the rule is lenient enough and conducted according to recognized forms, but when occasion arises the Government does not scruple to use its despotic power to the utmost. But although the constitution provides no checks on the arbitrary will of the Emperor, his power is circumscribed in practice by the necessity of finding capable and willing agents to carry out his decrees. The part that the Emperor personally plays in the matter depends on his character. A strong Emperor can be in fact as well as in theory absolutely despotic. A weak Emperor is simply a tool in the hands of those who are strong enough and united enough to seize his power and wield it. The power of the sword is, in either case the instrument by which decrees and orders are enforced, and the limitation of authority is the extent to which it may be used without provoking a successful rebellion.

After the Emperor himself the functions of government vest in the grand council of which we have already spoken. The number of this council is undetermined, but usually does not exceed five or six. They are nominated by the sovereign and can be changed at his pleasure or, if the Emperor is a nonentity, they nominate one another. The members are selected from the highest officers of State and include both Manchus and Chinese. In recent years one or more of the princes of the blood have always been included, who are, at the same time, commanders-in-chief of some of the Banner forces. It is this small group which wields the real authority of government. All business is transacted in secret and in ordinary circumstances in the presence of the sovereign. Decrees and orders are issued in his name and directed either to the executive boards in Peking or direct to the provincial authorities. The Emperor is not constitutionally bound to consult his council, but in practice

he cannot dispense with their assistance or act in contravention to their wishes. As an instance of what would happen in the latter event we may refer to the coup d'état of 1898. The Emperor, as he was entitled to do, called into his counsel others than the members of his advisory board, notably the reformer Kang Yu Wei and Chang Yin Hwan, then a member of the Tsung-liYamen. On their advice he began to issue a series of reform decrees, which were not approved of by the grand council and probably had never been submitted to them. Constitutionally, the decrees were valid and became law and there was no way of stopping them except by physical force. Had the Empress Dowager not been there, assassination would probably have been the only remedy, but her presence enabled a middle course to be steered, and the Emperor was required to invite her to assist in carrying on the Government. As the council had 50,000 troops on whom they could rely while the Emperor had none, discussion was not possible. By a fiction he continued to govern, but the despotic power of the Crown passed into the hands of the Empress Dowager and her clique.

Next to the grand council the department with which we are most concerned is the Tsung-li-Yamen, which many people take to be synonymous with the Chinese Government. It is, however, a body of quite recent creation. Prior to the war of 1860 there. was no foreign department at Peking. Foreign affairs were transacted by the Viceroy of Canton and only reached Peking as filtered through his despatches. After the war and the establishment of the Foreign Legations something more was needed and a board was then created to deal with foreign questions. At first the men appointed to it were of no great standing except Prince Kung, who ably pre

sided over it for many years. It was regarded as, and was probably intended to be, a sort of buffer between the foreign ministers and the real Government, a body to receive the hard knocks and transmit them in a modified form to those who held the power. Its function never was to facilitate business, but only to stave off importunate demands as long as possible, and when things became too importunate to yield the minimum that would keep the peace. Latterly it has included among its members officials who also belonged to the grand council, and to that extent its authority has been strengthened, but even so, it has no independent power, everything it may agree to being subject to the approval of the Emperor and grand council. The other departments of the central government, comprising six principal boards and several ministries of State, fulfil a two-fold office of tendering advice to the sovereign and carrying on the administrative work of the country. It will be noticed that nowhere is there anything in the nature of popular representation. The constitution, however, endeavors provide a sort of substitute in the Censorate, which deserves a word or two. The censors are a paid body of public servants whose duty it is to keep the Emperor informed of anything that may be transpiring in any part of his dominions, and in particular to keep an eye on malfeasance or oppression on The Saturday Review.

