to succeed, even partially, in such a task. More often than not
the reformer finds that the whole people rises up against him.
Then, to the contrary of what befalls in an ordinary revolution,
the autocrat is revolutionary and the people is conservative.
But an attentive study will soon show you that the peoples are
always extremely conservative.

Failure is the rule with these attempts. Whether effected by the
upper classes or the lower, revolutions do not change the souls
of peoples that have been a long time established. They only
change those things that are worn by time and ready to fall.

China is at the present time making a very interesting but
impossible experiment, in seeking, by means of the government,
suddenly to renew the institutions of the country. The
revolution which overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns
was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by
reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to
ameliorating the condition of China. The suppression of opium
and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools,
involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms
themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.

A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited
by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic,
an institution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.

It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has given
birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction. The
word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his European