Safe in the knowledge that possession is nine points of the law,
Yuan Shih-kai now treated with derision the resolutions which
Parliament passed that the transaction was illegal and the loan
agreement null and void. Being openly backed by the agents of the
Foreign Powers, he immediately received large cash advances which
enabled him to extend his power in so many directions that further
argument with him seemed useless. It is necessary to record that
the Parliamentary leaders had almost gone down on their knees to
certain of the foreign Ministers in Peking in a vain attempt to
persuade them to delay--as they could very well have done--the
signature of this vital Agreement for forty-eight hours so that it
could be formally passed by the National Assembly, and thus save
the vital portion of the sovereignty of the country from passing
under the heel of one man. But Peking diplomacy is a perverse and
disagreeable thing; and the Foreign Ministers of those days,
although accredited to a government which while it had not then
been formally recognized as a Republic by any Power save the
United States, was bound to be so very shortly, were determined to
be reactionary and were at heart delighted to find things running
back normally to absolutism.
[Footnote: The United States accorded formal recognition to the
Republic on the election of the Speakers of the two Houses of
Parliament: the other Treaty Powers delayed recognition until Yuan
Shih-kai had been elected full President in October.
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