o be premature.

[54] In negotiating this agreement Lord Salisbury appears to have
been largely influenced by the aggressive features of Russia's
action in North China, while Germany appears to have been actuated
by a desire to forestall isolated action by Great Britain in the
Yangtsze basin. In Germany the agreement was known as the Yangtsze
Agreement. Great Britain held, however, that it applied equally to
Manchuria.

[55] Liu Kun-yi died in 1902. In the same year died Tao-mu, the
viceroy of Canton. In these men China lost two of her most capable
and enlightened officials.

[56] Prince Chun was born in 1882. He was the first member of the
imperial family to be sent on a foreign mission.

[57] Tung Fu-hsiang died in 1908. A sum of some L80,000 belonging to
him, and left in the provincial treasury, was appropriated for works
of public utility (see _The Times_, April 9th, 1910).

[58] Lord W. Cecil, op. cit. p. 9.

[59] This institution was nominally a private concern which financed
the Manchurian railway, but it acted as part of the Russian
government machinery. The existence of the contract of the 27th of
August 1896 was frequently denied until expressly admitted by the
Russo-Chinese agreement of the 8th of April 1902.

[60] On the 8th of October the Russian troops had been withdrawn
from Mukden, but they reoccupied the town on the 28th of the same
month, Admiral Alexeiev, the viceroy of the Far East, alleging that
the inertia of the Chinese officials seriously hindered the work of
extending civilization in Manchuria.

[61] The form of outrage, probably the first of its kind in China,
was itself a symptom of the changed times. The bomb injured Prince
Tsai Tse and another commissioner, and the departure of the
commission was consequently delayed some months.

[62] In 1907 further commissions were appointed, on the initiative
of Yuan Shih-kai, to study specifically the constitutions of Great
Britain, Germany and Japan.

[63] This department was organized at Shanghai in 1854. The Taiping
rebels being in possession of the native city, the collection of
customs dues, especially on foreign ships, was placed in the hands
of foreigners. This developed into a permanent institution, the
European staff being mainly British.

[64] The British official view, as stated in parliament on th