This article explores the understanding of constitutional government by officials advocating a constitution and offers a broad comparison of their ideas with Western theories of constitutional government and with those of the faction that advocated a democratic constitution during the late Qing. This essay points out that these officials advocated establishing a constitution to strengthen resistance to foreign invasion and to guarantee the extension of peaceful rule under the Qing court. The form of constitutional government that they supported not only differed from Western style constitutional government; it was also distinct from those Chinese factions who advocated a democratic constitution. These officials endorsed an imperially granted constitution, establishment of a parliament, an independent judiciary, and no day-to-day political duties for the monarch,(the prime ministers and high officials would assume the monarch’s duties however, the monarch’s constitutional authority was greater) and the implementation of the contemporary Japanese model of “three powers separation.”In practice this was a dual monarch rule political system.