changes in the normal Asiatic practice which Japan has done with such complete thoroughness and beneficial result. If in the first place Li Hung Chang can arouse his countrymen to a correct sense of their deficiencies and to the resolution to shake off their selfconceit and adapt themselves to facts like other nations, he will have laid a sound basis for reform and future progress, and accomplished a far more practical and useful work than by drawing upon paper model systems for a fresh constitution. Recent events have not given outsiders a very high opinion of the patriotism of the Chinese. but their pride is undoubted, and if it can be turned into the proper direction it may yet supply the lever which will enable a Chinese statesman to regenerate his country. If commercial and political rivalry with the Japanese, a race always regarded as very inferior to themselves, does not supply the Chinese with an adequate stimulant to excel, it is hard to imagine what will suffice, and the regeneration of China by her own effort will be handed down to the Greek Kalends. every suggestion of practical reform? I ask the question because, while the measure is radical and drastic, it is well within the compass of imperial authority, and would not entail that serious interference with the elaborate Civil Service system of China that must follow any sweeping attempt to provide her with a new form of administration. Yet it is absolutely necessary for the success of any remedial measures in China that, on the threshold of their being undertaken, a strong and, if possible, a fatal blow should be dealt that literary class which has been supreme in China, and which has used its influence and position to prevent progress and to exclude all useful knowledge. It can only be reached in the first place through the Board of Censors, and no reforms will have any chance of success, nor can we feel any faith in the good intentions of the Chinese government itself, as long as that conclave of unpractical and bigoted pedants is able to obstruct every act of the administration, and to pervert when it does not prevent every beneficial measure. The fate of the censors will provide a sure test of the sincerity of the intentions of those who take up a policy of reform in China. With regard to Li Hung Chang's feelings in the matter, there is no doubt that he regards them with unequivocal dislike and hostility. They have always been his bitter foes, and if they had had their way he would long ago have been shorter by a head. But we do not know whether he attaches that importance to their sum The systems of administration in vogue in Europe and America will teach Li Hung Chang nothing, for as a system the administration of China is a very good one, and suits the country as well as any other that could be devised. What is wrong and rotten in the state of China is the manner in which that system is worked; and it is here that sweeping changes are required, which will tax the strength and the courage of even such a powerful minister as Limary effacement which to the Western Hung Chang. In the first place, no real progress can take place in China so long as the censors retain the power to judge every proceeding of the government by the light of Confucian ethics and to veto every reform because it is opposed to the apothegms of classical writers of the fossil age of China's existence. Will Li Hung Chang or his imperial master have the daring to abolish by a decree of the Vermilion Pencil the Board of Censors and put an end forever to their absurdly antiquated but none the less fatal strictures on mind seems the kernel of the whole but now China can only count on a very brief period to set her whole house in order. it has been made clear that she has both the capacity and the resolution to withhold from Russia those large concessions which, when the day of settlement comes, that power will demand. Still, railways must affect more largely than any other single circumstance the future position of the Pekin government, and to influence more than to anything else might we look for that awakening of the Chinese people which is absolutely necessary if the efforts of reformers like Li Hung Chang are to be crowned with success. Yet it would be folly to ignore the fact that popular feeling and prejudice will be strongly against their introduction, and if the censors are left in their present omnipotent position to express the lowest and most ignorant views of the people, there is little doubt that they can retard the commencement of railway construction until the real control has passed out of the hands of any Chinese government. We must recollect that China has become, from its antiquity and dense population, a vast burial ground, and that religion, as well as superstition, forbids the least attempt being made to disturb the spirits of the ancestors who haunt these scenes. There are ways of propitiating and disarming this popular feeling, but they will certainly not be given a fair trial as long as there are censors to give it pointed expression, and possessing the privilege of reading their anathemas to the emperor in person. The next measure in any project of reorganization should be the curtailment of the powers possessed by the viceroys; and it would be still better if that highest grade were altogether abolished, and each province assigned to a futai, or governor of the second grade. The former have always striven to make themselves more or less independent of the central authorities, and under the existing system the Pekin government, which bears all the responsibility, can only count on a very partial control of the resources of the provinces, and may find itself exhausted and beaten long before the various parts of the empire are able and willing to come to its assistance. By reducing the grade of these provincial rulers the Chinese executive may look for a prompter obedience to its orders, and a more cordial co-operation in the task of combining all the resources of the State for purposes of defence than would be rendered by the great satraps of the existing system, who think mostly of their own interest and personal position. Neither implicit obedience nor the efficient utilization of China's immense latent strength will be attained until the means of internal communication have been improved, and the outlying provinces, like Szechuen, and the densely peopled centre of China have been brought into railway communication with the capital and the centre of government. But that railway development will have to be preceded by an administrative reorganiza-point of the site of the Chinese