Before long, the tea-merchants discovered that some of their number had broken faith, and were doing a roaring business for their own account, on the terms originally insisted on by the tea-men.
There is no longer any doubt that China is now in the early stages of serious and important changes.

Her old systems of education and examination are to be greatly modified, if not entirely remodelled.
The distinctive Chinese dress is to be shorn of two of its most distinguishing features--the _queue_ of the man and the small feet of the woman.

The coinage is to be brought more into line with commercial requirements.

The administration of the law is to be so improved that an honest demand may be made--as Japan made it some years back--for the abolition of extra-territoriality, a treaty obligation under which China gives up all jurisdiction over resident foreigners, and agrees that they shall be subject, civilly and criminally alike, only to their own authorities.

The old patriarchal form of government, autocratic in name but democratic in reality, which has stood the Chinese people in such good stead for an unbroken period of nearly twenty-two centuries, is also to change with the changes of the hour, in the hope that a new era will be inaugurated, worthy to rank with the best days of a glorious past.
And here perhaps it may be convenient if a slight outline is given of the course marked out for the future.