It is on this Constitution that Parliament has been at work ever
since it re-assembled in August, 1916, and which is now
practically completed. Sitting together three times a week as a
National Convention, the two Houses have subjected the Draft
Constitution (which was prepared by a Special Parliamentary
Drafting Committee) to a very exhaustive examination and
discussion. Many violent scenes have naturally marked the progress
of this important work, the two great parties, the Kuo Ming Tang
and the Chinputang, coming to loggerheads again and again. But in
the main the debates and the decisions arrived at have been
satisfactory and important, because they have tended to express in
a concrete and indisputable form the present state of the Chinese
mind and its immense underlying commonsense. Remarkable
discussions and fierce enmities, for instance, marked the final
decision not to make the Confucian cult the State Religion; but
there is not the slightest doubt that in formally registering this
veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political
thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear
for the development of individualism and personal responsibility
in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the
greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which
must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even
more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles
of decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing
for many months to agree on the so-called Provincial system, and
then fighting a battle A OUTRANCE on the question of whether this
body of law should form a chapter in the Constitution or be simply
an annexure to the main instrument.
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