national wish, but having brought to Peking the Delegates of the Nanking
Revolutionary Body he had received from them the formal offer of the
Presidency.

These arrangements had, of course, been secretly agreed to _en bloc_
before the fighting had been stopped and the abdication proclaimed, and
were part and parcel of the elaborate scenery which officialdom always
employs in Asia even when it is dealing with matters within the purview
of the masses. They had been made possible by the so-called "Article of
Favourable Treatment" drawn-up by Yuan Shih-kai himself, after
consultation with the rebellious South. In these Capitulations it had
been clearly stipulated that the Manchu Imperial Family should receive
in perpetuity a Civil List of $4,000,000 Mexican a year, retaining all
their titles as a return for the surrender of their political power, the
bitter pill being gilded in such fashion as to hide its real meaning,
which alone was a grave political error.

In spite of this agreement, however, great mutual suspicion existed
between North and South China. Yuan Shih-kai himself was unable to
forget that the bold attempt to assassinate him in the Peking streets on
the 17th January, when he was actually engaged in negotiating these very
terms of the Abdication, had been apparently inspired from Nanking;
whilst the Southern leaders were daily reminded by the vernacular press
that the man who held the balance of power had always played the part of
traitor in the past and would certainly do the same again in the near
future.

When the Delegates came to Peking in February, by far the most important
matter which was still in dispute was the question of the oath of office
which Yuan Shih-kai was called upon to take to insure that he would be