{106}
HOW CHINA IS DEALING WITH OPIUM-INTEMPERANCE.
Burning a pile of pipes of reformed smokers at Hankow. The amazing success of China's crusade to free her people from the opium curse may be justly reckoned one of the greatest moral achievements in history--a challenge to our Western world.
{107 continued}
At this period of our drama there came upon the stage a new actor, at first little heeded, but quickly becoming the dominating figure--the Tzucheng Yuan, or National Assembly. This body, consisting of 100 nobles and men of wealth or scholarship appointed by the Throne, and 100 selected members of Provincial Assemblies approved by the viceroys, was expected to prove a mere echo of the royal wishes. "It is evident that the government is to have a docile and submissive assembly. Mediocrity is the chief characteristic of the members chosen." So wrote one of the best informed Americans in China, some weeks before it assembled, October 3. Reuter's press agent in Peking predicted through his papers that a few pious resolutions would represent the sum total of the Assembly's labors.
And yet the first day that these two gentlemen went with me to look in on the Assembly we found it coolly demanding that the Grand Council, or imperial cabinet, be summoned before it to explain an alleged breach of the rights of Provincial Assemblies!
From the very beginning the course of this National Assembly in steadily gathering unexpected power to itself has reminded me of the old States-General in France in the days just before the Revolution, and I could not help looking for Danton and Robespierre among the fiery orators in gown and queue on this occasion. Significantly, too, I now hear on the authority of an eminent scholar that Carlyle's great masterpiece is the most popular work of historical literature ever translated into Chinese. May it teach them some lessons of restraint as well as of aggressiveness!
Be that as it may, the Assembly has proved untamable in its demands for an early parliament, not even the hundred government members standing up against the imperious pressure of public opinion. In late October the Assembly {108} unanimously petitioned the Throne to hasten the programme of constitutional government. The day this petition was presented it was currently rumored in Peking that unless the Prince Regent should yield the people would refuse to pay taxes. But he yielded. The trouble now is that he did not yield enough to satisfy the public, and there is every indication that he will have to yield again, in spite of the alleged unalterableness of the present plan, which allows a parliament in 1913 instead of in 1916, as originally promised. A parliament within eighteen months seems a safe prediction as I write this.