Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/106

a foreign office—Tsungli Yamên, or general managing bureau—was organised specially for that purpose; organised in such a manner as to be capable of offering a maximum of obstruction to the progress of business when occasion suggested delay. For its members elaborated an adroit system of service routine such that whenever the demands of a Foreign Representative began to be inconveniently urgent, he found himself confronted by a new Minister of the Tsungli Yamên with whom the whole question had to be discussed de novo. Before such a round of repetition the most zealous diplomacy ultimately grew exhausted and the Tsungli Yamên obtained a high reputation for the art of inaction. Therefore, when the capture of Peking in 1900 by an allied force of all the treaty Powers and the consequent flight of the Court to the ancient capital of Hsiang in Shensi, created an opportunity for wresting reforms from China at the mouth of the cannon, one of the demands made and acceded to was that the Tsungli Yamên should be replaced by a foreign office of Occidental type, presided over by a minister who would not be unable to elude his responsibilities by a perpetual process of substitution.

In addition to the Six Boards and other bodies enumerated above, the governmental machinery in Peking includes also a Sacrificial Court for directing religious observances, an Imperial Steed Court, a Banqueting Court, and a Ceremonial