Exchange Quota Share Quotations, etc, 209 'THE apologists for the Empress Dowager are anxious that it should be understood that she has not deposed her nephew H. M. Kuang 210 Lis, but has merely provided him 210 with an heir in case the official illness from which he has suffered should $11 have a prematurely fatal termination. ai. This explanation, however, will not 11' held water in the face of the fact that the Ta A-ko Pu Chun is selected as
314 who died just twenty-five years ago, the heir of Tung Chih, the Emperor 520! not of Kuang Hsii. The latter is by this action, as we have said already, blotted out from the list of Emperors of China. In the days when King Charles the First of England was still called a martyr, it was the practice of royalist historious to call the period between the death of Charles I and the access sion of Charles LI, the bright period in English history when Oliver Cromwell made the name of England more respected in Europe than it had ever been before, an "Interregnum," in their desire to ignore the fact that the Protector ever existed; and in the same way the last twenty-five years are to be an_ interregnum in Chinese history. Meanwhile the Empress Dowager has left herself a loop-hole: if she finds from the reports of her henchmen all over the Empire that public opinion is too strong for her, she can continue to govern in Kuang Haiti's name, and the year that begins tomorrow will be officially styled the 26th year of Kuang Hsii; but if she thinks that with the backing of Russia she can defy the Chinese people, it will be the first year of Whatever dynastic title is selected for the six-year-old son of Prince Tuan. It is obvious that the Chinese are under no delusion as to the meaning of the selection of this baby-boy. The great fear of the Chinese who refuse to accept the new dispensation is that Kuang Hsii will be made away with. As long as he is alive, they feel that they are contending for their rightful sovereign, but his death would make them rebels and of this they have a superstitious dread.
The Spectator will doubtless accuse us of having Russia on the brain if we suggest that the hands of M. Pavloff and M. de Giers are in this latest move of the Dowager Empress. It is, we may nevertheless be certain, on their promised aid that the old lady relies much more than on that of the Princes and Generals whom she has temporarily attached' to her fortunes. Is fect cui prodest; and the present situation in Peking is so completely in Russia's favour, M. de Giers being prepared to call in Russian troops and pose as the Saviour of Society if trouble breaks out in Peking, that only the most innocent will persuade themselves
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.