Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/61

 the rules which formerly received Imperial sanction, merchants who come for the purchase of local produce can only be allowed, whether coming or going, to pass through the sidegates of the Fenghuang palisade passage; travellers who have been turned back from the tribute-road must not choose roads according to their fancy."

How redolent of the seventeenth century! For "His Majesty's Second Capital" is Moukden—the original chief city of the little Manchu principality which after fifty years of struggle had captured Peking. And just as miniatures or skeletons of the great Boards of State are maintained even to this day in Hsianfu, which ceased to be the national capital thirteen centuries ago, so was Moukden still spoken of as "the second capital". And the palisade which appears so casually—forty miles from the Yalu River—is the old Chinese boundary palisade built by the Ming dynasty in the fifteenth century to protect Chinese settlers from Manchu raids—where guards were still maintained in ignorance of the old purpose.

By these marks we see something of tragedy which Westernism, sweeping in by the sea, spelt for an old-world empire.

Meanwhile in the capital of Korea this up-