The Tsung-li Yamên is a small body of Councillors who form a species of Cabinet, with a special obligation to advise the Emperor on foreign affairs. "They have no constitutional position whatever, they have no powers except those derived from the Emperor, and they are very much afraid for themselves. He may by mere fiat deprive them of their rank, which is high; he may 'squeeze' them of their wealth, which is often great; he may banish them from the delights of Pekin to very unpleasant places; or he may order them to be quietly decapitated or cut slowly into little pieces. At such times their preoccupation is neither their country nor their immediate business, nor even their own advancement, but to avoid offending the irritable earthly deity who holds their lives and fortunes in his hands. Such a time it is just now. The Empress-Dowager is Emperor in all but name, she has ideas and a will, and she is suspicious to the last degree. There is no possibility of opposing her, for she has drawn together eighty thousand troops round Pekin, who while she pays their Generals will execute anybody she pleases; there is no possibility of appeal from her, for she represents a theocracy; and there is no possibility of overpowering her mind, for she is that dreadful phenomenon four or five times revealed in history, an Asiatic woman possessed of absolute power, and determined to sweep away all who oppose, or whom she suspects of opposition, from her path. Under her regime the members of the Tsung-li Yamên are powerless nonentities, trembling with fear lest, if they make a blunder, they may awaken the anger of their all-powerful and implacable Sovereign, whose motives they themselves often fail to fathom." _The Spectator (London), March 18, 1899._ CHINA: A. D. 1899 (March-April). Agreement between England and Russia concerning their railway interests in China. On the 28th of April, 1899, the governments of Great Britain and Russia exchanged notes, embodying an agreement (practically arrived at in the previous month) concerning their respective railway interests in China, in the following terms: "Russia and Great Britain, animated by the sincere desire to avoid in China all cause of conflict on questions where their interests meet, and taking into consideration the economic and geographical gravitation of certain parts of that Empire, have agreed as follows: 1. Russia engages not to seek for her own account, or on behalf of Russian subjects or of others, any railway concessions in the basin of the Yang-tsze, and not to obstruct, directly or indirectly, applications for railway concessions in that region supported by the British Government.