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the part of his officers. spects they may be compared to tribunes of the people who are expected to stand up for the popular cause against the officials. But however excellent the theory may have been, in practice the Censorate has become simply a huge blackmailing office. Its function being to denounce officials, if any one wants to ruin another he has only to trump up a story, bribe a censor and the thing is done. Or, as villainy is usually double-dyed, private notice will be given to the accused that the blow may be averted by a bigger bribe on his side. There is no court to which a man thus wronged can appeal for justice and, however clean-handed he may be, it is usually wisdom for him to submit and pay the squeeze demanded.

No provision is made for fresh legislation as such. The penal code which is the only body of statutory law in existence is supposed to contain enactments to meet every possible case, but if by chance some difficulty occurs for which there is no precedent it is referred to the Board concerned, which, in turn, reports to the Throne. A decree or rescript is thereupon issued which settles the case. Periodically the code is revised, and these various decrees are consolidated or incorporated and become part of the statute law.

It is a strange psychological fact in world-politics that when, after a spell of peace, war breaks out somewhere, it is soon followed by a series of other wars in rather unexpected quarters. Japan and China; the United States of America and Spain, with the still lasting Philippine conflict; England and the South African Republics, are some recent instances. Not to mention the extraordinary number of previous wars which followed each other with great rapidity, during about half a century, between the Russia of Nicholas I and the Allied Powers; France and Austria; Italian Democracy and the Kingdom of Naples; the United States and the Slaveholders' League; France and the Mexican Republic; Germany and Denmark; insurgent Poland and Russia; Prussia and the German Confederation; France and Germany; Servia and Turkey; Russia and Turkey; Bulgaria and Servia; Russia and the Khanates of Central Asia; the Transvaal and England; England and the Egypt of Arabi Pasha, with the later struggles in the Sudan; France and Madagascar; Greece and Turkey. Add to this the wars fought by this country in Afghanistan, beyond the eastern and northwestern frontiers of India, and in the Sudan; and by France in Africa and Southern Asia. The whole forms a

pretty array of butchers' bills in human flesh.

I do not say this as one who holds all war to be wrong. Far from it. When a nation has to defend its independence against foreign aggression; when freemen rise with arms in hand for the overthrow of tyranny, the sword has its full justification. Arbitration "from case to case," on matters which two countries can reasonably agree upon to submit to an umpire, is certainly to be recommended most strongly by all men in whom there is a spark of human feeling. But when Napoleon III, who had murdered two Republics, tried to do the same for the Mexican Republic, and, being foiled there, sought an escape from difficulties growing upon him by a war against Germany, no sensible person could say that in those cases there was anything to arbitrate upon. Murdered Republics, fortunately, have sometimes their resurrection. Though the Roman Commonwealth of 1849 did not rise again, its heroic defender, Garibaldi, the associate of Mazzini, became the founder in 1860 of Italian unity. The French Republic revived in 1870, after the fall of the Man of December.

The fact of so many wars following upon each other, as soon as the spell of peace is broken, remains a noteworthy

and disquieting phenomenon. It is as if the minds of men came under the influence of a quickly-spreading contagion of forcible action, whether for good or for evil purposes. In criminal science and statistics this rule is wellknown. Evidently it holds good also on political ground. At this very moment when the deplorable war in South Africa is not yet ended-and whilst we are told that "no shred of independent government" is to be left to two Republics which had both, until quite recently, been acknowledged by England as "foreign States" and "foreign Powers"-a lurid danger of new war appears already in the Far East.1 comes from that vast Chinese Empire, upon which the rulers of various nations have fixed their eager eyes and their strong hands.

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The outlook is a serious one. It is all the more serious for England, because her nearest neighbor on the other side of the Channel is known to be filled with sentiments of extreme bitterness about Egypt and Fashoda, whilst her distant rival and at heart enemy, Imperial Russia, not only harbors masterful designs against China, but also has crept up with military force to the very edge of the Afghan bulwark of India-much to the repeatedly expressed alarm of the Ameer Abdur Rahman.

