plainly a two-edged weapon, the first edge to cut was the Imperial
edge; that is largely why for several decades after the Taipings
China was relatively quiet.

Time was also giving birth to another important development--
important in the sense that it was to prove finally decisive. It
would have been impossible for Peking, unless men of outstanding
genius had been living, to have foreseen that not only had the
real bases of government now become entirely economic control, but
that the very moment that control faltered the central government
of China would openly and absolutely cease to be any government at
all. Modern commercialism, already invading China at many points
through the medium of the treaty-ports, was a force which in the
long run could not be denied. Every year that passed tended to
emphasize the fact that modern conditions were cutting Peking more
and more adrift from the real centres of power--the economic
centres which, with the single exception of Tientsin, lie from 800
to 1,500 miles away. It was these centres that were developing
revolutionary ideas--i. e., ideas at variance with the Socio-
economic principles on which the old Chinese commonwealth had been
slowly built up, and which foreign dynasties such as the Mongol
and the Manchu had never touched. The Government of the post-
Taiping period still imagined that by making their hands lie more
heavily than ever on the people and by tightening the taxation
control--not by true creative work--they could rehabilitate
themselves.

It would take too long, and would weary the indulgence of the
reader to establish in a conclusive manner this thesis which had
long been a subject of inquiry on the part of political students.