THE ABDICATION EDICT
HANKOW, HUPEH, CHINA, February 13, 1912.
Half an hour ago I was handed a facsimile of the greatest Edict that
has ever been issued in the Chinese Empire. It will become known as
the Abdication Edict.
The following is a full text of the Edict which has become known
as the Abdication Edict. As intimated in recent dispatches
concerning the terms agreed upon, it became apparent that there
was to be no complete abdication. The Emperor was simply to
relinquish all political power, a new provisional Government was
to take charge, which in turn was to be succeeded by a regular
Government to be named by a National Convention. The Edict
reads:--
"Since the uprising in Wuchang the Throne has complied with the
people's request and promulgated nineteen articles of
constitution, vesting in the Ministers of State all
administrative powers in which the subjects may take part, and
that members of the Imperial family should not interfere in
political affairs. Subsequently an edict was issued calling a
national convention to decide publicly on the government system,
thus to show Our intention not to regard the Throne in a selfish
spirit. The gentry and the people in the different provinces,
however, opine that the situation is pressing, and that if the
holding of a national convention is delayed, it is feared that
disasters of war may be prolonged and the situation will not be
saved. In addition, foreign troubles are threatening and new
dangers appear daily, and in the present circumstances the
nineteen articles of constitution are not entirely suited to
conditions.
"The authority of the Premier especially is insufficient to rule
the whole country from within, or to superintend foreign
relations from without, and in order to adapt the government to
exigencies, in which it is necessary to expect slight changes,
the name of Premier {279} is hereby abrogated, and a President is
created. All political power shall be vested in control of the
President, who is to be elected by the people. But with the
exception of resignation of all political powers, the majesty of
the Emperor shall not be much different from what is set forth in
the nineteen articles formerly adopted. We have enquired this
course of the Princes, nobles, officials and gentry in the
provinces who are agreed in their views. And it is becoming to
comply with their request and let it be carried out according.
"But rumours are widespread, and during our resignation from the
political government, unless a united organ exists to control
affairs it is feared that good order may not be maintained. We
hereby specially command Yuan Shih K'ai to act in conjunction
with the officials and gentry of the north and the south and
temporarily to form a provisional and united government to
destroy the seeds of trouble. Once the national convention has
met and formally elected the President, the provisional
government will be dissolved, so as to comply with public opinion
and display full justice. All our soldiers and people should
know that in taking this step Our object is solely for the
benefit of the State, the blessing of the people and to restore
good order. All affairs will remain as of old, and they should
not listen to rumours and create confusion and disturbances. It
will thus be fortunate for the country as well as the general
position."
Having agreed to abdication in favour of a Republic, the
Empress-Dowager issued a secret edict commanding Yuan Shih K'ai
to prepare for the formation of a provisional Government and the
drawing up of a preliminary scheme to carry it into effect.
During January Yuan Shih K'ai had several conferences, with the
result that the following scheme was organized:--
ARTICLE 1 deals with the necessity of a provisional and united
government after the Emperor's resignation from government to
assume all powers in preserving the status quo and to control
foreign affairs, and it will be dissolved after the national
convention has elected a President.
2. After resignation from power the Emperor shall remain in the
Palace so as to preserve peace in the north.
3. The President's residence shall be built in Peking, or the
newly completed Regent's Palace may be converted into a
presidential house.
4. Owing to the depletion of the treasuries of the present and
also the Nanking government since the revolution, while means
should be devised for the southern provinces, provisions shall be
made towards meeting administrative expenses in the northern
provinces after the provisional government has been formed.
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5. The northern and southern provinces should remove prejudices
and assist the central united government and remit reasonable
amounts of money to it to uphold the situation. Contributions
from provinces which have suffered greatly may be deferred.
6. All official administrative officers in Peking shall remain in
office, but owing to need of funds for the provisional government
all salaries will be suspended for six months.
7. During a few months the pay of the northern and southern
troops will be provided and the officers will remain in office.
8. When the provisional united government shall have been
recognised by the foreign Powers, foreign relations shall be
directly in charge of that government.
9. When the government system has been determined all foreign
loans and indemnities shall be paid when due and the provinces
should continue to send their usual contributions.
10. The Edict by which the Emperor surrenders the government
shall be printed and copies promulgated throughout the country.
An Edict will also be issued to the soldiery so as to acquaint
them and prevent mutiny.
And before I commence this concluding chapter, there will be need to
explain that the date of writing is placed at its head because of the
rapidity with which changes are coming to the land and the people.
In a footnote will be seen the Edict referred to. It stands alone
among all edicts that have ever been issued in China. Of all
political documents this may be taken as that which will shake the
very centre of the world if it is carried into practical effect. So
important is it that it were futile for one placed as the author is
in the centre of this Empire to endeavour to analyse just what it may
mean. What this Imperial Republic of China--for this is what now has
come--will develop into only the future can show. Not within the
power of any living man is it possible to-day to foretell. As one
writes his pen tremulously travels lest telling what appears to-day
as unshakable fact will even before this volume is published turn
out, in this land of political elasticity, to be nothing but
absurdity. But discarding altogether the cloak of the prophet, and
drawing his everyday deductions from everyday experience throughout
{281} out China's Revolution, one may now with confidence declare
unhesitatingly that this country will make international headway as
never before.
