, Hsianfu, whither the Manchu Court had
fled in 1900.

Meanwhile wholesale executions were carried out in the provinces with
monotonous regularity and all attempts at rising ruthlessly suppressed.
In Peking the infamous Chih Fa Chu or Military Court--a sort of Chinese
Star-Chamber--was continually engaged in summarily dispatching men
suspected of conspiring against the Dictator, Even the printed word was
looked upon as seditious, an unfortunate native editor being actually
flogged to death in Hankow for telling the truth about conditions in the
riverine districts. These cruelties made men more and more determined to
pay off the score the very first moment that was possible. Although he
was increasingly pressed for ready money, Yuan Shih-kai, by the end of
April, 1914, had the situation sufficiently in hand to bring out his
supreme surprise,--a brand-new Constitution promulgated under the
euphonious title of "The Constitutional Compact."

This precious document, which had no more legality behind it as a
governing instrument than a private letter, can be studied by the
curious in the appendix where it is given in full: here it is sufficient
to say that no such hocuspocus had ever been previously indulged in
China. Drafted by an American legal adviser, Dr. Goodnow, who was later
to earn unenviable international notoriety as the endorser of the
monarchy scheme, it erected what it was pleased to call the Presidential
System; that is, it placed all power directly in the hands of the
President, giving him a single Secretary of State after the American
model and reducing Cabinet Ministers to mere Department Chiefs who
received their instructions from the State Department but had no real
voice in the actual government. A new provincial system was likewise
invented for the provinces, the Tutuhs or Governors of the Revolutionary
period being turned into Chiang Chun or Military Officials on the Manchu
model and provincial control absolutely centralized in their hands,
whilst the Provincial Assemblies established under the former dynasty
were summarily abolished. The worship at the Temple of Heaven was also
re-established and so was the official worship of Confucius--both
Imperialistic measures--whilst a brand-new ceremony, the worship of the
two titulary Military Gods, was ordered so as to inculcate military
virtue! It was laid down that in the worship of Heaven the President
would wear the robes of the Dukes of the Chow dynasty,