treachery. At the
beginning of 1909 the Regent dismissed Yuan on an apparently trivial
pretext, but every one in China knew the real reason for his fall, and
not a few wondered that his life had been spared. It is idle to surmise
what might have happened if his services had been retained by the
Throne all the time, but who could have imagined that so swift and
almost incredible an instance of time's revenges was in store--that
within barely three years Yuan Shih-kai would be the acknowledged head
of the State, and Prince Chun and all the Manchus in the dust?

Representative government of a kind started in 1909 with the
establishment of provincial assemblies; elections were held, and
assemblies met in most of the provinces. In the following year a senate
or imperial assembly was decreed by an imperial edict; its first
session was held in Peking in October of that year, and was opened by
the Regent; one of the first things the assembly did was to memorialize
the Throne for the rapid hastening on of reforms, and in response an
edict was issued announcing the formation of a national parliament,
consisting of an Upper and a Lower House, within three years. Under
further pressure the Throne in May of 1911 abolished the Grand Council
and the Grand Secretariat, and created a Cabinet of Ministers, after
the Western model. But the agitation continued and went on growing in
intensity; still it sought nothing apparently but a development of the
constitution, and at least on the surface was neither anti-dynastic nor
republican.

An anti-dynastic outburst at Changsha, Hunan, in 1910, was easily
suppressed, and certainly gave no indication of what was so soon to
take place. So late as September of 1911 a rising on a considerable
scale in the province of Szechuan was not antidynastic, but was
declared by the rebels themselves to be directed against the railway
policy of the Government. The best hope for China lies in a wide
building of railways; the Chinese do not object to them, but, on the
contrary, make use of them to the fullest extent where they are in
existence; they do not wish, however, the lines to be constructed with
foreign money, holding that such investments of capital from without
might be regarded as setting up liens on their lands in favor of
outside Powers--how far they can do without outside capital is another
matter. Then the whole question of railway-building involved the old
quarrel between the provinces and the