July 26.
Ose of the severest tests to which a Government can he subjected is a sudden outbreak of lawlessness or it reso mon the part of members of a disaffected class to achieve their political aims, Fow countries remain for long immune from one or other of these ordeals, and the action of the authorities on such occasions and the after-effects on the community at urge afford an indication of the political health of the country in general and of the measure of strength and. stability enjoyed by the Administration. "The extremes of this picture are presented on the one hand, by the several attempts made upon the life of Queen Victoria, which were de far ax the persons of the mentally deranged perpetrators were concerned; on the other hand by the present situation in Russia, where straggle is being fought out to the death between the Government and the forees of anarchy and terrorism. In the Balkans and in several countries in South and Central America assassination figures ax amore or les Frequent phase of party polities, and its results according to the sta which one or other of the rival camps finds itself, Tu 1898 was made to assassinate ex-King Milan of Servia, then Generalissimo. of the Ai The crime in all probability was the act of an individual entirely on his own responsibility; but the occasion seemed to the Government in power too good to be lost, and nearly all the members of the Opposition were at once arrested on the charge of complicity. In spite of the absence of ineriminati evidence, a certain number condemned to nye of penal servitude, and of the convicts one at least was within four years again a member of the Cabinet, thanks to the vicissitudes of parliamentary strife in that country.
Tu China the substitution—of individualized assassination for re-hellion or insurrectionary—dut-breaks has an clement of novelty about it that has not failed to impress the Central Government. From the day when the bomb was thrown commissioners on ug, a very evident terror has possessed most. off the highest officials of the Empire, their alarm at the unlimited possibilities of this new danger has not unnaturally been increased a The effects unfortunate! crime, indicate that the her strength itself. Momentary panic seized it, as it did Eh Min's entourage, and the world learned of the wholesale arrest and torture not only of the ussailant's family und relatives, but also of others whose only connexion with y|the n was limited to utter ance institution endowed by him. It was during the} first phase of this creditable alarm that a lady tea at Shao-hing, whose name, it is true, had een connected with the reform movement, but mainly on the educational side, was decapitated by order of the Governor of Chekiang without ax fur as is known, of being adduced against. her.
of this nct, which, though ial Governor, was a natural outcome of its own orders, or a sudden accession of wisdom, brought home to the Central Government the conviction that in the present state of the country such wholesale butchery of those connected in one way or another with En Min's murderer was calculated to arouse forces with which it was not now anxious to try conclusions.
sent hurried= innocent people and to confine their attention to those against whom evidence of complicity could be brought. If the authorities at Peking had allowed the matter to rest there, they would have shown some measure of enlightenment and a creditable reserve of strength. But as in the cuse of Servia where neither party is inclined to let slip an op portunity of " downing ™ its opponents, so the reactionary element at the Capital seems to have profited by the Anking tragedy to. forge more than one nail for the coffin in which they hope ultimately to bury: the reform movement.
Much depends on the efforts of those who wish to improve the present occasion by setting, back the clock in China two years or more for by their success or failure the sincerity of the Central Government in the professed regeneration of the Empire will be judged. Among the reactionary measures to which the authorities have lent their countenance in the alarm of the moment may be enumerated the closing of new schools in Anhui province and the countermanding of the order to recall a certain number of qualities students from abroad to fill posts in five departments of the Ministry of War. The demand for properly educated officials in China, not mere half-baked students, is increasing, and several of the more enlightened Viceroys are endeavouring to secure the services of such men in their provinces It would be a calamity, therefore, for China, if she allowed the pani of the moment to affect her policy in the all-important matter of administrative reform. There is every reason that the authorities should not relax their efforts to check the spirit of revolution by keeping a close watch upon suspicious characters. But between such measures and the regarding with suspicion of every student who goes abroad there is a wide gulf, The sudden resort to political assassination on the part of men of Hsii_ Hsi-lin's persuasions has found the Chinese authorities unprepared for such emergencies; but there ill opportunity to show that the Government has confidence in itself. and that the strength it possesses i to be used neither tyrannically as in support of a moraily weak cause, nor despairingly as though to bolster up a tottering authority.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.