Still no Parliament was assembled.  Although the Nanking Provisional Constitution had stipulated that one was to meet within ten months i.e. before 1st November, 1912, the elections were purposely delayed, the attention of the Central Government being concentrated on the problem of destroying all rivals, and everything being subordinate to this war on persons.  Rascals, getting daily more and more out of hand, worked their will on rich and poor alike, discrediting by their actions the name of republicanism and destroying public confidence—­which was precisely what suited Yuan Shih-kai.  Dramatic and extraordinary incidents continually inflamed the public mind, nothing being too singular for those remarkable days.

Very slowly the problem developed, with everyone exclaiming that foreign intervention was becoming inevitable.  With the beginning of 1913, being unable to delay the matter any longer, Yuan Shih-kai allowed elections to be held in the provinces.  He was so badly beaten at the polls that it seemed in spite of his military power that he would be outvoted and outmanoeuvred in the new National Assembly and his authority undermined.  To prevent this a fresh assassination was decided upon.  The ablest Southern leader, Sung Chiao-jen, just as he was entraining for Peking with a number of Parliamentarians at Shanghai, was coolly shot in a crowded railway station by a desperado who admitted under trial that he had been paid L200 for the job by the highest authority in the land, the evidence produced in court including telegrams from Peking which left no doubt as to who had instigated the murder.

The storm raised by this evil measure made it appear as if no parliament could ever assemble in Peking.  But the feeling had become general that the situation was so desperate that action had to be taken.  Not only was their reputation at stake, but the Kuomingtang or Revolutionary Party now knew that the future of their country was involved just as much as the safety of their own lives; and so after a rapid consultation they determined that they would beard the lion in his den.  Rather unexpectedly on the 7th April (1913) Parliament was opened in Peking with a huge Southern majority and the benediction of all Radicals.[7] Hopes rose with mercurial rapidity as a solution at last seemed in sight.  But hardly had the first formalities been completed and Speakers been elected to both Houses, than by a single dramatic stroke Yuan Shih-kai reduced to nought these labours by stabbing in the back the whole theory and practice of popular government.

The method he employed was simplicity itself, and it is peculiarly characteristic of the man that he should have been so bluntly cynical.  Though the Provisional Nanking Constitution, which was the “law” of China so far as there was any law at all, had laid down specifically in article XIX that all measures affecting the National Treasury must receive the assent of Parliament, Yuan Shih-kai, pretending that the