capital. tion. Several railway projects have already been put forward in a more or less tentative manner, and one of them, that from Pekin to Hankow, the important city on the Yangtsekiang, which is the true heart of China, would unquestionably strengthen the position of the imperial government, and might prove self-supporting. But it must be hoped that no English capitalists will provide China with the means of building any railways north of the Great River until As intimately connected with the railway question as the censors' privileges and popular prejudices is the practical Pekin was chosen as the seat of government because the existing dynasty is of northern race, and its founders wished not merely to dwell in a congenial climate, but also to be as near as possible to the base of their military power in Manchuria. The same reason had influenced the Mongols and before them the Tartars in fixing their capitals somewhere near the present Chinese metropolis. But events have deprived this view of its original force, even from a dynastic standpoint. The Manchu dynasty as a separate institution from the Chinese Empire has no chance of preserving its existence, and the late war demonstrated beyond dispute that its Tartar forces were, if anything, less efficient and courageous than the native Chinese. The causes that made Pekin the capital have therefore no longer any force, while the change in the position has made it especially dangerous that the capital should lie at the mercy of an enterprising and expeditious adversary. That it does occupy such an exposed position cannot be disputed. The small Anglo-French expedition, with none of those improved weapons which have made modern armies so formidable, had no difficulty in advancing upon and practically seizing Pekin in 1860, and there can be no doubt that the Japanese last year would have been equally successful if the war had continued. But the danger from the seacoast will be far less than that presented when Russia has a railway to Vladivostock, and can at any moment march an army through Manchuria. The fragment of a will left the existing Chinese administration by Count Cassini's astute diplomacy, and the vigorous support of his government will depart when to threatening despatches on the table of the Tsungli Yamen can be added the menace of an army crossing the Usuri by the highroad to Moukden and Pekin. If the sting has to be taken from that threat the capital must be moved from Pekin, and that with all possible despatch. General Gordon, when summoned to China in 1880 to advise its government in reference to the crisis with Russia, most strongly urged this point on the attention of Li Hung Chang, and recommended the immediate transfer of the capital to Nankin. But Nankin itself is not in a sufficiently secure position, and the site of China's capital should be at a greater distance from the sea. If Hankow were selected there would be all the advantages of remoteness from the nearest points of any hostile power, at the same time that the existence of a water-way from the sea to its very gates would leave the administration open to those external influences to which China has hitherto been SO opposed. At the same time, a railway across the great provinces of Hupeh and Hunan from Hankow to Canton would open up an unknown but thickly peopled and highly productive region, and add immensely to the security and well-being of the government. By these three practical measures the abolition of the censors, the reduction of the viceroys or the concentration of power in the hands of the central government, and the transfer of the capital to the interior-an immense stride towards the true regeneration of China would be effected. I have reason to think that one and all of these schemes have been passed in review by Li Hung Chang, but whether he feels either able or willing to carry them out must be left to time to show. It may be confidently said that without some of them no measure of reform will be successful or will endure. There are other matters which the enlightened statesman, whose name is almost a convertible term for that of China, will consider in the interests of his country. They may perhaps form a larger part of his programme than even the study of political systems that are altogether unsuited to China and her people. His country is now stricken down under the shadow of great naval and military disasters. The fleet which certainly cost China a great deal of money, and on paper made a very fair show, is either at the bottom of the sea or in Japanese harbors. Of the two principal naval stations, one has been dismantled and the other remains a hostage in the hands of Japan for a period of years. Yet China has not given up her dream of maritime power. She has bought one or two fresh ironclads since the war, and is expected to give large orders in English and German shipyards. It may seem presumptuous, but the advice is certainly based on good feeling and close study of her position, to urge her to do nothing of the kind. She is only wasting her resources and providing spoil for her enemies, as no fleet that she can create within the next | protecting arm, so is it the bounden ten years, the extreme limit within which it will be possible to maintain peace in the Far East, would have any chance of success against even the weakest of her possible opponents. Moreover, the dangers she has to cope with are on land, and not at sea. Expenditure on torpedoes and other means of coast defence is both prudent and necessary, but to spend millions on battleships and cruisers is only to invite a repetition of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei. The more strongly this conviction is held the more incumbent does it become for those who are responsible for the security of China to make a strenuous and sustained effort to give that country an army and a military organization sufficient to enable it to maintain its rights against all aggressors. So clearheaded a man as Li Hung Chang must see that if his country was able to make but a poor defence against Japan it would have no chance at all in a contest under existing conditions with either Russia or England. To put the matter brutally but unmistakably, China is helpless, and so long as she remains so will have to submit to any indignity that may be offered her. She can, of course, procure the protection of Russia, followed for a time by the other members of that strange Slav-TeutonGallic Triple Alliance, but while the efficacy of that protection might in certain eventualities prove doubtful, there can be no question as to its cost. The Russian ruler