sed the British minister that the contract
should not be ratified without his having an opportunity of seeing it.
As a penalty for this breach of faith, and as a set-off to the
Franco-Belgian line, the British minister required the immediate grant
of all the railway concessions for which British syndicates were then
negotiating, and on terms not inferior to those granted to the Belgian
line. In this way all the lines in the lower Yangtsze, as also the
Shan-si Mining Companies' lines, were secured. A contract for a trunk
line from Canton to Hankow was negotiated in the latter part of 1898
by an American company.

The reform movement, 1898

There can be little doubt that the powers, engrossed in the diplomatic
conflicts of which Peking was the centre, had entirely underrated the
reactionary forces gradually mustering for a struggle against the
aggressive spirit of Western civilization. The lamentable consequences
of administrative corruption and incompetence, and the superiority of
foreign methods which had been amply illustrated by the Japanese War,
had at first produced a considerable impression, not only upon the more
enlightened commercial classes, but even upon many of the younger
members of the official classes in China. The dowager-empress, who, in
spite of the emperor Kwang-su having nominally attained his majority,
had retained practical control of the supreme power until the conflict
with Japan, had been held, not unjustly, to blame for the disasters of
the war, and even before its conclusion the young emperor was adjured by
some of the most responsible among his own subjects to shake himself
free from the baneful restraint of "petticoat government," and himself
take the helm. In the following years a reform movement, undoubtedly
genuine, though opinions differ as to the value of the popular support
which it claimed, spread throughout the central and southern provinces
of the empire. One of the most significant symptoms was the relatively
large demand which suddenly arose for the translations of foreign works
and similar publications in the Chinese language which philanthropic
societies, such as that "for the Diffusion of Christian and General
Knowledge amongst the Chinese," had been trying for some time past to
popularize, though hitherto with scant success. Chinese newspapers
published in the treaty ports spread the ferment of new ideas far into
the interior. Fifteen hundred young men of