be able seriously to shake the foundations of this hoary edifice.  He has watched the opinions and activities in every province from the beginning of the present revolution, and he “is compelled to the conviction that salvation from this quarter is impossible.”  He thinks that although in Canton and the Kuang Provinces, which are the most intellectually advanced portions of China, a system of popular representation may be introduced with some hope of beneficial results,

... as regards the rest of China, as every educated Chinese knows (unless, like Sun Yat-Sen, he has been brought up abroad), the idea of rapidly transforming the masses of the population into an intelligent electorate, and of making a Chinese Parliament the expression of their collective political vitality, is a vain dream, possible only for those who ignore the inherent character of the Chinese people.

There is, however, one consideration set forth by Mr. Bland, which may possibly prove, at all events for a time, the salvation, while it assuredly connotes the condemnation of the present system of government, and that is that the Chinese Republic may continue to exist by abrogating all republican principles.  According to Mr. Bland this “gran rifiuto” has already been made.  “The actual government of China,” he says, “contains none of the elements of genuine Republicanism, but is merely the old despotism, the old Mandarinate, under new names.”  “The inauguration of the Republican idea of constitutional Government in China,” he says in another passage, “can only mean, in the present state of the people, continual transference of an illegal despotism from one group of political adventurers to another, the pretence of popular representation serving merely to increase and perpetuate instability.”

It would require a far greater knowledge of Chinese affairs than any to which I can pretend to express either unqualified adherence to or dissent from Mr. Bland’s views.  But it is clear that his diagnosis of the past is based on a very thorough acquaintance with the facts, while, on a priori grounds, his prognosis of the future is calculated to commend itself to those of general experience who have studied Oriental character and are acquainted with Oriental history.

[Footnote 66:  High Albania, p. 311.]

[Footnote 67:  See on this subject the final remarks in Mr. Bland’s very instructive chapter xiv.]

VII

THE CAPITULATIONS IN EGYPT

"The Nineteenth Century and After,” July 1913