wn even to the "Throne."
Fourteen years ago, after the _coup d'etat_ by which Tzu Hsi smashed
the reform movement that had been patronized by the Emperor Kuang Hsu,
the then Viceroy of Canton stated in a memorial to her that among some
treasonable papers found at the birthplace of Kang Yu-wei, the leading
reformer of the time, a document had been discovered which not only
spoke of substituting a republic for the monarchy, but actually named
as its first president one of the reformers she had caused to be
executed. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that the idea has
been imported into China comparatively recently; the Chinese language
contains no word for republic, but one has been coined by putting
together the words for self and government; it must be many years
before the masses of the Chinese--the "rubbish people," as Lo Feng-lu,
a former minister to England, used to call them--have any genuine
understanding of what a republic means.

The Manchus were in power for nearly two hundred and seventy years, and
during that period there were various risings, some of a formidable
character, against them and in favor of descendants of the native Ming
dynasty which they had displaced; powerful secret organizations, such
as the famous "Triad Society," plotted and conspired to put a Ming
prince on the throne; but all was vain. It had come to be generally
believed that the race of the Mings had died out, but a recent dispatch
from China speaks of there still being a representative in existence,
who possibly might give serious trouble to the new republic. In any
case, for a long time past the Mings had ceased to give the Manchus any
concern; the pressure upon the latter came from outside the empire, but
that in its turn reacted profoundly on the internal situation. The wars
with France and England had but a slight effect on China; though the
foreign devils beat it in war it yet despised them. The effect of the
war with Japan, in 1894, was something quite different, beginning the
real awakening of China and imparting life and vigor to the new reform
movement which had its origin in Canton, the great city of the south,
whose highly intelligent people have most quickly felt and most readily
and strongly responded to outside influences. Regarded by the Chinese
as at least partially civilized, the Japanese were placed in a higher
category than the Western barbarians, but as their triumph over China
was attributed to their adoptio