Peking to Canton is 1,400 miles along a hard and difficult route; the journey to Yunnan by the Yangtsze river is upwards of 2,000 miles, a distance greater than the greatest march ever undertaken by Napoleon.  And when one speaks of the Outer Dominions—­Mongolia, Tibet, Turkestan—­for these hundreds of miles it is necessary to substitute thousands, and add thereto difficulties of terrain which would have disheartened even Roman Generals.

Now the old Chinese, accepting distance as the supreme thing, had made it the starting-point as well as the end of their government.  In the perfected viceregal system which grew up under the Ming Dynasty, and which was taken over by the Manchus as a sound and admirable governing principle, though they superimposed their own military system of Tartar Generals, we have the plan that nullified the great obstacle.  Authority of every kind was delegated by the Throne to various distant governing centuries in a most complete and sweeping manner, each group of provinces, united under a viceroy, being in everything but name so many independent linked commonwealths, called upon for matricular contributions in money and grain but otherwise left severely alone[3].  The chain which bound provincial China to the metropolitan government was therefore in the last analysis finance and nothing but finance; and if the system broke down in 1911 it was because financial reform—­to discount the new forces of which the steam engine was the symbol—­had been attempted, like military reform, both too late and in the wrong way, and instead of strengthening, had vastly weakened the authority of the Throne.

In pursuance of the reform-plan which became popular after the Boxer Settlement had allowed the court to return to Peking from Hsianfu, the viceroys found their most essential prerogative, which was the control of the provincial purse, largely taken from them and handed over to Financial Commissioners who were directly responsible to the Peking Ministry of Finance, a Department which was attempting to replace the loose system of matricular contributions by the European system of a directly controlled taxation every penny of which would be shown in an annual Budget.  No doubt had time been vouchsafed, and had European help been enlisted on a large scale, this change could ultimately have been made successful.  But it was precisely time which was lacking; and the Manchus consequently paid the penalty which is always paid by those who delay until it is too late.  The old theories having been openly abandoned, it needed only the promise of a Parliament completely to destroy the dignity of the Son of Heaven, and to leave the viceroys as mere hostages in the hands of rebels.  A few short weeks of rebellion was sufficient in 1911 to cause the provinces to revert to their condition of the earlier centuries when they had been vast unfettered agricultural communities.  And once they had tasted the joys of this new independence, it was impossible to conceive of their becoming “obedient” again.