seed, but this he was obliged to return to the state after the ingathering of the harvest.  The power of the overseer went farther; it was he who determined what crops the husbandman might sow and who fixed day by day the price of every salable commodity in the district.  As the state reserved to itself the right to buy all agricultural produce, it was bound in return to save up a part of the profits to be used for the benefit of the people in years of scarcity, and also at other times to be employed in works needed by the community.  Wang Ngan Shen also ordained that only the wealthy should pay taxes, the proceeds of which were to be employed in relieving the wants of the poor, the old, and the unemployed.  The theory was smooth and attractive.

For over thirty years those laws are said to have remained in force, at any rate on paper.  To what extent they were carried out is problematical.  Probably a beginning was actually made, for during Wang’s tenure of office confusion was worse confounded than before, and misery more intense and widespread.  The opposition to his regime increased, spread, and finally got the upper hand.  Wang Ngan Shen was banished, together with those of his partizans who refused to accept the return to the old system.  Such would appear to have been the first appearance of Bolshevism recorded in history.

Another less complete parallel, not to the Bolshevist theory, but to the plight of the country which it ruined, may be found in the Chinese rebellion organized in the year 1850 by a peasant[285] who, having become a Christian, fancied himself called by God to regenerate his people.  He accordingly got together a band of stout-hearted fellows whom he fanaticized, disciplined, and transformed into the nucleus of a strong army to which brigands, outlaws, and malcontents of every social layer afterward flocked.  They overran the Yangtse Valley, invaded twelve of the richest provinces, seized six hundred cities and towns, and put an end to twenty million people in the space of twelve years by fire, sword, and famine.[286] To this bloody expedition Hung Sew Tseuen, a master of modern euphemism, gave the name of Crusade of the Great Peace.  For twelve years this “Crusade” lasted, and it might have endured much longer had it not been for the help given by outsiders.  It was there that “Chinese” Gordon won his laurels and accomplished a beneficent work.

There were politicians at the Conference who argued that Russia, being in a position analogous to that of China in 1854, ought, like her, to be helped by the Great Powers.  It was, they held, quite as much in the interests of Europe as in hers.  But however forcible their arguments, they encountered an insurmountable obstacle in the fear entertained by the chiefs of the leading governments lest the extreme oppositional parties in their respective countries should make capital out of the move and turn them out of office.  They invoked the interests of the