miles away, ministerial irresponsibility is the enemy; that is to say
that so-called Cabinet-rule, with the effacement of the Chief Executive,
has tended to make Cabinet Ministers removed from effective daily
control. All sorts of things are done which should not be done and men
are still in charge of portfolios who should be summarily expelled from
the capital for malpractices.[22] But although Chinese are slow to take
action and prefer to delay all decisions until they have about them the
inexorable quality which is associated with Fate, there is not the
slightest doubt that in the long run the dishonest suffer, and an
increasingly efficient body of men take their place. From every point of
view then there is reason for congratulation in the present position,
and every hope that the future will unroll peacefully.

A visit to Parliament under the new regime is a revelation to most men:
the candid come away with an impression which is never effaced from
their minds. There is a peculiar suggestiveness even in the location of
the Houses of the National Assembly. They are tucked away in the distant
Western city immediately under the shadow of the vast Tartar Wall as if
it had been fully expected when they were called into being that they
would never justify their existence, and that the crushing weight of the
great bastion of brick and stone surrounding the capital would soon
prove to them how futile it was for such palpable intruders to aspire to
national control. Under Yuan Shih-kai, as under the Manchus, they were
an exercise in the arm of government, something which was never to be
allowed to harden into a settled practice. They were first cousins to
railways, to electrical power, to metalled roadways and all those other
modern instances beginning to modify an ancient civilization entirely
based on agriculture; and because they were so distantly related to the
real China of the farm-yard it was thought that they would always stand
outside the national life.

That was what the fools believed. Yet in a copy of the rules of
procedure of the old Imperial Senate (Tzuchengyuan) the writer finds
this note written in 1910: "The Debates of this body have been
remarkable during the very first session. They make it seem clear that
the first National Parliament of 1913 will seize control of China and
nullify the power of the Throne. Result, revolution--" Though the dating
is a little confused, the prophecy is worthy of record.