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wn even to the "Throne." Fourteen years ago, after the _coup d'etat_ by which Tzu Hsi smashed the reform movement that had been patronized by the Emperor Kuang Hsu, the then Viceroy of Canton stated in a memorial to her that among some treasonable papers found at the birthplace of Kang Yu-wei, the leading reformer of the time, a document had been discovered which not only spoke of substituting a republic for the monarchy, but actually named as its first president one of the reformers she had caused to be executed. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that the idea has been imported into China comparatively recently; the Chinese language contains no word for republic, but one has been coined by putting together the words for self and government; it must be many years before the masses of the Chinese--the "rubbish people," as Lo Feng-lu, a former minister to England, used to call them--have any genuine understanding of what a republic means. The Manchus were in power for nearly two hundred and seventy years, and during that period there were various risings, some of a formidable character, against them and in favor of descendants of the native Ming dynasty which they had displaced; powerful secret organizations, such as the famous "Triad Society," plotted and conspired to put a Ming prince on the throne; but all was vain. It had come to be generally believed that the race of the Mings had died out, but a recent dispatch from China speaks of there still being a representative in existence, who possibly might give serious trouble to the new republic. In any case, for a long time past the Mings had ceased to give the Manchus any concern; the pressure upon the latter came from outside the empire, but that in its turn reacted profoundly on the internal situation. The wars with France and England had but a slight effect on China; though the foreign devils beat it in war it yet despised them. The effect of the war with Japan, in 1894, was something quite different, beginning the real awakening of China and imparting life and vigor to the new reform movement which had its origin in Canton, the great city of the south, whose highly intelligent people have most quickly felt and most readily and strongly responded to outside influences. Regarded by the Chinese as at least partially civilized, the Japanese were placed in a higher category than the Western barbarians, but as their triumph over China was attributed to their adoptio
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