To Probe Into The State Council For Political Consultation

The State Council for Political Consultation was the main point of late Qing's constitutionalism and the special alliance between the feudal ruling class and the bourgeois constitutionalists on perparatory constitutionalism, and it was a method that bourgeois democracy and legality was used in China. The author tries to analyze the State Council and hopes to do some good for further research to this topic. This paper contains three parts.Part one: The building of the State Council. It was the class and thought basis of building the State Council that bourgeois force was growing steadily and bourgeoisie propagandized civil rights; Qing's ruling crisis was the social basis of building it. Qing Government's design to the State Council reflected that the State Council was just a discussing office of central authority.Part two: The author has analyzed its constitution director-general, asseblyman and proposal, and also explained the complicated relations among them. Qing Government, depended on its political authority, made the State Council just be a advisory body by means of revising the constitution constantly, replacing director-general frequently, making the assemblymen made by imperior order get majority, rejecting or granting its proposal, etc. Qing Government tried to win the people's confidence in order to mitigate its ruling crisis by complete constitutional figure. On the other hand, the assemblymen elected by the people, represented the bourgeois constitutionalists, were engaged in proposing drafts taking a vote, presenting a petition and lodging a protest in the light of the State Council, the basis of parliament. Both of them, on the common prerequisite of perparatory constitutionalism, preventing revolution, put the perparatory constitutionalism forward with each taking what one needs and overt contention and covert struggle.Part three: Juding the State Council. On the legal system history, the State Council never emerged in China; on the legal principle, the statecouncil was just an embryonic form of parliament and the law gained supreme power. But the result was that most proposals obtained no effect. The reason was that the models between Qing Government and constitutionalists were different; the former imitated Japanese monarchy but had held back a lot, and the later yearned for the constitutional monarchy in Britain. With revolutionary situation developing and national crisis being more serious, the constitutionalism in late Qing failed because of losing class foundation. Then the State Council stepped down from the stage of history in China.