the Board
of Communications, and to him fell the difficult task of reconciling
Chinese and foreign interests in the development of the railway system.
Sheng Kung-pao regarded as the chief Chinese authority on currency
questions, and an advocate of the adoption of a gold standard, was
attached to the Board of Finance to help in the reforms decreed by an
edict of May of the same year (see ante, _Currency_). The issue of the
edict was attributed to the influence with the regent of Prince
Tsai-tao, who had recently returned from a tour in Europe, where he had
specially studied questions of national defence. The changes made among
the high officials tended greatly to strengthen the central
administration. The government had viewed with some disquiet the
Russo-Japanese agreement of the 4th of July concerning Manchuria (which
was generally interpreted as in fact lessening the authority of China in
that country); it had become involved in another dispute with Great
Britain, which regarded some of the measures taken to suppress opium
smoking as a violation of the terms of the Chifu convention, and its
action in Tibet had caused alarm in India. Thus the appointment to high
office of men of enlightenment, pledged to a reform policy, was
calculated to restore confidence in the policy of the Peking
authorities. This confidence would have been greater had not the changes
indicated a struggle for supreme power between the regent and the
dowager empress Lung Yu, widow of Kwang-su.

The strength of the various movements at work throughout China was at
this time extremely difficult to gauge; the intensity of the desire for
the acquisition of Western knowledge was equalled by the desire to
secure the independence of the country from foreign control. The second
of these desires gave the force it possessed to the anti-dynastic
movement. At the same time some of the firmest supporters of reform were