22nd November.
Ir was on the 11th of July 1898 that H.M. Kuang Hsii issued his decree ordering the establishment schools "forthe joint study of throughout China of colleges and
Chinese and Western literature and science." It was one of the series of decrees whose observance would by this time have seen China fairly started on the road to enlightenment and prosperity; but the representatives of Foreign Powers at Peking saw in them unfortunately little more than the ill-founded aspirations of an enthusiastic and unpractical youth; while most of the older Manchu and Chinese statesmen recognised in them an uprooting of al! their ancient prejudices, and a deathblow to their privileges and profits. "The present great colleges in the provinces" said the Emperor, "are hereby ordered.to be changed into middle colleges for the joint study of Chinese and Western literature and sciences. As for schools which have been established "by public subscription as charity schools or local public schools, they are also to have Western studies introduced into their curriculum, in order that education may be widespread, and talent and abilities developed and nourished throughout our empire. As for the books to be studied in these middle and lower colleges and schools, they are to obey the instructions formerly issued, namely, that the local officials shall establish translation bureaux for the translation of foreign books into Chinese, which shall be distributed to such schools for the use of the students. As regards niemorial temples belonging to the people which are not entered in the official records of the Board of Rites, the local officials shall issue roclima'ions to the people informing them that they are all to be changed into schools for the instruction and spreading of Western and Chinese learning, in order to save money and avoid erecting new buildings. By advocating reforms in this direction the minds of the masses will be enlightened by education, and whatever they may learn will be of the useful and practical kin thus our ambition to nourish talent and ability for the good of our empire shall be accomplished." The open-minded and receptive among the offic: als and educated men China were convinced by the easy victory of Japan, and by the lessons inculcated in Dr. Youag J. Allen's history of that war and the serial publications of the Diffusion Society, that China must reform herself or fall a prey to her hungry neighbours; but these lessons were lost at the time on the Empress Dowager and her friends: and by the coup d'état which followed in September all the promising schemes of the Emperor were crushed.
It was on the 26th of September 1898 that the decree was issued by the Empress Dowager in the Emperor's name annulling HIM. Kuang Hsi's projects of reform altogether. The opening paragraph of it was; "When we began the era of reform such as devising means for the encouragement of commerce and the like, we did so with the hope of strengthening and enriching our empire and for the betterment of our people. We were not led todo all this for the mere love of change and the suppression of old customs and manners. Our people throughout the empire must be aware that we were forced to do this by the crisis hanging over us. But we now find that owing to our actions in the above respect, our people aye getting unduly excited, suspicions, and panic-stricken, and must attribute this to the incapability of the officials put over them, and the inability of these officials comprehend our reasons in so doing." No such excitement, suspicion, and panic were really noticeable among the people, and it was remarked at the time that the students throughout the empire, instead of resenting the burden of undertaking a new curriculum, thronged the shops where translations of foreign books were sold and the mission-stations in the interior, in their eagerness to prepare themselves for the reformed examinations, The following was the paragraph referring to the estab li ment of colleges and schools." With regard to the Peking University and higher schools, as they are places to nourish and instruct men of ability, they are allowed to stand only as far as Peking ard the provincial capitals where steps have already been taken to establish them, are concerned: but those schools intended to be established in other prefectural, sub-prefectural, and district cities by the officials, are commanded to be held in abeyance and the people allowed to form such if they please to do so: while as regards monasteries, nunneries, and temples not authorised by and recorded in the Board of Rites, which were commanded to be given up snd turned into schools of Western learning, since their occupants have not been proved guilty of immorality or violation of the laws of the land, and since official schools are held In abeyance, there will be no further nse of them. The command for their abolition is hereby revoked an' the present inmates allowed to remain there as usual." So ended for the time the Emperor's well-designed plan for the improved education of his people, which involved at the same time the eradication of what #re too often hotbeds of ignorance and immorality, the monasteries and nuoneries.
It required a stronger lesson than the war with Japan to convince the Empress Dowager and her friends that the Emperor was right and they were wrong. They provoked the second lesson and they got it last year. Now the Empress Dowager herself' claims te be a Reformer, not too much all at once, but stil! a convinced friend of the spread of Western learning. The flight from Peking in August 1900 confirmed the teaching of Chang Chih-tung and the arguments of the Emperor. Enlightened men like Director-General Sheng and Governor Yuan Shih-kai anticipated the renewal of the decree to found colleges for the joint study of Chinese and Western literature and science. The Nanyang College here is already a flourishing example, and, under the able direction of Dr. Hayes, the college at Chinanfa will soon be set going on a firm basis. The arrangement made by Dr. Timothy Richard with the reforming Governor of Shansi, whereby a sum of Tls. 50,000 a year for ten years, which would otherwise have had to be paid to the missionaries as indemnity, is to be devoted to the advancement of education in Western as well as Chinese learning, is another admirable step. That other Viceroys and Governors will follow the lead thus given them is certain, and before long thousands of the young men vf Shina all over the empire will be eagerly studying the learning of the West, the best possible safeguard against any renewal of last year's madness. It hus taken three years and much suffering, in which the innocent have shared with the guilty, to justify the Emperor, but what a catalogue of woes would have been spared to China had Peking recognised three years ago the wisdom of his designs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.