The Republic of China is now among the Powers of the world.
The Republicans of China, new-born into a life full of highest
promise to mankind, now have free way. In them, if they are wise and
good, as wise and good as we believe them anxious to be, we shall
soon see on the horizon of the East a nation whose power will be
ultimately predominant on the earth, upon whose integrity will
undeniably depend the peace of the world. And whilst, if the
Republicans rise to the best within them, if they are given foreign
support such as their unparalleled political conduct deserves, if
they are successful in keeping from their own ranks a dangerous
spirit of office-seeking and petty jealousy--in short, if they reach
to the zenith of the power that is expected of them by the West, they
will make their country, huge as it is, in perhaps less time than the
changing era took in Japan, the greatest Empire in the Far East. As
I write the Powers, lynx-eyed as ever, are observing China. During
the last four months China has been watched as no other nation was
ever watched, and she has rushed through her great national drama
with appalling speed. She is breathless. Nervously, with a
wonderful confidence coming from her newly won emancipation, China is
looking questioningly to the West. She knows that all the Powers are
closely scrutinising her every movement through political eyeglasses.
Having taken the plunge, she knows that they all expect her to break
finally from the furrows of the ages--she is almost out of her
national depths, and looks half-trustingly only to the Powers, lest
she should get out of her depths. She knows that although not all
show to her an unmingled friendly attitude--for some would prey upon
her speedily, if left alone--it is her duty to herself to watch her
political horizon far away. {282} The protest by the Chinese over
the Dynasty that has ruled over them for two and a half centuries has
been made in every part of China. It is not confined to one or more
populous cities or provinces as at first was thought it would be, but
this protest against Manchu ascendancy has received approval wherever
the Chinese reside. Never in the history of any revolution have the
people been more united in sentiment, or has established authority
more quickly admitted the justice of that sentiment than the one
which has now convulsed China from centre to circumference. Charles
I. defended his crown on the battlefield, and yielded only to the
genius of Cromwell. Louis XVI. thought to conciliate his political
foes by concessions of so humiliating a nature as to forfeit national
respect. Both of these kings lost their heads on a scaffold, the one
by his hypocrisy, the other by his weakness. Thus far the
Revolutionists throughout the country have manifested no barbaric
desire for blood. There have been some disgusting acts of brutality
in connection with the execution of their enemies. Often have they
cut out the hearts and livers of their enemy and, devouring these
human organs, and often drinking the human blood, have thought they
have added to their bravery. But this sort of thing has been only on
a very comparatively small scale. Generally speaking, their
behaviour has been good. In the highest degree were they to be
commended for their respect for personal safety and property, and the
proclamations of their leaders--General Li, Wu Ting Fang, Sun
Yat-sen, and others like-minded--had been worthy of the great end
they professed to have in view. The United States declared war
against Spain because of cruelties to the inhabitants of Cuba, but
the burning of Hankow and reported butcheries at Nanking and other
places belittle in their inhuman crimes any practised by Spanish
soldiers on Cubans. But these things were the forerunners of the
Republic {283} of China, and now that Republic has been won. The
leaders are now more confident than ever of the good days coming.
Lest one should be led to condemn the confidence shown by her leaders
and the makers of the Republic, however, we must remember that into
the most populous nation of the world reform had come in four months
which came to other countries who fought for their liberty only after
years of fearful war. We are inclined, perhaps, we who expect more
from the Chinese than perhaps we ourselves are capable of, to
ridicule the efforts of this Republican Party, and to believe that
all going on around us is a mere political make-believe. We are
inclined, perhaps, almost totally to discount the ability of the
members of the Republican party, men who, for the most part, have
risen from the mediocrity of the nation. And I confess myself to
have been during these months of active war among the number who
pessimistically looked out upon a changing China. But, now that the
critical days of the Revolution are passed, even the most cautious
European in China--I mean cautious in regard to snatching at
political straws which float down the stream of Chinese national
life--even he must, if he be unbiased, acknowledge that history can
show us no parallel to what is daily going on around us.
I am perfectly aware that many of the ambitions of the Republican
party as it now is are at present unrealisable. I know that many of
the old-time practices and corruptions against which their leaders so
vehemently proclaimed will in the very nature of things be found
necessary to continue. I cannot, however, discount the extreme
sincerity of the main leaders, men who with no other motive than that
of benefiting their fellow-nationals, are prepared to work hard and
unostentatiously for the permanent good of their country. These are
the real reformers. Many of them for years have been China's real
reformers, but their {284} light has been under the national bushel.
