But his chief aim in life soon became a political one, and he determined to get rid of the Manchus.

He organized a Young China party in Canton, and in 1895 made an attempt to seize the city.

The plot failed, and fifteen out of the sixteen conspirators were arrested and executed; Sun Yat-sen alone escaped.

A year later, he was in London, preparing himself for further efforts by the study of Western forms of government, a very large reward being offered by the Chinese Government for his body, dead or alive.
During his stay there he was decoyed into the Chinese Legation, and imprisoned in an upper room, from which he would have been hurried away to China, probably as a lunatic, to share the fate of his fifteen fellow-conspirators, but for the assistance of a woman who had been told off to wait upon him.

To her he confided a note addressed to Dr Cantlie, a personal friend of long standing, under whom he had studied medicine in Hongkong; and she handed this to her husband, employed as waiter in the Legation, by whom it was safely delivered.