Ch`ien Lung’s son, who reigned as Chia Ch`ing (high felicity—­not to be confounded with Chia Ching of the Ming dynasty, 1522-1567), found himself in difficulties from the very start.  The year of his accession was marked by a rising of the White Lily Society, one of the dreaded secret associations with which China is, and always has been, honeycombed.  The exact origin of this particular society is not known.  A White Lily Society was formed in the second century A.D. by a certain Taoist patriarch, and eighteen members were accustomed to assemble at a temple in modern Kiangsi for purposes of meditation.  But this seems to have no connexion with the later sect, of which we first hear in 1308, when its existence was prohibited, its shrines destroyed, and its votaries forced to return to ordinary life.  Members of the fraternity were then believed to possess a knowledge of the black art; and later on, in 1622, the society was confounded by Chinese officials in Shantung with Christianity.  In the present instance, it is said that no fewer than thirty thousand adherents were executed before the trouble was finally suppressed; from which statement it is easy to gather that under whatever form the White Lily Society may have been originally initiated, its activities were now of a much more serious character, and were, in fact, plainly directed against the power and authority of the Manchus.

Almost from this very date may be said to have begun that turn of the tide which was to reach its flood a hundred years afterwards.  The Manchus came into power, as conquerors by force of arms, at a time when the mandate of the previous dynasty had been frittered away in corruption and misrule; and although to the Chinese eye they were nothing more than “stinking Tartars,” there were not wanting many glad enough to see a change of rule at any price.  Under the first Emperor, Shun Chih, there was barely time to find out what the new dynasty was going to do; then came the long and glorious reign of K`ang Hsi, followed, after the thirteen harmless years of Yung Cheng, by the equally long and equally glorious reign of Ch`ien Lung.  The Chinese people, who, strictly speaking, govern themselves in the most democratic of all republics, have not the slightest objection to the Imperial tradition, which has indeed been their continuous heritage from remotest antiquity, provided that public liberties are duly safeguarded, chiefly in the sense that there shall always be equal opportunities for all.  They are quick to discover the character of their rulers, and discovery in an unfavourable direction leads to an early alteration of popular thought and demeanour.  At the beginning of the seventeenth century, they had tired of eunuch oppression and unjust taxation, and they naturally hailed the genuine attempt in 1662 to get rid of eunuchs altogether, coupled with the persistent attempts of K`ang Hsi, and later of Ch`ien Lung, to lighten the burdens of revenue which weighed down the energies of all.  But towards the end of his reign Ch`ien Lung had become a very old man; and the gradual decay of his powers of personal supervision opened a way for the old abuses to creep in, bringing in their train the usual accompaniment of popular discontent.