About them little has been known, and as often as not they have been
despised as a dangerous faction in the country. In the press they
have been cried down. The Manchu Government have been hunting them
to do them to death--the leaders, at all events. There have been
thousands of smaller men, however, sent abroad to light the fuse; but
all of them have had their lights under the national bushel. It has
come, in the main, in the march of education, and this morning,
looking back over the years, it is a wonderful thing to be able to
have in this document the product of the toiling of years of China's
enlightened educated sons.
Since the Reform Edict of 1898 more articles have appeared in both
the English and Chinese Press in China upon the subject of education
than upon any other. To laud and to praise education has been the
fashion--innumerable sticks of incense have been lit and set up to
education in China. Education, however, was the means of winning the
Revolution, and now the educated men are to have full sway. To them,
as never before, the country is looking for right guidance: China has
always looked to her scholars for guidance, but this is a new kind of
scholar, with a new kind of learning.
And education, as has been pointed out by a writer on Chinese
affairs, is a kind of tree which bears two manners of fruit--good and
evil. It is a kind of petrol which may drive the individual or the
State at a spanking pace along the path of progress, or it may
explode with disastrous results to the car and all on board. The
general discontent which prevails in so many of the leading nations
may be traced directly to the wider spread of education. The
industrial classes in the present day are better paid, better fed,
better clad, better housed, and work shorter hours than ever before,
but through education their aspirations for still more favourable
conditions have been tenfold increased, and {285} their efforts to
obtain them are becoming always more and more determined.
"We asked a leading Revolutionist the other day," said the writer
quoted, "where the new men who are being sent to all the inland
cities as magistrates came from. We supposed they were mostly men of
the old magistrate class who were being reappointed, but he said
'no.' The bulk of them were young men who had received a modern
education and who on examination proved themselves most fit. But for
them, he said, there would have been no Revolution. Some had been
educated at the expense of the Central Government, some by the
provinces, and many at their own expense, but all with a view to
obtaining official employment afterwards. This they failed to get,
as the offices were only open to those who could afford to purchase
them, so they determined to take them, and they have done it. It was
not that they desired the spoils of office, but, like Napoleon, they
felt that the tools should go to the workmen, and that they could
serve their country better than the Manchus and Money Bags whom they
wished to supersede."
Education has thus proved in China to be another name for revolution,
and revolution means reform. The chance of the reformers has now
come: we must wait for their reforms. Now is not the time to tell
each other whether we shall see all that we may expect to see--that
time will come in due course. But we know that whilst they have had
their lights under this national bushel, the real reformers have
succeeded in bringing the word "reform" to every one's lips in China.
The assertion is made in a broad sense. During the past decade and a
half every one has been adjuring some one else to reform, and each
seemed to be pointing out the true way. This was the result of the
working of the reformers, who were there toiling away under greatest
odds and at some risk to their own lives, but who now have full power
in the land. But {286} what is the genius of any reform, and what
are the elements which ensure its success? The celebrated German
philosopher, winner of the Nobel prize, Professor Eucken, writes:
"The kernel of reform usually consists in the establishment of an
essential, original and natural foundation, entailing the elimination
of a network of artificialities, superfluities, and complications."
This is true when we glance at the reformers of olden times who in
turn harked back to a simpler state when elemental principles stood
out more distinctly. Confucius and Mencius, as all Chinese students
are aware, referred constantly to the three great kings when the
rulers desired only the good of the people. The American people,
when rebelling against the oppression of Great Britain, sought to
restore the status of citizenship as it was supposed to be in the
Mother Country. They fought for old-time Saxon freedom. Then came
their reforms.
And so with the Chinese now. First, they must get the essential,
original, and natural foundations--of liberty and justice. To plant
in China ideas and manners and customs and things, however, which for
centuries have held good in the West will not make in China for the
best the people are capable of. They will be alien. To give to the
Chinese an education only along lines laid down in the West as the
best for men in the West would not guarantee the best being drawn out
of the Chinese. There must be a commingling of the best the West has
to offer with that which has been proved best for China unquestioned
through the centuries of her wonderful history. It may or may not be
a mistake of modern educationists to pound away only with Western
subjects in educating the Chinese, not only not giving any heed to
the preservation of the good in Chinese education, but openly
dissuading its continuance. This I consider to be one of the weak
points in the Republican propaganda--the excessive out-reaching for
Western education at the {287} expense of all that really matters in
the Chinese national life. The Republican outlook is everywhere
filled with all things foreign. Every Revolutionist had shown that
he must have a foreign outlook--and that, perhaps, in time to come
may develop to be an outlook totally unsuited to China's teeming
millions.
So far as the leaders have gone, however, they have made no great
mistakes. The reformers, at all events, are now given the chance to
show what they can do. If they are earnest in the declaration in
favour of a Republic, the United States would seem the proper model,
_mutatis mutandis_, to be copied. As the Emperor has been proved
powerless to hold in subjection the provinces of the Empire, there is
a similarity between them and the American colonies when the latter
separated from the British Government to establish one of their own.
But whatever their pattern, it will be no easy matter practically to
work out immediate reforms in this country--that they will be able to
keep to any one plan, however, seems hardly possible.
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