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. While Kuang Hsu may have been reconciled to
the performance of these duties at eighteen, they became irksome
at twenty-seven and he demanded and received full liberty in the
affairs of state.
We have seen how he used his liberty,--not wisely, perhaps, as a
reformer, and yet the reformation of China can never be written
without giving the credit of its inception to Kuang Hsu. He was
very different from Hsien Feng, the husband of the Empress
Dowager, before whose death we are told "the whole administrative
power was vested in the hands of a council of eight, whilst he
himself spent his time in ways that were by no means consistent
with those that ought to have characterized the ruler of a great
and powerful nation." Whatever else may be said of Kuang Hsu, he
cannot be accused of indolence, extravagance, or indifference to
the welfare of his country or his people.
Appreciating the difficulty of securing an expression of opinion
from those opposed to his views, and thus getting both sides of
the question, in his fourth edict he requested the conservatives
to send in their objections to his schemes for progress and
reform, and then as if to get the broadest possible expression of
opinion he adopted a Shanghai journal called Chinese Progress as
the official organ of the government. But lest this be
insufficient, in his twenty-second edict he gave the right to all
officials to address the throne in sealed memorials
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