Ir is commonly stated and believed in Shanghai that the Representatives of the Foreign Powers at Peking accept the Empress Dowager's coup d'état as a mere family quarrel. The young Emperor offended his aunt and the leading imperial clansmen by his over-zealous devotion to reform, and they accordingly determined to depose him and keep him quiet while they restored the ancient regime. This, the Foreign Ministers are supposed to have agreed, is all there is to it, and the movement has been very much exaggerated at Shanghai. The call for guards at the various Legations is only a measure of precaution, and does not indicate any intention on the part of the Foreign Representa tives to interfere in the domestic squabbles in the palace.
If this is a fair statement of the Position! taken up by the Foreign Ministers, it would seem that they have a very inadequate grasp of the situation. The Empress Dowager's cowp is at the same time a revolution and a usurpation. No one will seriously contend that the young Emperor voluntarily signed the decree of the 22nd ult. calling his aunt back to power; and if he is alive at all, which is still uncertain, though the balance of assertion now is in favour of his being alive, and it is said that he is confined in an island in the palace grounds, he has hech deprived of all,{power,: all his personal attendants have been killed, and it may be doubted if he has any means of knowing what is going on. All his papers have been seized by the Empress Dowager, who is going through them carefully to find out whom to proscribe. All his reforms have been rescinded, the sinecures which he abolished have been re-established, the men whom he dismissed have been reinstated in.their offices or promoted, and the Emperor's friends and the friends of reform have been and are being hunted down, murdered, exiled, cashiered and declared for ever unfit for the public service, or sent to their homes to remain under the surveillance of1 the authorities. Nobody under the} rank of Viceroy is safe, if it can be shown that he has taken any interest in reform or in a reformer; and it is even hinted that the great Viceroy Chang Chih-tung is not altogether secure in his seat at Wuchang. Finally comes a decree suspending all the native newspapers in China without exception, and ordering their Editors to be treated with exemplary severity. Now this decree is really crime against civilisation. As was pointed out in these columns the other day in an article on the native Press:—"If we may liken the effect of the Japan-Chinese war on China to a severe electric shock, we may also speak of the Native Press as a telegraphic system conveying an electric current of new ideas throughout the length and breadth of the land." To cut off this current, to which the nation has now become habituated, and which has become a necessary element in its life, isa crime, and it is a stupidity which is worse than a crime. The Empress Dowager is like Mrs. Partington with her mop; the tide of enlightenment is flowing' in China, and if she and her friends at Peking had a little more knowledge of the world, she would "know that her edicts cannot possibly stop the rising of the tide. ff the Emperor went too far and too fast in his reforms, the Empress' Dowager is carrying reaction too far and too fast. For the moment the reform party is stunned; but there is too much enlightenment among the younger Chinese for the Manchu brute force on which the Empress Dowager is relying to prevail for long. The young Emperor has made himself very popular in China by his recent acts; but the Manchus as a race and the Empress Dowager herself are not popular.
Tu accepting the Empress Dowager as the de facto ruler of China, and in condoning her usurpation, as they appear to be doing, the Foreign Ministers are making a very serious mistake. The Empress Dowager is undoubtedly giving a great impetus to the rebellion in the South, and if other rebellions break out, or other provinces join the two Kuang in their resistance to the imperial authority, it will be the Empress Dowager and her friends who are to blame. If a really big rebellion is the consequence of the coup d'état at Peking, it will be impossible for the Foreign Powers to come to the aid of the present Government as they did at the time of the Taiping Rebellion, for the rebels now will be fighting in the name of the Emperor, the rightful ruler of China, No foreigner wants to see another big rebellion in China trade, loans, concessions, industries all kinds demand peace and internal tranquillity. But in condoning the mad career of reaction on which the Empress Dowager has entered, the Foreign Powers through their Ministers are encouraging a rebellion, which, it seems, can only end, and that at no distant date, in the partition of China. There may be one or two Powers to whom this partition will not be altogether unwelcome but the chief tradi Powers, Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Japan, are interested in_ the maintenance of the integrity of the Chinese Empire, and they should be strong enough if united to impose their wishes on the Tsungli Yamen, and on the Empress Dowager through the Tsungli Yamen, and have some check put on the reactionary career of the de facto ruler of China. HE. Yung Lu has, we lea, done everything in his power to moderate the Empress Dowager's rage against, the reformers, and it is mainly to his counsel that the non-return to power of Li Hung-chang is due. It is very important to remember that in Peking, and probably not only in Peking, the antireform party which is now in power is regarded as an anti-foreign party the Empress Dowager's practical protests against the Emperor's reforms are regarded as protests against the concessions that have been made to foreigners, and everywhere the haters of foreigners throughout the Empire will hold up their heads again. It no doubt suits Russia to have the Manchus in power again at Peking, and the young reforming Chinese who were disposed to look into things for themselves, suppressed as they have been; and in minimising the importance of recent events in Peking, the other Powers are, consciously or unconsciously, playing Russia's game. The inaction of Sir Claude Macdonald, which is of course dictated from home, is another proof of the truth of Mr. Office no policy in China, and Moreing's eabtention that our Foreign the British public has not knowledge enough of the situation to impose a policy on our Government.
Since writing the above the news has arrived, and there is much reason to fear that it is true, of the murder by the secret order of the Empress Dowager of H. E. Chang Yin-huan while on his way to exile. Surely this
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.