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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools,
involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms
themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.
A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited
by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic,
an institution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.
It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has given
birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction. The
word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his European
education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of the yoke of
laws, rules, and long-established restraints. Cutting off his
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