The Peking government was technically based on the Provisional Constitution of 1912. At the earliest period of the restored Republic (1917) it fell into the hands of the Anfu clique, which administered to China a dose of Reconstruction on the American model. The treasury was literally looted, and the politicos who attached themselves to the government and to the military dominating it fell over each other in their haste to sell the nation out to Japan. A peace conference with the representatives of the South met in 1919 but accomplished nothing. A new parliament was chosen from the areas claimed by Peking; when this passed out of existence another parliament stemming from the National Assembly dissolved by Yüan in 1913 assembled in 1922--a rare modern instance of a legislative body succeeding its successors. This so-called Old Parliament returned to the task which had been interrupted ten years before and in 1923 gave birth to a constitution. The 1923 constitution--China's third Republican constitution, after the Provisional Constitution of 1912 and the Constitutional Compact of 1914--was adopted by a body revoltingly corrupt. The constitution itself was the work of political scientists; it was as admirable a document as John Locke's constitution for the colony of Carolina, although the parliament elected Ts'ao Kun president under conditions which set a record for indefensible practices. The constitution itself was federalist, but with many adaptations of French institutions in so far as the central government was concerned. As a theoretical device for government, it would stand high among the constitutions of the world, but if not stillborn it was never brought to life. Within a year it was set aside, and another provisional system of government was established. A committee was set to work on a fourth constitution more strongly federal.[9] The provisional government lasted from 1924 to 1926. In 1926 Chang Tso-lin, the _tuchün_ of Manchuria, took over the city of Peking and the government. In doing so he did not bother to appoint a constitutional committee or to bribe a parliament. He appointed himself dictator (_ta yüan shuai_) and let the legalistic logicians construe it as they might. On June 5, 1928, Sun Yat-sen's armies from the South occupied Peking, and the Peking Republic was at an end. A ghost of a ghost, it was to reappear as a Japanese device in 1937, at a time when constitutional debate was at a minimum.