Page:My life in China and America.djvu/282

266 Chinese statesman; and Ting Yi Tcheang, then Governor of the Province of Kiang Su. Yet these men, convinced as they were by Wing's reasons and avowedly favorable to his project, with all their eminence of position and their influence, were not ready to venture the attempt to carry it through with the Imperial Government. All the forces of conservatism would be opposed to it; the time for it had not come.

In 1867, however, the Governor Ting, who was the most willing of the three, had made representations to an Imperial Minister named Wan Cheang, on the strength of which he was adased to address a memorial on the subject to the Imperial Council at Peking, Van Cheang undertaking to commend it to the attention of the Council. The situation was at this juncture moderately hopeful, but before the memorial reached the Council, the mother of Wan Cheang died, by which event he was, under the law of Chinese high official etiquette, retired from public life three entire years, and the whole business was set back to where it had been. These were years of great trial to Yung Wing. He was prospering, indeed, in one point of view, but the hope to which he was devoted was so long deferred that his heart was often sick. Understand