the killing of a robber and a villain named Chou; I have not heard about the killing of a king.' That is to say, Chou by his rascality had already forfeited all the rights and privileges of kingship before he was actually put to death.

On another occasion Mencius was questioned about the duties. of ministers and royal relatives. If the sovereign rules badly,' he said, they should reprove him; if he persists again and again in disregarding their advice, they should dethrone him.' The prince for whose edification the philosopher uttered these daring sentiments looked grave. I pray your Majesty not to take offence,' said Mencius. You asked me for my candid opinion, and I have told you what it is.'

Several other passages of similar purport might be cited from Mencius, but two more will suffice. Let us suppose,' said the sage, that a man who is about to proceed on a long journey entrusts the care of his wife and family to a friend. On his return he finds that the faithless friend has allowed his wife and children to suffer from cold and hunger. What should he do with such a friend?' 'He should treat him thenceforth as a stranger,' replied King Hsüan. 'And suppose,' continued Mencius, 'that your Majesty had a minister who was utterly unable to control his subordinates: how would you deal with such a one?' 'I should dismiss him from my service,' said the King. And if throughout all your realm there is no good government, what is to be done then?' The embarrassed King, we are told, 'looked this way and that, and changed the subject.'

The last of Mencius's teachings on kingship to which we shall refer is perhaps the most remarkable of them all. The most important element in a State,' he says emphatically, is the people; next come the altars of the national gods; least in importance is the king.'

These citations from the revered classics should be sufficient to prove that the people of China are not necessarily cutting themselves adrift from the traditions of ages and the teachings of their philosophers when they rise in their might to overthrow an incompetent dynasty. For it cannot be denied that China has known little prosperity under the later rulers of the Manchu line, and when the revolutionary leaders declared that the reigning house had forfeited the T'ien-ming we must admit that they had ample justification for their belief that such was the case. But many Western friends of China, while fully recognising the right of the people to remove the Manchus, entertain very grave doubts as to the wisdom of abolishing the monarchy altogether and the establishment of a Republican Government in its stead. The Tien-ming has always passed from dynasty to dynasty, never

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from dynasty to people. From the remotest days of which we have record, the Chinese system of government has been monarchic. If the revolutionaries can break with tradition to the extent of abolishing the imperial dignity, what guarantee have we that they will not break with tradition in every other respect as well, and so destroy the foundations on which the whole edifice of China's social, political, and religious life has rested through all the centuries of her known history?

That there are dangerous rocks lying ahead of the ship of the Chinese State is too obvious to need emphasis: yet it would be rash and unfair to assume that the establishment of a Republic necessarily signalises a break in the continuity of Chinese political life. There is in the nature of things no reason why the Divine Decree should be regarded as necessarily entrusted by Heaven to one man rather than to the people themselves or their chosen representatives. We have already seen that a Chinese Emperor is in theory presented to and accepted by the people; and indeed it may be said that his acceptance by the people is the surest indication that he is the true possessor of the Divine Decree. But if the sovereign power rests ultimately upon, or is inseparable from, the people's will, what is to prevent the people from bestowing that power upon delegates directly chosen from and by themselves? There is, indeed, no precedent for this course, for the so-called Republic of 841-828 B.C. cannot be regarded as such; but the mere absence of a true precedent will not, and should not, debar the Chinese people from adopting a system of government which they honestly believe to be adapted to the changed conditions of Chinese life, and need not necessarily imply more than a formal break with constitutional tradition.

Whether the Chinese people-as distinct from a few foreigneducated reformers-do, as a matter of fact, honestly believe that a Republican Government is adapted to the needs of the country, is a very different question. It certainly has not been proved that 'the whole nation is now inclined towards a Republic '-in spite of the admission to that effect contained in the imperial Edict of abdication. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the overwhelming majority of the people of China have not the slightest idea what a Republic means, and how their lives and fortunes will be affected by its establishment, and therefore hold no strong opinions concerning the advantages or disadvantages of Republican government.

It cannot be denied, however, that the social system under which the Chinese people have lived for untold ages has in some ways made them more fit for self-government than any other people in the world. It would be well if Europeans-and especially Englishmen-would try to rid themselves of the

obsolete notion that every Oriental race, as such, is only fit for a despotic form of government. Perhaps only those who have lived in the interior of China and know something of the organisation of family and village, township and clan, are able to realise to how great an extent the Chinese have already learned the arts of self-government. It was not without reason that a Western authority (writing before the outbreak of the revolution) described China as the greatest Republic the world has ever seen.' "

The momentous Edict in which the Manchu house signed away its imperial heritage was issued on the twelfth day of February 1912. It contains many noteworthy features, but the words which are of special interest from the constitutional point of view I translate as follows: The whole nation is now inclined towards a Republican form of government. The Southern and Central Provinces first gave clear evidence of this inclination, and the military leaders of the Northern Provinces have since promised their support to the same cause. By observing the nature of the people's aspirations we learn the Will of Heaven (T'ien-ming). It is not fitting that We should withstand the desires of the nation merely for the sake of the glorification of Our own House. We recognise the signs of the age, and We have tested the trend of popular opinion; and We now, with the Emperor at Our side, invest the Nation with the Sovereign Power and decree the establishment of a Constitutional Government on a Republican basis. In coming to this decision, We are actuated not only by a hope to bring solace to Our subjects, who long for the cessation of political tumult, but also by a desire to follow the precepts of the Sages of old who taught that political Sovereignty rests ultimately with the People.'

