The Senate
is elected by the Provincial Assemblies by direct ballot. In the
opinion of the writer, the Chinese Parliament in spite of obvious
shortcoming, is representative of the country in its present
transitional stage.] Hopes rose with mercurial rapidity as a
solution at last seemed in sight. But hardly had the first
formalities been completed and Speakers been elected to both
Houses, than by a single dramatic stroke Yuan Shih-kai reduced to
nought these labours by stabbing in the back the whole theory and
practice of popular government.
The method he employed was simplicity itself, and it is peculiarly
characteristic of the man that he should have been so bluntly
cynical. Though the Provisional Nanking Constitution, which was
the "law" of China so far as there was any law at all, had laid
down specifically in article XIX that all measures affecting the
National Treasury must receive the assent of Parliament, Yuan
Shih-kai, pretending that the small Advisory Council which had
assisted him during the previous year and which had only just been
dissolved, had sanctioned a foreign loan, peremptorily ordered the
signature of the great Reorganization Loan of 25,000,000 pounds
which had been secretly under negotiation all Winter with the
financial agents of six Powers, [Footnote: The American Group at
the last moment dropped out of the Sextuple combination (prior to
the signature of the contract) after President Wilson had made his
well-known pronouncement deprecating the association of Americans
in any financial undertakings which impinged upon the rights of
sovereignty of a friendly Power,--which was his considered view of
the manner in which foreign governments were assisting their
nationals to gain control of the Salt Administration.
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