29th July.
THE China Association of London, in the autumn of the year 1900, made the following statement in a special letter to Lord Salisbury: "It may be expedient for reasons of State to guarantee the personal immunity of the Empress Dowager, how convincing soever the evidence of her complicity may appear... The restoration of the Empress, in a word, means continued reaction, persecution and unrest. It is impossible." And yet it has come to pass that the Empress Dowager on returning to Peking returned as the real Sovereign of the Empire. Her position as sole, Regent for the Emperor, which she claimed for herself in the autumn of 1898, but which at the time no one of the Powers was inclined to recognise, has at last, after the cruel intriguing of 1900, been calmly and formaty recognised by the representatives in Peking of every one of the Powers, Seeing, then, that the Empress Dowager has been thus acknowledged to be the Regent and practical Sovereign, it means that she carries the burdens and responsibilities of Head of this vast Empire; and it also ought to mean that the Foreign Powers will hold her, and her alone, responsible for the proper management of the affairs of State, with all the relations which China is to maintain with other peoples and governments. If she is eager to wear the crown at just this time, and if no one enters a protest to her so doing, she should understand that the great policies and occurrences of the State, good or bad, will henceforth be traced to her supreme will. The Emperor accordingly, is to be recognised as an "incapable," and it is useless for the foreign Ministers and special Envoys to bother themselves mith the Emperor's wishes; the Emperor has no will to be considered; this is the position taken by the Powers. We may personally feel sorry for His Majesty, but the Foreign Ministers have, with their eyes wide open, taken up with the idea that the EmpressDowager, and she alone, is the Regent and so the Ruler. The Ministers' wives, with marked magnanimity, have received with sensations of pleasurable recognition the kindly overtures and jewelled gifts of Her Majesty, and it seems plain that with such assistance rendered their husbands, it is all in vain for them to speak in glowing and tender terms to the Emperor, who is only a figurehead and an "incapable."
The matter worth our notice is not that the Empress Dowager is ruling Regent, but that she has become so through her magisterial and dominating will. She is outside the direct lineage of Manchu rulers; she is only a woman; but to her Manchu rinees bend: Manchu nobles look to er as to a descendant of the Tartar conquerors, and every mandarin, Manchu or Chinese, is ready to applaud her skill and power in holding the reins of government, in spite of the complicity of only two years ago. That she is the strongest person in the country, and that through her personality, cannot be gain said, 'Though in vivid outlines she stands before the world, there are few, if any, who understand her character. Personally is she a good woman or a bad woman' Politically, is she_progressive or conservative? Socially, is she sincere and kind or treacherous and cruel? As a ruler, is she easily overruled by her advisers. or is nothing done without her will? Is she a lover of peace or a believer in war Daring the time of the first Regency of the present Emperor, the Western Empress, apart from all the advanced ideas of the late Prince Kung, was regarded as favourable to progress. 'The introduction of the telegraph, of coasting steamers, of a modern navy, of a Western-trained army, of arsenals and forts, of mining and' railways, all advocated by Li Hung-chang during his period of greatest power, met with the sanction of the Empress Dowager. Even after the young Emperor entered on his reign, he was believed to be less favourable to Western innovations than his aunt the Empress Dowager. She took the advice of Li Hung-chang, the progressive, while the Emperor took the advice of the Imperial tutor, Wong Tung-ho, who at the time was intensely conservative. She had steam launches, a miniature railway, the electric light introduced into her palace grounds. Clocks, pianos, musical boxes, forjeign pictures, French vases, a billiard table, anything pretty or costly from abroad, even the Holy Bible in gilt and morocco, adorned her palaces as had never been known since the days of Kang Hei. She was more modernized than any of the Cabinet Ministers. Since her return ite Peking she has shown many of the same peculiarities. The Rev. Dr. Sheffield in his addresses at the Educational Association gave em-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.