Such was the dignified and yet pathetic swan-song of the dying Manchu dynasty. Whatever our political sympathies may be, we are not obliged to withhold our tribute of compassion for the sudden and startling collapse of a dynasty that has ruled Chinanot always inefficiently-for the last two hundred and sixty-seven years. The date of the extinction of the Ming dynasty and the accession of the Manchus synchronises with a period which is of interest to all Englishmen, for at that very time England was convulsed by a momentous revolution of her own. Emperor and people confronted each other last winter on the plains of Central China just as the armies of the King and Commons of England faced each other in 1644 on the field of Marston Moor. The downfall of the English King was followed by a short-lived Commonwealth. The abdication of the Chinese Emperor has

2 Professor H. A. Giles, in The Civilisation of China.

The Edict is issued in the name of the Dowager-Empress Lung-yü.

been accompanied by the establishment of a Republic which has still to prove itself worthy of a patriot's devotion.

There is something in average human nature which impels. men to mourn with the conquered even when they have reason to rejoice with the conqueror. Nearly every lost cause has its romance; nearly every fallen champion makes a mute appeal, not in vain, to our sympathy. We must beware of allowing our emotional interest in a fallen dynasty to make us deaf to the cries that rose from the lips of a patient and misgoverned people to the ears of a corrupt and incompetent Court. Yet it is surely permissible to remind ourselves that even among the much-abused Manchu princes there are some who are far more deserving of compassion than of blame, and who, in a better and more wholesome environment, might have lived to earn the affection and gratitude, rather than the hate and scorn, of the people of China. In spite of his fatal weakness of character, it is difficult not to class among these the lonely figure of the unhappy ex-Regent. Those of us who remember Prince Ch'un as a courteous and gentle-mannered youth of nineteen years of age, who signalised his entrance into public life by bearing the weight of his country's disgrace at the Court of a Western monarch, will not be niggards of our pity for one whose brief and ill-starred career of earthly greatness ended, as it began, in the ashes of humiliation. Brother of a puppet-Emperor whose life was ruined by a woman's lust for power, father of an Emperor whose three years' reign came to an ignoble end before he had reached his sixth birthday, the ex-Regent must now prostrate himself before the shrines of his imperial ancestors and confess to the spirits of the august dead his share in the ruin of their house. There is a sacred veil,' said Burke, to be drawn over the beginnings of all government.' It is sometimes fitting to draw a sacred veil over the end as well.

The Abdication Edict cannot fail to be of interest to students of the science of politics. The Throne itself is converted into a bridge to facilitate the transition from the Monarchical to the Republican form of government. The Emperor remains absolute to the last, and the very Republican Constitution, which involves his own disappearance from political existence, is created by the fiat of the Emperor in his last official utterance. Theoretically, the Republic is established not by a people in arms acting in opposition to the imperial will, but by the Emperor acting with august benevolence for his people's good. The cynic may smile at the transparency of the attempt to represent the abdication as entirely voluntary, but in this procedure we find something more

4 The writer was one of the foreigners who (in 1901) had the privilege of meeting the young prince when he was on his way to Germany to present the humble apologies of China for the murder of the German envoy by a 'Boxer.'

than a mere face-saving' device invented for the purpose of effecting a dignified retreat in the hour of disaster.

Perhaps the greatest interest of the decree centres in its appeal to the wisdom of the national sages, and its acceptance of their theory as to the ultimate seat of political sovereignty. The heart of the drafter may have quailed when he wrote the words that signified the surrender of the imperial power, but the spirit of Mencius guided his hand. It now remains for us to hope that the teachings of the wise men of old, which have been obeyed to such momentous issues by the last of the Emperors, will not be treated with contempt by his Republican successors. Let them remember

that those wise men were not wise only in matters affecting statecraft and kingly rule. They were teachers of morals and builders of human character before they were political theorisers. Let the architects of the New China remember that they, too, will assuredly be called upon to choose-not once, but many timesbetween obeying and disobeying the precepts of the sages of old,' and that the fate of their country and the welfare of mankind may be dependent on the way in which they exercise their choice.

R. F. JOHNSTON.