The office of Emperor was thus heavenly rather than terrestrial, and suasion, not arms, was the most potent argument used in everyday life.  The amazing reply (i.e., amazing to foreigners) made by the great Emperor K’ang-hsi in the tremendous Eighteenth Century controversy between the Jesuit and the Dominican missionaries, which ruined the prospects of China’s ever becoming Roman Catholic and which the Pope refused to accept—­that the custom of ancestor-worship was political and not religious—­was absolutely correct, politics in China under the Empire being only a system of national control exercised by inculcating obedience to forebears.  The great efforts which the Manchus made from the end of the Sixteenth Century (when they were still a small Manchurian Principality striving for the succession to the Dragon Throne and launching desperate attacks on the Great Wall of China) to receive from the Dalai Lama, as well as from the lesser Pontiffs of Tibet and Mongolia, high-sounding religious titles, prove conclusively that dignities other than mere possession of the Throne were held necessary to give solidity to a reign which began in militarism and which would collapse as the Mongol rule had collapsed by a mere Palace revolution unless an effective moral title were somehow won.

Nor was the Manchu military Conquest, even after they had entered Peking, so complete as has been represented by historians.  The Manchus were too small a handful, even with their Mongol and Chinese auxiliaries, to do more than defeat the Ming armies and obtain the submission of the chief cities of China.  It is well-known to students of their administrative methods, that whilst they reigned over China they ruled only in company with the Chinese, the system in force being a dual control which, beginning on the Grand Council and in the various great Boards and Departments in the capital, proceeded as far as the provincial chief cities, but stopped short there so completely and absolutely that the huge chains of villages and burgs had their historic autonomy virtually untouched and lived on as they had always lived.  The elaborate system of examinations, with the splendid official honours reserved for successful students which was adopted by the Dynasty, not only conciliated Chinese society but provided a vast body of men whose interest lay in maintaining the new conquest; and thus Literature, which had always been the door to preferment, became not only one of the instruments of government, but actually the advocate of an alien rule.  With their persons and properties safe, and their women-folk protected by an elaborate set of capitulations from being requisitioned for the harems of the invaders, small wonder if the mass of Chinese welcomed a firm administration after the frightful disorders which had torn the country during the last days of the Mings.[2]