nd an elective element was introduced into the provincial
administrations. The old conception of government with such
modifications as had been made up to 1910 are set forth below.

The Chinese conception of government.

The laws of the state prescribe the government of the country to be
based on the government of the family.[27] The emperor is the sole and
supreme head of the state, his will being absolute alike in the
highest affairs and in the humblest details of private life. The
highest form of legislation was an imperial decree, whether
promulgated in general terms or to meet a special case. In either form
it was the law of the land, and no privilege or prescriptive right
could be pleaded against it. All officers of state, all judges and
magistrates, hold their offices entirely at the imperial pleasure.
They can be dismissed, degraded, punished, without reason assigned and
without form of trial--even without knowing by whom or of what they
are accused. The monarch has an advisory council, but he is not bound
by its advice, nor need he pretend that he is acting by and with its
advice and concurrence. This condition of affairs dates back to a
primitive state of society, which probably existed among the Chinese
who first developed a civilized form of government. That this system
should have been maintained in China through many centuries is a fact
into the causes of which it is worth while to inquire. We find it
pictured in the records which make up the _Book of History_, and we
find it enforced in the writings of the great apostle of patriarchal
institutions, Confucius, and in all the other works which go to make
up the Confucian Canon. The reverence with which these scriptures are
viewed was the principal means of perpetuating the primitive form of
Chinese imperialism. The contents of their pages formed the study of
every schoolboy, and supplied the themes at the competitive
examinations through which every one had to pass who sought an
official career. Thus the mind of the nation was constantly and almost
exclusively turned towards them, and their dogmas became part and
parcel of the national training. The whole theory of government is the
embodiment of parental love and filial piety. As the people are the
children of the emperor, so is he the _T'ien-tsze_ or the Son of
Heaven.

The emperor.

In practice the arbitrary power of the em