Among the edicts put forth to check the modernisation of China after the coup d'état of September, 1898, was one decreeing the abolition of the native newspapers which had sprung into being in the chief Treaty ports of China. Its text may be given as illustrating the attitude of the Manchu Government toward what have come to be considered by us of the West as so many daily necessities, and their editors, well, as fairly respectable men according to our barbarian estimate of things. Let us, however, own our ignorance, and consent to be instructed by one who has ranked higher than any Son of Heaven which the Court of Cathay has produced for some decades. She says:—

“As newspapers only serve to excite the masses to subvert the present order of things and the editors thereof are composed of the dregs of the literary classes, no good can be served by the continuation of such dangerous instruments, and we hereby command the entire suppression of all newspapers published within the Empire, while the editors connected with them are to be arrested and punished with the utmost rigour of the law” (Imperial decree, October 8, 1898).

On this The North China Herald naturally remarked: “If we may liken the effect of the Japan-Chinese war to a severe electric shock administered to China, we may also speak of the native Press as a telegraphic system conveying an electric current of new ideas throughout the length and breadth of the land.