Without indulging in a senseless cabalistic Abracadabra of political astrology, I am convinced that, out of the present sad war in South Africa, more wars will be evolved, for more than one reason. The Dutch population of the two Republics, from whom in the name of freedom their freedom and independence is to be taken, will in future form a fretting sore on what is proudly called "the Empire" by men whose ideal seems to be more the Rome of old in its de

1 This was written before the recent warlike events.

cay than the traditions of an English Commonwealth or of a "glorious Revolution." At the Cape the indignant Dutch kinsmen of those Republics-which are to be made into Crown Colonies under military dictatorshipwill, in coming years, add to a danger that must necessitate the maintenance in South Africa of an army out of all proportion to the weaponed strength this country seems ready to bear or to buy.

But that is not all. The present struggle may be "muddled through." Yet a country which holds the fifth part of the inhabitable globe cannot go on forever on the system of muddle, if the Irishism of the juxtaposition of these two words is allowable. fact is, in the absence of all system we cannot well speak of a system.

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Here I come to a point on which an unpleasant duty has to be fulfilled, but a duty, nevertheless, for who, whilst strongly disagreeing from a war policy once scathingly denounced by the author of the war himself, may truly say that he has the welfare of this country at heart.

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It is no use blinking facts. This South African struggle has laid bare dangerous rifts and flaws in England's armor. During a war against a population not more numerous than that of a secondthird-rate English town-a which has lasted now for nearly nine months-military observers abroad, hostile or friendly, have noted many significant points. They have seen that nearly the whole of the available, and comparatively very small, forces of England had to be employed in South Africa. They have wondered that even the little European army in India (orthan 74,000 men, dinarily not more many of whom are in hospital, in a dominion containing nearly 300,000,000 inhabitants) had to be drafted upon. They have remarked that, but for the help of the smart Irregular Volunteers

from the Colonies, the result of various engagements might have turned out somewhat different.

With the readiness never lacking in truly brave men, foreign soldier critics have meted out full praise to the valor repeatedly shown by English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, Australian and Canadian troops. At the same time they have pointed out that, in several most important cases, it is scarcely possible to say, as has been done, that "the men fought splendidly," when the real fact was that they had been led into a trap by inefficient officers, and were mown down by hundreds in little more than a minute, before they had the slightest idea where they were.

Again, those foreign observers, whose business it is, even from the more abstract and theoretical point of view of military science, to study these things, have noted that nearly half a year passed ere such incapable leadership, shown by general after general, was at last superseded by one man of greater foresight and daring energy. They were astonished, however, that with such a spectacle before the world's eyes, many of those discredited officers, in whom the troops could scarcely have any further confidence, were yet left in their risky positions. This to other countries almost inconceivable procedure was attributed partly to the lack of better material in officers, partly to the aristocratic or plutocratic social influences in the army management.

Considering the fact that the United Kingdom was nearly bared of really serviceable troops, and that both the Militia and the Volunteers were undermanned, foreign observers were much astonished that Government not only did not dare to propose the introduction of an easy Militia system such as free Switzerland has, but that it had not even the courage to make the existing law of conscription operative in regard to the Militia, although that

The question is then asked abroad: How would England fare in a war in which she had to struggle against a strong military and naval Power, or a combination of two such Powerssay, Russia and France? Historically speaking, how would it have gone with her at Waterloo or in the Crimea, had she not had what she cannot get nownamely, foreign allies, with a vast preponderance of troops of theirs over her own?

When storm-clouds are gathering on the horizon, the eye naturally looks first towards a near country, whose people, in a famous phrase, must be "taught manners." The political situation there merits special study under present circumstances. A recent stay at Paris, where we met old friends and new acquaintances-among them, prominent politicians in and out of Parliament, editors, public writers, political economists, distinguished scholars, scientists and leaders of various social movements, belonging to different party-shades-afforded good opportunities for inquiring into the state of affairs.

London is the centre of an Empire stretching over the five parts of the world. Yet Paris, superficially at any rate, gives one the impression of a