THE  GOVERNMENT  55
central  administration,  both  Presidents  of  Boards,  and  one
of  them  a  Grand  Secretary  of  State.
The  hammering  of  twenty  years  had  welded  the  Empire
together,  and  the  Imperial  Government  was  compelled,  in
its  foreign  relations,  to  act  as  ruler  and  not  as  mere
supervisor,  and  to  adopt  a  more  centralised  policy.  This
policy  was  made  the  more  necessary  from  the  disorganisation ­
  into  which  the  provincial  administration  was  thrown
by  the  Taiping  rebellion  ;  and  the  tendency  was  increased
by  the  practice  of  the  foreign  envoys  in  demanding  that
all  important  questions,  in  the  settlement  of  which  by  the
Consuls  and  the  local  authorities  any  difficulty  presented
itself,  should  be  referred  to  the  capital,  and  there  settled
between  themselves  and  the  Imperial  Ministers  ;  and  the
decisions  based  on  such  settlements  went  down  to  the
provinces  as  orders  from  Peking.  By  degrees,  as  the
result  of  this  innovation,  the  Tsungli  Yâmen,  which  had
been  organised  in  1861  as  a  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs,
tended  more  and  more  to  become  a  body  of  Cabinet  Ministers
and  to  displace  the  Grand  Council.  The  first  members,  in
1861,  were  Prince  Rung,  uncle  of  the  Emperor  ;  Kwei
Liang,  Grand  Secretary,  who  had  negotiated  the  treaties
of  1858  ;  and  Wen  Siang,  then  Vice-President  of  the
Board  of  War.  This  number  was  increased,  until,  in  1876,
there  were  eleven  members,  including  Prince  Rung,  as
President,  including  also  all  the  members  of  the  Grand
Council,  and  including  none  who  were  not  of  the  Grand
Council  or  were  not  President  or  Vice-President  of  a
Board.  Thus  was  developed  a  Cabinet,  in  the  sense  common ­
  to  the  British,  American,  and  French  systems  ;  and
the  compulsory  substitution,  in  1901,0t  a  Board  of  Foreign
Affairs  and  abolition  of  the  Tsungli  Yâmen,  leaving  the
government  without  a  corporate  head,  caused  the  resumption
by  the  Grand  Council  of  its  active  functions  as  the  deliberating ­
  and  deciding  Cabinet  of  the  Emperor,  and  the  executive
head  of  the  government.  The  Grand  Council,  however,
inherited  the  centralised  power  of  the  old  Tsungli  Yâmen,
and  the  orders  emanating  from  Peking  were  more  direct