Almost the oldest book in China, the Chou Li, provided for village management at the same time that sacrifices were instituted, thousands of years before the Christian era. The oldest man of the clan-village, bearing the title of “hsiang lao” (village old-one) takes charge at a salary of about one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and hires say twenty police in the smaller villages. This “hsiang lao”, when necessary, deals with the district “siunkian”, who is the government’s lowest mandarin. The people express their views in an open “hsiang” meeting, which is the same as the old town meeting of New England, on which present democratic institutions in America are based; an “open primary”, for that matter.

In the guild councils of the cities, the more experienced tradesmen have had political experience in their dealings with the “taotai”, a higher class of mandarin. From “hsiang” and guild meetings, the next step was to send delegates to viceroys, or even delegates to the Board of Censors at Peking, accusing viceroys. China, therefore, had some experience in politics before the reformers of 1898 induced the impressionable young Emperor Kwang Hsu to issue his famous edicts, which started a wave that rolled on, lifting provincial assemblies, parliaments, and revolutionists into view; and the wave is rolling onward still. Kwang Hsu as early as 1891 issued an edict praising and protecting missionaries. He was never permitted to travel, but learned from books, brought to him by Kang Yu Wei and the other new spirits, what was going on in the outside world. In 1894 Kwang Hsu sent to the American Bible Society at Peking a request for copies of the two Testaments, “such as are sold to THE PEOPLE”. His immortal edicts began to appear in the Peking Gazette on June 23, 1898, and ended in September of that year, when he was imprisoned by the empress dowager and Yuan Shih Kai. During the issuance of the edicts the dowager was at the summer palace, eight miles northwest of Peking, where she was preparing her reactionary plans. The edicts covered the following:

1. New learning for much of the old classical essays. This reform is in force.

2. Modern army, navy, railways, telephone, telegraph. The slow progress of the Lu-Han (Peking to Hankau) Railway was commented on. These reforms are under way, and full of promise.

3. Publicity of national and provincial figures of receipt and expenditure; i.e., a budget. This reform was instituted by the National Assembly in 1911, and will be adopted by the republicans.

4. All citizens to have the privilege of memorializing the Throne independent of the Censor Board.

5. Extension of mail service. This is being brought about by the extension of the railway service, and the government taking over private post routes of guilds.

6. Prince Ching to secure assistance from foreigners in establishing a national university, with branches in provincial capitals. Departments of universities at Peking, Canton, Shanghai, Nanking, Paoting, Tientsin, Hankau, etc., have been established. The English universities, acting under the suggestions of Sir Robert Hart and Lord Cecil, will assist, as will also America. This is secular education. The mission schools are, of course, extending to many new cities.

Let us step into one of the meetings of the first partially formed Parliament, which opened in 1910. We would call it a Senate. They called it Tzu Cheng Yuan; that is, Property Laws Assembly, or Taxing Assembly. The Parliament buildings at Peking, not being completed, the Congress met in the law hall of the Peking University. This hall is a two-story western style building, the only Chinese feature being the heavy tiled roof. The windows are square and have modern sashes. The door is Roman and not Chinese in curve. The Lower House was not yet formed. In the front row of two hundred members were Mongol princes, Manchu princes, viceroys, governors, mandarins, appointed by the Crown, and farther back were men sent up by the provincial assemblies. The great Prince Pu Lun of the royal blood, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Hongkong, and who was commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, most affable, stout and progressive, opens the assembly with bland dignity. Shen Chia Pan, the temporary vice-president, sits on his left. The debate at once opens like the small fire of machine guns. It takes up appeals by the provincial assemblies on the actions of the provincial governors. Education, foreign loans, provincial versus nationalized railways, pensions to Manchus, suppression of opium, acts of departmental secretariates, the leakage in tax collection, the corruption of courts, the police to serve the people and not against the people, high tax rate against the poor and low tax rate against the rich, taxation without representation, foreign aggression in Manchuria and Turkestan, insults to the flag abroad, nepotism, etc., are discussed, and the secretariates have a lively time defending themselves from the critical, eloquent pure Chinese Cantonese; the independent Hunanese who have many Cromwells among them, and who are foremost for running Chinese mines and railways without foreign money; the tradition-loving Szechuen men; the literati and capitalists from Kiangsu; the traveled bankers from Shansi province; the cosmopolitan men from the imperial province of Pechili and Shangtung; the rough-rider Mongols from far west Shensi and Kansu provinces; and the Patrick Henrys from turbulent Fukien province. The Throne is compelled to promise a Lower House in 1913 instead of 1915, and at last, in its edict, gives all credit to the crushed reformer, Emperor Kwang Hsu, who learned reform from the Bible and other western books surreptitiously introduced despite the eunuch spies of the reactionary Empress Dowager Tse Hsi. This preliminary Senate stormily sends a suggestion to the oligarchic Grand Council of the Regent that reform shall be evidenced by the regent and the infant Emperor Pu Yi having their queues cut off. Thus the spirited debate rolled back and forth between the old Grand Council and the new Congress or Parliament, until the guns of the impatient revolution thundered at Hankau, like Cromwell on the doors of the Long Parliament.

