"To prosperity," says the adage, "must succeed decay,"-- a favourite theme around which the novelist delights to weave his romance.

This may perhaps account for the tame resistance of the Manchus to what they recognized as inevitable.

They had enjoyed a good span of power, quite as lengthy as that of any dynasty of modern times, and now they felt that their hour had struck.

To borrow another phrase, "they had come in with the roar of a tiger, to disappear like the tail of a snake." On November 3, certain regulations were issued by the National Assembly as the necessary basis upon which a constitution could be raised.

The absolute veto of the Emperor was now withdrawn, and it was expressly stated that Imperial decrees were not to over-ride the law, though even here we find the addition of "except in the event of immediate necessity." The first clause of this document was confined to the following prophetic statement: "The Ta Ch`ing dynasty shall reign for ever." On November 8, Yuean Shih-k`ai was appointed Prime Minister, and on December 3, the new Empress Dowager issued an edict, in which she said: "The Regent has verbally memorialized the Empress Dowager, saying that he has held the Regency for three years, and his administration has been unpopular, and that constitutional government has not been consummated.
Thus complications arose, and people's hearts were broken, and the country thrown into a state of turmoil.