"By the command of the army administration, I desire you the people of my country to know that wherever our patriotic troops come you need have no occasion for the least suspicion or anxiety. I come to save you and with no idea of acquiring merit or personal profit, but to pull you out of fire and water, and to cure you of your cankering maladies. Hitherto you have been bitterly oppressed and drowned in a sea of misery through being under the government of an alien race who treat you as bastards and not as children. You must know that the present day Manchu slaves do not belong to the family of Han, and we, being animated by heaven-high patriotism, will not spare them their well-deserved retribution. On this account I could not but raise our patriotic flag in order to give you deliverance by causing all the people to unite their strength and drive them out, together with the traitorous Chinese robbers whom I will not permit to continue long. These robbers have hitherto eaten our flesh and now we will sleep in their skins. Whoever is animated by patriotic sentiments let him quickly come and join our ranks, and together gain the glory of delivering the country. The day of the revival of the Han people is arrived with the establishment of the Chinese republic with which you my brethren will have no cause to be ashamed. Scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants, let all unite their efforts with ours to drive out the Manchu barbarians. Wherever our army goes it will be under perfect control and troops and people will be treated alike without the least partiality to either. I desire you my beloved uterine brothers every one to respectfully listen to my exhortation. "Dated the 18th day of the first year of Hwang Ti, being the 4609th year of China." The other side of the question was eloquently put {90} in an Imperial edict, published about the same time, and which reads:--