THE PASSING OF CHINA'S ANCIENT SYSTEM 115 



establishment of provincial colleges and the organization of a common- 

 school system. Already these young men are returning, some of them 

 with honors from the best schools of the west; and one of them, who 

 also holds his Chinese second degree, wrote two years ago : 



Every Chinese man knows that the examination system is not good, and 

 so the government has resolved to establish schools, colleges and universities, 

 instead of all the kinds of examinations. For the examinations of the next 

 term, the number of Hsiu Ts'ai, Chii Jen and Chin Shih will be diminished and, 

 several years after, all the examinations will be dismissed. 



Thus the recent decree giving the last blow to the old system was 

 not entirely unforeseen, though it was scarcely expected so soon. 



H. E. Yuan Shih-kai, holder of the senior viceroyalty of the em- 

 pire, that of Chihli, the most powerful subject in China, and the very 

 man whose devotion to the empress dowager when the emperor called 

 for his assistance in 1898 made her coup d'etat possible, sent in a 

 memorial which was approved and made operative in an imperial de- 

 cree dated September 2, 1905, advocating the summary abolition of the 

 old style literary examinations, in order to allow the expansion of 

 modern modes of education throughout the empire. Associated with 

 him as memorialists were H. E. Chao Erh-sen, the Tartar general of 

 Mukden and viceroy of Fengtien province (Lower Manchuria), H. E. 

 Chang Shih-tung, viceroy of the Hukuang provinces, H. E. Chou Fu, 

 acting viceroy of the Liangkiang provinces, H. E. Tsen Ch'un-hsuen, 

 acting viceroy of the two Kuang provinces, and H. E. Tuan Fang, 

 governor of Hunan province. This is the strongest list available 

 throughout the whole empire, and it was but natural that the empress 

 dowager should have been so impressed that even if she were at heart 

 opposed to the epoch-making step, she could but tell the emperor to 

 sanction it, in spite of the opposition which Wang Wen-shao, Lu 

 Ch'uan-lin and others are reported to have made against the ' revolu- 

 tionary ' memorial. Though signed by this group of influential vice- 

 roys, the plea was really the work of H. E. Yuan Shih-kai, assisted by 

 H. E. Chang Chih-tung. With their unfailing astuteness, they point 

 out that what they propose is not after all a new scheme, but a return 

 to a former usage. The literary examinations may seem to us of vener- 

 able antiquity, but these viceroys point out that they are really modern 

 innovations on an older and much better system which they desire to 

 recall. Theirs is not the destructive hand of the reformer, but the 

 conservative hand of the restorer. The decree says : 



Before the era of the ' Three Dynasties,' men for office were selected from 

 the schools, and it must be confessed that the plan produced many talented 

 men. It was indeed a most successful plan for creating a nursery for the dis- 

 ciplining of talents and the molding of character for our Empire of China. In- 

 deed the examples before us of the wealth and power of Japan and the coun- 

 tries of the west have their foundation in no other than their own schools. 



