a nation wise and strong by Acts of Parliament." And what poor,
self-deluded T'ang is saying and thinking in Canton is said and thought
daily by countless Ahmeds, Ibrahims, and Rizas in the bazaars of
Constantinople, Cairo, and Teheran.

What has Mr. Bland to tell us of all the welter of loan-mongering,
rococo constitution-tinkering, Confucianism, and genuine if at times
misdirected philanthropy, which is now seething in the Chinese
melting-pot?

In the first place, he has to say that the main obstacle to all real
progress in China is one that cannot be removed by any change in the
form of government, whether the ruling spirit be a full-fledged
Republican of the Sun Yat-Sen type, aided by a number of "imitation
foreigners," as they are termed by their countrymen, or a savage, albeit
statesmanlike "Old Buddha," who, at the close of a life stained by all
manner of blood-guiltiness, at last turned her weary face towards
Western reform as the only hope of saving her country and her dynasty.
The main disease is not political, and is incapable of being cured by
the most approved constitutional formulae. It is economic. Polygamy,
aided by excessive philo-progenitiveness, the result of
ancestor-worship, has produced a highly congested population. Vast
masses of people are living in normal times on the verge of starvation.
Hence come famines and savage revolts of the hungry. "Amidst all the
specifics of political leaders," Mr. Bland says, "there has been as yet
hardly a voice raised against marriages of minors or polygamy, and
reckless over-breeding, which are the basic causes of China's chronic
unrest."

The same difficulty, though perhaps in a less acute form, exists in