[56] Prince Chun was born in 1882. He was the first member of the imperial family to be sent on a foreign mission.
[57] Tung Fu-hsiang died in 1908. A sum of some £80,000 belonging to him, and left in the provincial treasury, was appropriated for works of public utility (see The Times, April 9th, 1910).
[58] Lord W. Cecil, op. cit. p. 9.
[59] This institution was nominally a private concern which financed the Manchurian railway, but it acted as part of the Russian government machinery. The existence of the contract of the 27th of August 1896 was frequently denied until expressly admitted by the Russo-Chinese agreement of the 8th of April 1902.
[60] On the 8th of October the Russian troops had been withdrawn from Mukden, but they reoccupied the town on the 28th of the same month, Admiral Alexeiev, the viceroy of the Far East, alleging that the inertia of the Chinese officials seriously hindered the work of extending civilization in Manchuria.
[61] The form of outrage, probably the first of its kind in China, was itself a symptom of the changed times. The bomb injured Prince Tsai Tse and another commissioner, and the departure of the commission was consequently delayed some months.
[62] In 1907 further commissions were appointed, on the initiative of Yuan Shih-kai, to study specifically the constitutions of Great Britain, Germany and Japan.
[63] This department was organized at Shanghai in 1854. The Taiping rebels being in possession of the native city, the collection of customs dues, especially on foreign ships, was placed in the hands of foreigners. This developed into a permanent institution, the European staff being mainly British.
[64] The British official view, as stated in parliament on the 27th of April 1910, was that the changes resulting from the creation of the Board of Control had, so far, been purely departmental changes of form, and that the position of the inspector-general remained unaltered.
[65] See The Times of the 21st of April and 11th of May 1910.