The climaxing decree was the one abolishing sinecures. For the Emperor’s unreconstructed entourage this last was too much. Foreign aggression had embittered to the point of unreason mandarin and coolie alike. The _coup d’état_ planned by the Dowager Empress, and executed by the reactionaries, virtually dethroned the Emperor, exiled his advisers, and ended the foreign-encouragement reform. Indeed it was not within human nature for it to endure. From the point of view of the party of the second part the aspect of the whole foreign relationship, even after the Hay Note, looked very ugly indeed. The fact of guaranteed integrity was obscured by the _laissez-faire_ of the already consummated grabs. The idea that gripped them was the humiliation of foreign occupation and foreign aggression. It was as if the Russians and the English had just seized rival reservations on Long Island and the Jersey coast, commanding New York City; as if the English had wrenched away Charleston; the Germans, Philadelphia; the French, New Orleans; and Cossacks were garrisoned in strategic points throughout New England. It was as if the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway were manned and guarded by Slavs, the New York Central by Belgians, the Pennsylvania by Prussians; as if the Pittsburgh mines were handed over _en bloc_ to an English corporation, and the Russians had exclusive mining rights to the gold of Alaska’s Yukon region. It was as if America’s protective-tariff and contract-labor laws were repealed at foreign dictation, and a flood of foreign machine-made goods and undesired immigrants were poured into the unwilling country. It was as if yellow-robed Buddhist lamas were everywhere haranguing the Yankee farmers, telling them of the fraudulent nature of the Christian creed, and urging upon them an approved canine method for disposing of deceased ancestors, to replace their superstitious funeral services. It was as if astrologers, calling themselves engineers, were to dig up New York cemeteries in order to erect prayer-wheels; as if the apostates whom these yellow priests had drawn into their joss-houses were enabled to dodge part of the taxes, which consequently fell with added oppression on the rest of the people; and as if, when they did something which others would in the normal course of events get punished for, a lama came before the magistrate and got them off. As if the President and the Senate were given a weekly wigging by the diplomatic corps, and were periodically forced to deed away sections of the forest reserve and tracts of particularly desirable territory. With such an aspect as this, which represents what in an undefined, bewildered way the Chinese saw and felt, it is no wonder that they considered the Confucian dictum obsolete: “Do not unto others, what you would not that they should do unto you”; and joined the patriotic harmonious Fists,--the Boxers.