The agreement which was
finally arrived at--to make it part and parcel of the
Constitution--was masterly in that it has secured that the
sovereignty of the people will not tend to be expressed in the
provincial dietines which have now been re-erected (after having
been summarily destroyed by Yuan Shih-kai) the Central Parliament
being left the absolute master. This for a number of years will no
doubt be more of a theory than a practice; but there is every
indication that parliamentary government will within a limited
period be more successful in China than in some European
countries; and that the Chinese with their love of well-
established procedure and cautious action, will select open debate
as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and
deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority.
Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than
justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch
Committee. Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been
constant and frequent; fierce verbal assaults are delivered on
Cabinet Ministers; and slowly but inexorably a real sense of
Ministerial responsibility is being created, the fear of having to
run the gauntlet of Parliament abating, if it has not yet entirely
destroyed, many malpractices. In the opinion of the writer in less
than ten years Parliament will have succeeded in coalescing the
country into an organic whole, and will have placed the Cabinet in
such close daily relations with it that something very similar to
the Anglo-Saxon theory of government will be impregnably
entrenched in Peking.
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