on' May.
Tue whole Empire has been deeply stirred within the past six months by the definite announcement that the Government, meaning the Empress Dowager, has decided upon a radical amendment of the educational processes of China, line of the reforms prop and commanded by the Emperor himself four years ago, as x direct result of which he was deposed and has remained so ever since. It was his complaint at that time that the Governors-General, the Governors, and other high officials did not at once fall in with the Imperial plans, and when asked their opinion on the suggested changes firmly hold their peace, until the Emperor threatened to cashier them unless they roused themselves and made some positive and adequate response.
Iv is interesting to see how exactly history has repeated itself The Empress Dowager in her turn finds it convenient to advocate reforms of a startling and sweeping character, which she knows will be opposed by many. It was a great streak of good fortune all around that Yuan Shih-kai was already prepared with a well digested scheme of education which Her Majesty liked so well that she soon after ordered all the rest of the Empire to go and do likewise. To our friends who edit the principal journals of that part of this Terrestiial Spbure lying outside of China, it seemed that now at last China has positively begun a career of amendment and advance, and the same was heralded to all the earth in telegrams and editorials past count. But no long time elapsed before it began to appear very questionable what was really meant. by this reform business (just as some of those tiresome persons whom George Wingrove Cuoke used to stigmatize as twenty-years-inthe-country-and-speak-the language people' predicted would turn out to be the case). All the talk has been of " Universities," when there are no materials out of which they can be formed. Institutions of this type we have little occasion to remind ourselves, but great need to remind the Chinese, are not a completed product put forth at one point of time, but a developed growth resulting from long periods of preparation.
What the Chinese really require at the present stage of their new processes of advance are good primary schools in which shall be trained the material out of which may be developed the meu upon whom China may hope to be able to lean.
From the present race of Confacian scholars, whose only ambition is to cover their classical studies and attainments with a thin lacker of "Western Learning," nothing valuable, we are persuaded, is to be expected. It isa law of mechanics that a body cannot arrive at a fixed position without passing through all the points intermediate between that of starting and the objective. Of this unalterable truth the Chinese, as a rule, have no more perception than of the laws of motion enounced by Kepler. Until they begin to apprehend it they will be floundering in educational mire under the impression that they are clothing themselves with the garb of Modern Learning.
In the practical as distinguished from the theoretical lines of Reform there is one step which we should greatly rejoice to have taken, or if it cannot be taken, at least contemplated as a desirable object to be aimed at. There is no collection of persons in all the broad domains of the Celestial Empire whose conduct, and whose equipment, makes so much difference to the population of China as the men who serve as the magistrates of the thirteen hundred counties which are the unit of civil administration. Not one of these men is certain to have any antecedent preparation for his duties, and the greater part of them are most conspicuously unfit for their posts. Their superiors pay no attention to what they are doing unless there is some trouble, and then the longest purse is sure to win. What is needed is in the first place a recognition of the fatal defects of the present system; a requirement that no candidate who cannot pass a full examination on certain specified topics of theoretical administration, will be considered as eligible to appointment, a previous meritorious record entitling one to precedence over those without experience. The inherent vice of a plan of employment of officers with practically no salaries is not to be amended in a day nor in a decade, but much might be accomplished as a preliminary if a stimulus were given to the better class of men who now find no encouragement to do well, except that peculiar and often unsatisfying recompense said to belong to virtue.'
China is to wait until grand
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.