0th December.
THE power and extent of secret socit in China are a sufficient evidence, as they are the direct outcome, of an incompetent government and of law unevenly administered. Such secret combinations carried out on a large scale provide the only workable defence of the common copie against injustice and oppress sion. For this cause Chinese officials, being often in apprehensive ignorance of the exact nature and magnitude of the forces thus secretly arrayed against them, stand in as great a fear of the people as such, as individuals in their turn do of the yameos. Thus we see in China the forces of suspense, always destructive of firm and effective government, everywhere in operation. Poise and equipoise as between people and officials have t/been in this way heaped heavens high, until law has lost all its majesty and government forgotten its function.
In these maritime provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang, it may be imagined that since nothing is heard of such great societies as the "Great Swords" of Northern China, or the "Triads" of the South, that therefore the district is free from this particular menace. Not so. Throughout this region branches of a large and powerful secret organisation are everywhere to be found. The simple expedient of giving different names to branches of the same organisation in different places serves to screen the magnitude ofts operations. But the identity, even to minute details, of ritual and method is sufficient to mark these al! as units of one great whole. In parts of the Soochow prefecture this Society is known as the 5% "Enter Heaven Sect." Other places, other names. It is well known to the officials and donbtless closely watched. What is the real relation of this organisation to the better known societies is difficult to ascertain, but a relation there is, for it is asserted that the few emissaries of the I-Ho-Chuan who succeeded in practising the Boxer rites in Kiangnan did so under the auspices of this Society. It is certain, moreover, that the movement is closely leagued with the Taoist Priests as a class, and many Buddhist priests assist its propaganda. The main purpose of the Society seems to be revolutionary; it is uncompromisingly anti-dynastic. I's following, especially in the country districts, is enormous, but no particularly anti-foreign or anti-Christian sentiments seem to be proclaimed. On the contrary there is apparent friendliness towards these forces, which are.also supposed by the people to be anti-Manchu in their tendency and effects.
In forming local branches the modus operandi is to select one or two well-known characters of the bully class and appoint them district leaders. These issue proclamations in regal style to their adherents, taking the dragon for their sign manual and terming themselves "by one tenth the inferiors of the Emperor." To whom they are in turn responsible is not generally known. Secret signs of the freemasonry type are in use among the members, In tea and opium houses they practise certain formule in smoking and drinking, and thus mutual recognition is speedily and safely effected. Their initiatory rites are connected with the ancient "eight diagrams of the Turtle" so commonly used in divination throughout China. The branches of the Society in this district are supposed to be under the protection and control of the third principle, denoting fire, flame, and light; and occult power over the forces of fire are ascribed to the fully initiated. When the first rites have been acquired by the novitiate he is said to have "entered the mystery," and thereafter proceeds by stages to the mastery of the cult.
Latterly the local leaders of this Society have been "exalting their horn" and crusading in cer ain district. In city of the Soochow fu, one of these men, a shoemaker named Li, calling himself "the Great," has drawn an undesirable amount of attention to himself, and is in consequence now reflecting upon the penalties of greatness in the City Jail. The officials, however, knowing that a riot would mean loss of place, and fearing to risk the anger of a portion of the populace whose strength they cannot estimate, dare not scrike hard, though they have the guilty in their hands, and their demagogue will probably suffer only by being watched in the yamen fora while asd then be quietly released.
So long as counsels of peace cuntinue to prevail in the ranks of this Sociely, nothing is to be feared from its members. The potentiality of trouble is there, however, and given famine, or drought, or even a sudden gust of local passion met only by a weak-kneed officialdom, then the seeds of such inflammatory suggestion as the Taoist and Buddhist priests know too well how to handle, sown in the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.