Though the
increasingly large groups of foreigners, residing under their own
laws, and building up, under their own specially protected system
of international exchange, a new and imposing edifice, had made
the hovel-like nature of Chinese economics glaringly evident, the
mercantile classes of the New China, being always quick to avail
themselves of money-making devices, had not only taken shelter
under this new and imposing edifice, but were rapidly extending it
of their own accord. In brief, the trading Chinese were
identifying themselves and their major interests with the treaty-
ports; they were transferring thither their specie and their
credits; making huge investments in land and properties, under the
aegis of foreign flags in which they absolutely trusted. The
money-interests of the country knew instinctively that the native
system was doomed and that with this doom there would come many
changes; these interests, in the way common to money all the world
over, were insuring themselves against the inevitable.
The force of this--politically--became finally evident in 1911;
and what we have said in our opening sentences should now be
clear. The Chinese Revolution was an emotional rising against the
Peking System because it was a bad and inefficient and retrograde
system, just as much as against the Manchus, who after all had
adopted purely Chinese methods and who were no more foreigners
than Scotchmen or Irishmen are foreigners to-day in England.
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