Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 568, February, 1863

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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. DLXVIII.      FEBRUARY 1863.      Vol. XCIII.
It would have required many cycles of Cathay to bring to the councils of the Court of Pekin the enlightenment we have alluded to in our last Number, if the populations over which it ruled had not threatened to outstrip the Government in the adoption of European ideas. Petty sedition, which had always been acknowledged in China as the expression of the will of the people, suddenly assumed an alarming form, and threatened to subvert not only the present dynasty, but, what was of far greater importance, a much venerated constitution, the result of the collective wisdom and experience of twenty-five centuries.