and the provinces even more
formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of
decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing for many
months to agree on the so-called Provincial system, and then fighting a
battle _a outrance_ on the question of whether this body of law should
form a chapter in the Constitution or be simply an annexure to the main
instrument. The agreement which was finally arrived at--to make it part
and parcel of the Constitution--was masterly in that it has secured that
the sovereignty of the people will not tend to be expressed in the
provincial dietines which have now been re-erected (after having been
summarily destroyed by Yuan Shih-kai), the Central Parliament being left
the absolute master. This for a number of years will no doubt be more of
a theory than a practice; but there is every indication that
parliamentary government will within a limited period be more successful
in China than in some European countries; and that the Chinese with
their love of well-established procedure and cautious action, will
select open debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the
chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority.
Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified
its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee.
Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been constant and
frequent; fierce verbal assaults are delivered on Cabinet Ministers; and
slowly but inexorably a real sense of Ministerial responsibility is
being created, the fear of having to run the gauntlet of Parliament
abating, if it has not yet entirely destroyed, many malpractices. In the
opinion of the writer in less than ten years Parliament will have
succeeded in coalescing the country into an organic whole, and will have
placed the Cabinet in such close daily relations with it that something
very similar to the Anglo-Saxon theory of government will be impregnably
entrenched in Peking. That such a miracle should be possible in extreme
Eastern Asia is one more proof that there are no victories beyond the
capacity of the human mind.

[Illustration: General Tsao-ao, the Hero of the Yunnan Rebellion of
1915-16, who died from the effects of the campaign.]

[Illustration: Liang Shih-yi, who was the Power behind Yuan Shih-kai,
now proscribed and living in exile at Hong-Kong.]

Meanwhile, for the time being, in China as in countries ten thousand