would always find the policy congenial which assigned the position of a dependant to the occupant of the Dragon Throne, but it would be an undeserved reflection on Li Hung Chang's astuteness to suggest that he does not see that the protection of Russia is as humiliating and far more perilous for his country than the loss of a campaign with an undisguised antagonist like Japan. Just as the policy of Russia is to keep China in leading strings, to destroy her nerve and self-reliance, and to make her think that she is safe because the great White Czar extends over her his duty of any Chinese statesman desirous of maintaining his country's liberty and the majesty of his emperor to struggle against and combat that influence, and to resist the insidious counsels by which it would be extended. China has nothing to fear in the way of unprovoked aggression from England, the only power whose hostility would justify her in accepting the support of Russia at all cost, nor is there any likelihood of Japan resorting to any fresh measures until she has made sure of the future instalments of the war indemnity, and that will not be under five years. Even when Japan decides to move again it will more probably be in the direction of Corea-the derelict vessel of Asian politics-where her plans are suspended not abandoned, than against China herself. These considerations ought to show a Chinese statesman that there is no desperate need to rely exclusively on Russia's protection, or to follow blindly her advice, while the safer and more dignified course is obviously to reform the military organization of his country and to show the world that her great resources in men and money can be employed for the purposes of adequate national defence. The administrative reforms of which China stands in need might have been discovered and enforced without Li Hung Chang leaving his own country; but his European experiences cannot fail to impress on him the fact that if China is to hold her own she must do as other nations, and maintain a large and well-equipped army. The advice given by General Gordon in 1880, that China was not to think of a regular army but to wage all her wars in an irregular fashion, good as it was at the time, is now obsolete. If China is to exist as an independent empire, she must have a large and a well-trained army, and she must give up her antiquated notion that war can be conducted by ignorant generals and untrained officers. Her last attempt to reconcile the exploded theories of a very primitive age with the hard and uncompromising facts of modern warfare cost her dear; any at tempt to repeat the experiment would be nothing short of fatal to the Chinese Empire. Li Hung Chang will have been afforded every opportunity of seeing the immense armies maintained by the most peaceful of peoples, and the magnitude of Russia's forces will not impress him more than the readiness of the English army to proceed anywhere, whether it be to carry out an expedition to the Equator or the interior of China itself. China does not want parliaments, but she does want an army. If this want is essential for any real progress in other directions, it is also clear that China will never succeed in supplying it on her own initiation. She has not the experience nor the right man. Throughout her existence she has slighted the military profession, and pronounced it derogatory to be a soldier, with the result that when a great national peril presented itself she did not possess efficient and trustworthy defenders. China has the raw material for an army in excellent quality and unlimited quantity, but she does not possess the officers and leaders who are essential for the conversion of that raw material into a formidable army. If she attempts to carry out her own reorganization, centuries must elapse before any real progress could be made, and long before that day arrived her fate would have been sealed by those whose designs on China are part of the inevitable progress of mankind. We must hope that in this matter Li Hung Chang has fully taken to heart the lesson supplied by the removal of Captain Lang from the command of the Chinese fleet, and the putting of a Chinese officer in his place shortly before the outbreak of the Japanese war. I am quite aware that General Gordon, in his memorandum of July, 1880, advised the Chinese not to employ Europeans, and to do everything for themselves, but at that moment it not only looked as if China would not suffer from being slow and sure in her movements, but the uppermost thought in Gordon's mind was not so much to provide China with an efficient army, as to avert a change in her government. Moreover, as Li Hung Chang will remember, Gordon's Ever Victorious Army of Chinese was led into action by a strong cadre of European officers. Everything that has happened since has increased the necessity for placing Chinese troops under foreign tutelage for several generations. War has been made more scientific and dangerous, with the result that the consequences of defeat for the unprepared and unqualified have been rendered more serious and costly. If another argument were needed to convince the Chinese of these facts it might be found in the representation that the enemies against whom they will have to hold their own will be far more formidable than the Taepings, or even than the Japanese. While it is comparatively easy to decide what China should do in the direction of military reorganization, it is not so obvious what the best working plan for her would be. Up to the present time there has been no definite plan. The viceroys at Canton and Nankiu have employed officers, chiefly Germans, in drilling some troops, but their treatment has been capricious, and the gain to China has been nil. If any good is to result, the control of all arrangements with foreign officers must be withdrawn from the provincial authorities and retained exclusively in the hands of the central government. This arrangement would still leave it necessary for the executive to form a definite plan of action, to which they would consistently adhere, and by which the Europeans they employed should be guided. Without entering into details, it might be said that the main idea would be the formation of several corps, specially trained and officered, with permanent camps at Pekin, Tientsin, Shanghai, Nankin, and Canton. Five corps of twenty-five thousand men each would suffice as a commencement, and would provide China with the nucleus of an army. Up to the present absolutely nothing has been done in this direction. The breach with the German officers at Nankin and the summary conclusion of |