With the closing of a debate there is the vote.  An electric bell rings again, and with a rough hand the House police close all the exits.  The clerks come down into the aisles.  They seem to move listlessly and indifferently; yet very quickly they have checked the membership to insure that the excessively large quorum requisite is present.  Now the Speaker calls for the vote.  Massively and stiffly, as at a word of command the “ayes” rise in their seats.  There is a round of applause; the bill has been carried almost unanimously.  That, however, is not always so.  When there is an obstreperous mood abroad, the House will decline to proceed with the agenda, and a dozen men will rise at a time and speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down.  The Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure—­ and often failing since practice is still in process of being formed.  Years must elapse before absolutely hard-and-fast rules are established.  Still the progress already made since August, 1916, is remarkable, and something is being learned every day.  The business of a Parliament is after all to debate—­to give voice to the uppermost thoughts in the nation’s mind; and how those thoughts are expressed is a continual exposition of the real state of the nation’s political beliefs.  Parliament is—­or should be—­a microcosm of the race; parliament is never any better or any worse than the mass of the people.  The rule of the majority as expressed in the voting of the National Assembly must be taken as a fundamental thing; China is no exception to the rule—­the rule of the majority must be decisive.

But here another complexity of the new Chinese political life enters into the problem.  The existence of a responsible Cabinet, which is not yet linked to the Legislative body in any well-understood way, and which furthermore has frequently acted in opposition to the President’s office, makes for a daily struggle in the administration of the country which is strongly to be condemned and which has already led to some ugly clashes.  But nevertheless there are increasing indications that parliamentary government is making steady headway and that when both the Permanent Constitution and the Local Government system have been enforced, a new note will be struck.  No doubt it will need a younger generation in office to secure a complete abandonment of all the old ways, but the writer has noted with astonishment during the past twelve-month how eager even viceroys belonging to the old Manchu regime have become to fall in with the new order and to lend their help, a sharp competition to obtain ministerial posts being evident in spite of the fact that the gauntlet of Parliament has to be run and a majority vote recorded before any appointment is valid.