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. Similar photographs had been sent to all the ministers
and rulers represented at Peking, and I said to myself: "The
Empress Dowager is shrewd. She knows that false pictures of her
have gone forth. She knows that the painted portrait is not a
good likeness, and so she proposes to have genuine pictures in
the possession of all civilized governments." This shrewdness was
not necessarily native on her part, but was engendered by the
arguments that had been used by those who induced her to be the
first Chinese monarch to have her portrait painted by a foreign
artist.
A few years ago the Empress Dowager had a dream, which, like
every act of hers, was greater than any of those of her brilliant
nephew. This dream was to give a constitution to China. Of
course, if this were done it would have to be by the Manchus, as
the government was theirs, and any radical changes that were made
would have to be made by the people in power. The Empress
Dowager, however, wanted the honour of this move to reflect upon
herself, and hoped to be able to bring it to a successful issue
during her lifetime.
There was strenuous opposition, and this most vigorous in the
party in which she had placed herself when she dethroned Kuang
Hsu. The conservatives regarded this as the wildest venture that
had yet been made, and were ready to use all their influence to
prevent it; nevertheless the Empress Dowager called to her aid
the greatest and most progressive of the Manchus, the Viceroy
Tuan Fang, and appointed him head of a commission which she
proposed to send on a tour of the world to examine carefully the
various forms of government, with the purpose of advising her, on
their return, as to the possibility of giving a constitution to
China
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