ich had torn the
country during the last days of the Mings.[2]

It was the foreigner, arriving in force in China after the capture of
Peking and the ratification of the Tientsin Treaties in 1860, who so
greatly contributed to making the false idea of Manchu absolutism
current throughout the world; and in this work it was the foreign
diplomat, coming to the capital saturated with the tradition of European
absolutism, who played a not unimportant part. Investing the Emperors
with an authority with which they were never really clothed, save for
ceremonial purposes (principally perhaps because the Court was entirely
withdrawn from view and very insolent in its foreign intercourse) a
conception of High Mightiness was spread abroad reminiscent of the awe
in which Eighteenth Century nabobs spoke of the Great Mogul of India.
Chinese officials, quickly discovering that their easiest means of
defence against an irresistible pressure was to take refuge behind the
august name of the sovereign, played their role so successfully that
until 1900 it was generally believed by Europeans that no other form of
government than a despotism _sans phrase_ could be dreamed of. Finding
that on the surface an Imperial Decree enjoyed the majesty of an Ukaze
of the Czar, Europeans were ready enough to interpret as best suited
their enterprises something which they entirely failed to construe in
terms expressive of the negative nature of Chinese civilization; and so
it happened that though the government of China had become no
government at all from the moment that extraterritoriality destroyed the
theory of Imperial inviolability and infallibility, the miracle of
turning state negativism into an active governing element continued to
work after a fashion because of the disguise which the immense distances
afforded.

Adequately to explain the philosophy of distance in China, and what it
has meant historically, would require a whole volume to itself; but it
is sufficient for our purpose to indicate here certain prime essentials.
The old Chinese were so entrenched in their vastnesses that without the
play of forces which were supernatural to them, _i.e._, the
steam-engine, the telegraph, the armoured war-vessel, etc., their daily
lives could not be affected. Left to themselves, and assisted by their
own methods, they knew that blows struck across the immense roadless
spaces were so diminished in strength, by the time they reached the spot
aimed at, t