Representative government of a kind started in 1909 with the establishment of provincial assemblies; elections were held, and assemblies met in most of the provinces. In the following year a senate or imperial assembly was decreed by an imperial edict; its first session was held in Peking in October of that year, and was opened by the Regent; one of the first things the assembly did was to memorialize the Throne for the rapid hastening on of reforms, and in response an edict was issued announcing the formation of a national parliament, consisting of an Upper and a Lower House, within three years. Under further pressure the Throne in May of 1911 abolished the Grand Council and the Grand Secretariat, and created a Cabinet of Ministers, after the Western model. But the agitation continued and went on growing in intensity; still it sought nothing apparently but a development of the constitution, and at least on the surface was neither anti-dynastic nor republican. An anti-dynastic outburst at Changsha, Hunan, in 1910, was easily suppressed, and certainly gave no indication of what was so soon to take place. So late as September of 1911 a rising on a considerable scale in the province of Szechuan was not antidynastic, but was declared by the rebels themselves to be directed against the railway policy of the Government. The best hope for China lies in a wide building of railways; the Chinese do not object to them, but, on the contrary, make use of them to the fullest extent where they are in existence; they do not wish, however, the lines to be constructed with foreign money, holding that such investments of capital from without might be regarded as setting up liens on their lands in favor of outside Powers--how far they can do without outside capital is another matter. Then the whole question of railway-building involved the old quarrel between the provinces and the central government--which is another way of saying that the provinces did not see why all the spoils should go to Peking.