How came the Chinese people to this concept of State government! It was by a recognition, which the deemed it wise to give, to 2 unity of the laws of morality and nature, and to their postulate of moral force as the primary of all forces. Accordingly, the people deemed it! natural to' be subject to the Emperor—the Heaven-sent representative—and he, correspondingly, to be subject, in a sense, to them. It he was not, they found another who was! The relation between the throne and its subjects was paralleled in the home. The state was! endangered if natural duties were not ebserved—if the father was not a good father, or the son a good son.
Of what character was the government administration? Since moral force was regarded as primary, the cult and practice of the five heavenly virtues (bene-valence, public spirit, principle, insight and uprightness) were regarded as the guarantee of the: deal form of government. The government wns, therefore, based on the moral education of the people; and the guarantee of the outer: order of the community was considered to be the moral culture of its members. There came thus to be erected the literati, in. whose: hands the administration of the Chinese State so successfully repose ed under that former-day concept of the oneness of universal order and good government. Mrs. Ayscough, I think it was, gave us the parable of the pyramidical structure, typical of the Chinese body politic: the Emperor at the apex the people constituting the: base and the body; the walls, containing and securing all, the a muinistrating literati. How great' then was the people's spill from unison when those walls were pus ed out by the abel tions in moral, not merely political, culture—and the pyramid collapsed Tt will be admitted, T think, that under the above system the Chinese did achieve good government, and security and peace for the lives of the people. It is undoubted that they achieved a high form of social he order.
Granted it was a condition possible only to a secluded Chini immune from the Occidental concent of progress, with its concomitant of change.
The Torn Network And now to my point. All this has been changed—the meshes of the network have been torn; the Pyramid has come tumbling down; the Emperor of Heaven no longer: serves as an image to knit men's minds with Heaven and their persons with the State. In effect, the entire basis of the relationship between the people and the State in this land has been swept away, and they have been left mentally: floundering. Is it unjustified pessimism, therefore, to suggest that there can be no speedy remedy' of conditions? I do not say that Republicanism cannot succeed in China. T low insufficient of the subject to dogmatize on the respec-_ tive merits of the varying forms of political government. Incidentally, the Chinese do appear democrats, even if they haven't in the post held that all men are. originally. equal. But I do think that the geographical vastness of this country, the number of its population and the lack of communications. coupled with the fact of the radical volte face from past concepts and fons, will necessitate a heavy all upon' Father Time's bounty—and T think of a century, rather than 4 deeade—ere there will be any general understanding and appreciation among the people of the upon, the waters, 'Till that day arrives, there will be a very' considerable call for sympathy and tolerance on the part of all of us foreign witnesses of a ship in very troubled seas—that is, even allowing that the Nanking Gonfer- th ministers. And because his|ence succeeds in building a ship at Tam, ete,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.