THE  GOVERNMENT  6i
No  Hupeh  man  may  hold  an  official  post  in  Hupeh,  nor
Kiangsu  man  in  Kiangsu.  When  Li  Hung-chang  left  the
Viceroyalty  at  Tientsin,  the  post  to  which  he  would  naturally
have  gone  was  the  other  great  Viceroyalty,  that  at  Nanking  ;
but  his  native  province,  Anhwei,  is  in  the  Nanking  Viceroyalty, ­
  and  he  went  to  Canton  instead.  Tsen  Chun-siian,
a  man  of  great  force  of  character,  native  of  Kwangsi,  made
a  name  as  provincial  Treasurer  of  Kwangtung,  and  was
promoted  to  be  acting  Viceroy  of  Szechwan  ;  in  1903  he
was  the  obviously  indicated  man  to  restore  order  in  the
Canton  Viceroyalty,  and  was  sent  back  there  ;  but  though,
as  a  Kwangsi  man,  he  could  rule  at  Canton  as  provincial
Treasurer  of  Kwangtung,  he  could  not  be  substantive
incumbent  at  Canton  of  the  Viceroyalty  of  which  Kwangsi
forms  part,  and  went  therefore  as  acting  Viceroy  ;  in  1906
he  was  appointed  substantive  Viceroy  to  Yunnan.
Another  practice  is  a  matter  of  policy  rather  than  of
rule,  and  is  only  possible  in  a  country  where  all  appointments
are  made  by  a  central  authority.  Parties  exist  in  China
as  in  other  countries,  and  as  in  other  countries  are  as  often
the  following  of  a  man  as  of  a  principle.  In  the  exercise  of
patronage  at  Peking  the  principle  of  divide  et  impera  in  the
provinces  is  followed  in  this  as  in  other  ways  The  principle
is  that  which  animated  Washington  in  the  selection  of  his
first  cabinet,  and  may  be  understood  if  we  suppose  that  in
the  United  States  the  federal  government  appointed  to  any
state  a  Republican  as  Governor,  a  Democrat  as  Lieutenant-Governor,
  a  Republican  as  State  Secretary,  a  Democrat  as
State  Treasurer,  and  so  on.  For  three  decades  from  i860
there  were  two  great  parties  in  China,  the  Hunan  men  and
their  adherents,  following  Tseng  Kwo-fan,  and  later  Tso
Tsung-tang,  and  the  Anhwei  men  and  their  adherents,  following ­
  Li  Hung-chang  and  Li  Han-chang  ;  the  former  were
generally  conservative,  and  the  latter  generally,  but  moder-&amp;tely,
  progressive,  and  the  men  of  other  provinces,  disregarding ­
  provincial  lines,  ranged  themselves  with  one  or
other  of  these  parties.  Latterly  the  Canton  party,  ultraprogressive, ­
  after  a  check  in  1898,  has  again  come  to  the