suppressed; from which statement it is easy to gather that under whatever form the White Lily Society may have been originally initiated, its activities were now of a much more serious character, and were, in fact, plainly directed against the power and authority of the Manchus.
Almost from this very date may be said to have begun that turn of the tide which was to reach its flood a hundred years afterwards. The Manchus came into power, as conquerors by force of arms, at a time when the mandate of the previous dynasty had been frittered away in corruption and misrule; and although to the Chinese eye they were nothing more than "stinking Tartars," there were not wanting many glad enough to see a change of rule at any price. Under the first Emperor, Shun Chih, there was barely time to find out what the new dynasty was going to do; then came the long and glorious reign of Kʽang Hsi, followed, after the thirteen harmless years of Yung Chêng, by the equally long and equally glorious reign of Chʽien Lung. The Chinese people, who, strictly speaking, govern themselves in the most democratic of all republics, have not the slightest objection to the Imperial tradition, which has indeed been their continuous heritage from remotest antiquity, provided that public liberties are duly safeguarded, chiefly in the sense that there shall always be equal
