and which had been counted upon as a valuable weapon in cutting off the whole Yangtsze Valley, was at the last moment purchased to neutrality by a liberal use of money obtained from the foreign banks, under, it is said, the heading of administrative expenses!  The turbulent city of Canton, although it also rose against the authority of Peking, had been well provided for by Yuan Shih-kai.  A border General, named Lung Chi-kwang, with 20,000 semi-savage Kwangsi troops had been moved near the city and at once attacked and overawed the garrison.  Appointed Military Governor of the province in return for his services, this Lung Chi-kwang, who was an infamous brute, for three years ruled the South with heartless barbarity, until he was finally ejected by the great rising of 1916.  Thoroughly disappointed in this and many other directions the Southern Party was now emasculated; for the moneyed classes had withheld their support to the end, and without money nothing is possible in China.  The 1913 outbreak, after lasting a bare two months, ignominiously collapsed with the flight of every one of the leaders on whose heads prices were put.  The road was now left open for the last step Yuan Shih-kai had in mind, the coup against Parliament itself, which although unassociated in any direct way with the rising, had undoubtedly maintained secret relations with the rebellious generals in the field.

Parliament had further sinned by appointing a Special Constitutional Drafting Committee which had held its sittings behind closed doors at the Temple of Heaven.  During this drafting of the Permanent Constitution, admittance had been absolutely refused to Yuan Shih-kai’s delegates who had been sent to urge a modification of the decentralization which had been such a characteristic of the Nanking Instrument.  Such details as transpired showed that the principle of absolute money-control was not only to be the dominant note in the Permanent Constitution, but that a new and startling innovation was being included to secure that a de facto Dictatorship should be rendered impossible.  Briefly, it was proposed that when Parliament was not actually in session there should be left in Peking a special Parliamentary Committee, charged with supervising and controlling the Executive, and checking any usurpation of power.

This was enough for Yuan Shih-kai:  he felt that he was not only an object of general suspicion but that he was being treated with contempt.  He determined to finish with it all.  He was as yet, however, only provisional President and it was necessary to show cunning.  Once more he set to work in a characteristic way.  By a liberal use of money Parliament was induced to pass in advance of the main body of articles the Chapter of the Constitution dealing with the election and term of office of the President.  When that had been done the two Chambers sitting as an Electoral College, after the model of the French Parliament, being partly bribed and partly terrorised by a military display, were induced to elect him full President.