Confucius himself was a politician. He lived in an age of able prime ministers of some ten highly civilized, equal states, fighting generally by diplomacy for mastery, on the pretext of the right to monopolize the succession to perform the sacred rites of the parent Chou state, which alone was weak. These prime ministers were all abler men than were the titular rulers of the states. Confucius studied diplomacy in the writings of Kwan Tsz, premier-philosopher of the adjoining Tsi state. Kwan Tsz’ writings are sometimes published with Lao Tsz’ works, but should not be confounded with them. Confucius was also influenced by his friend, the great diplomat, Shuh Hiang, prime minister of the Tsin state, which was situated far to the northwest of his native state of Lu; also by the very able minister Tsz Chan of the state of Cheng, which lay west of Lu. He had to keep his wits awake to save the small and weaker Lu state from succumbing to the policies of the ambitious Yen Tsz, prime minister of the Tsi state, which was situated immediately north of Lu, and from falling before the intrigue of Kupeh Yu, prime minister of Wei state, lying to the northwest. This last state afforded Confucius a long exile, when his vicious, ungrateful, new prince hounded him for fourteen years by an ancient system of “Black List” out of his positions with some thirty states, content neither to use his eminent services, nor to let him live that other states might avail of them. He knew too much about law-breaking by those who occupied the “seats of the mighty”; and “such men are dangerous”! Devoted as they are to the study of Confucius’ life, the Chinese thereby imbibed politics.

History throws light on some of the insidiousness of ancient Chinese intrigue. As long ago as 626 B.C. the ruler of the Chinese principality of Ts’in, which state was oppressed by the manly Tartars, sent to the Tartar chief two companies of singing girls “that he might be too weak to ride the saddle at the head of his cavalry”. In 486 B.C. the prince of Tsi state, lying to the north of Lu state, sent to the prince of Lu state, Confucius’ master, a company of singing girls to ensnare manliness in the lap of debauchery, with the result that Confucius in disgust left the service of his prince and became a hounded exile, laughed out of his court by the powerful who for the time were above the law. Where have been that most venerable family on earth, the Kungs of Shangtung province, who have lived at Kufu near Yenchow, in all the recent turbulence in China? We have heard of Manchu princes, of leaders of the Chinese like Kang and Sun, Yuan, General Li, and Wu Ting Fang; of descendants of the old Ming emperors, etc., but why have not the lineal descendants of Confucius put forward a man able to handle politics, war and literature as did their great ancestor? What an opportunity they have had recently. What an opportunity they have yet to put forward a man for the presidency, whom all China and all the world will be delighted to accept if he is only one-twentieth as able as his immortal ancestor.

The secret society, too, has played a great part in internal politics. It is not so necessary now as it was. The pitiless publicity of a democracy or constitutional monarchy makes secret duplicity unnecessary. The Kao Ming Tang was Yuan Shih Kai’s and Prince Ching’s society. At the other extreme was the Kao-lao-Hwei and other anti-Manchu secret societies. It was the union of the Triad secret society with the Taiping rebels that made that revolution powerful enough to spread from Canton to Nanking. In the Boxer days of 1900 the Buddhist secret society, Tsai Li Hwei, extended its scope to cover the new movement. Their watchword was: “Store grain for war; collect forage; revolt”. The Sia Hwei (reform association), Tung Men Hwei (sworn brother), and other secret societies established in China and throughout the world by Sun Yat Sen, had much to do with the successful preliminary work that made the revolution possible.

The old lines of political demarcation are passing away, and new lines will be drawn in some instances. The powerful viceroys of the fourteen main provinces were located and named as follows:

“Viceroy of Pechili” province, at Tientsin.

“Viceroy of Shen Kan” (i.e. Shensi and Kansu provinces), at Singan.

“Viceroy of Kiangnan” (i.e. Kiangsu, Nganhwei and Kiangsi provinces), at Nanking.

“Viceroy of Hu Kwang”, or “Viceroy of Liang Hu” (i.e. Hunan and Hupeh provinces), at Wuchang.

“Viceroy of Min Che” (i.e. Chekiang and Fukien provinces), at Fuchau.

“Viceroy of Liang Kwang” (i.e. Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces), at Canton.

“Viceroy of Yun Kwei” (i.e. Yunnan and Kweichou provinces), at Yunnan.

The favorite retreats for these retired officials are the five cities of cultured Kiangsu province: Shanghai, Suchow, Chinkiang, Yangchow and Nanking; and one city in adjoining Chekiang province, Hangchow. If the clubs of these cities could by a dictograph breathe what they have heard, volumes of wonderful interest would keep a score of publishers busy. China has entered the world arena because of her human interest on a vast scale.

The Manchu may try to come back, as the irreconcilable Major General Yin Tchang has been plotting from Japanese Dalny. The doctrine of sacred right, as strongly as the Hohenzollern has enunciated it, has been preached before in China. The Manchu, with this in view, would not abdicate until he was assured that in him would lie the ancient right to pay the sacred Chou sacrifices, which are 4,000 years old. The builder of the Great Wall, the Emperor Tsin, 200 B.C., said “Shao Ming Yu Tien” (Heaven gives me my decree to reign). Sunyacius and the republicans of 1911 said: “Tien Ming Wu Chang” (The divine right lasts not forever).

Some of the political proverbs of the people are the following:

“An oligarchic government bites harder than a tiger.”

“A good hearer knows twice as much as a foolish talker, for he knows himself and he knows the talker, too.”

“The great statesman makes public opinion his opinion.”

“When the whale gets out of his element, even minnows can safely laugh.”

“In the rise and decline of his country, each man has his share.”

Chang Chih Tung, the famous viceroy of Wuchang in 1909, used to say, “Treachery can turn fame to everlasting stench.” May the New China not be a traitor to progress. Chang was the progressive who established, among many other modern plants, the wonderfully successful Hanyang steel plant, whose products are used in Europe, both coasts of America, Japan and in China on the roadbed from Canton to Harbin, 2,000 miles of shining steel, in that “Celestial” land that is beginning to find that it has a grand terrestrial future.