education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of the yoke of
laws, rules, and long-established restraints. Cutting off his
pigtail, covering his head with a cap, and calling himself a
Republican, the young Chinaman thinks to give the rein to all his
instincts. This is more or less the idea of a republic that a
large part of the French people entertained at the time of the
great Revolution.

China will soon discover the fate that awaits a society deprived
of the armour slowly wrought by the past. After a few years of
bloody anarchy it will be necessary to establish a power whose
tyranny will inevitably be far severer than that which was
overthrown. Science has not yet discovered the magic ring
capable of saving a society without discipline. There is no need
to impose discipline when it has become hereditary, but when the
primitive instincts have been allowed to destroy the barriers
painfully erected by slow ancestral labours, they cannot be
reconstituted save by an energetic tyranny.

As a proof of these assertions we may instance an experiment
analogous to that undertaken by China; that recently attempted by
Turkey. A few years ago young men instructed in European schools
and full of good intentions succeeded, with the aid of a
number of officers, in overthrowing a Sultan whose tyranny seemed
insupportable. Having acquired our robust Latin faith in the
magic power of formulae, they thought they could establish the
representative system in a country half-civilised, profoundly
divided by religious hatred, and peopled by divers races.

The attempt has not prospered hitherto. The authors of the