During the last ten years, many of our scholars, having a desire to settle present "Chinese problems, have not begun by comparing the conditions of the two countries of China and America, but have only considered the resultant power and wealth of America, thinking that all China looks for is wealth and power. The wealth and power of America come from the unity of the States, and if China wants to be equally wealthy and strong she must unite her provinces. The advantage of the system of the confederacy in America is that each state fixes its own constitution and is self-governed. If we would copy this American system we must unite our provinces snd begin by each province fixing its own constitution and regulating its own affairs. When the Pro-
Vineial Constitution has been put into force, then we must all unite and form' a National Constitution, In reality we must take our present unified China and make it into more than 20 independent units, just like the ten or more independent states of the America of 100 years ago and then afterwards all unite.
Now these views and ideas are erroneous to a degree, and may be said to be simply expressing other peoples' opinions without finding out whether they are practicable or not. To think that because America has become the wealthiest. and most powerful country in the world by adopting the system of state unfication, and that we must copy this system in order to make China strong_and wealthy, is just like what I spoke of in a previous lecture, when I said that when Europeans arid Americans contended for the rights of the people, they did not say they were fighting for democratic rights, but only for and equality. We Chinese of this time in our revolution, copy the watchwords of America saying we are fighting for freedom a equality, but we are just the same following blindly and not under-what it means.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.