in the House of Commons and a Conservative majority in the House of Lords. Japan, though governed by party men, is not blessed or cursed with party government. The Ministers in Japan, like the President's Cabinet in America, are the nominees and servants of the Emperor. They are not responsible to the Diet, and can remain in office as long as the Sovereign honours them with his confidence. But whereas in America a majority hostile to the Executive in both Houses is a phenomenon extremely rare in occurrence, and certain to be terminated in a short period of time, in Japan there is no a priori reason why such a situation should not exist in the first place, or be indefinitely prolonged. The theory of the Japanese Constitution, therefore, being the rule of a Government legislating through two Chambers, but not responsible to either, and treating their representations with comparative indifference, it may readily be understood that the popular Chamber at any rate, which rests solely upon election, though on a narrow franchise, becomes an almost automatic machine of opposition. There

is a more or less rough subdivision of parties, with supposed supporters or adversaries of the Government. But these do not in either or any case sit in groups; nor can their votes be relied upon with any certainty, the Below the gangway' attitude being as popular in Tokio as it is in Northampton. The largest combination in the House of 1892 only numbered 96 out of a total of 300; and the two main sections of the Radical party are irreconcilably opposed. So far the Japanese House of Representatives has rendered itself as disagreeable to successive Governments as it could, obstructing their measures, defeating their budgets, and generally betraying an attitude that might have been studied in Irish academies. Nor can I imagine a more fruitful occupation for the student, be he partial or prejudiced, of representative

institutions, than a perusal of the proceedings of the Lower House of the Japanese Diet during its last six sessions. There will be much to interest and inform him; some things to reassure; but not a little to dispirit and dismay.

At the time of my visit in September 1892, a new Ministry had recently assumed the seals of office, and as I

revise these pages (1895) is still in power. Count Ito, the Minister President, or Prime Minister, is probably the bestknown Japanese statesman outside his own country; The Minis the adventurous exploit of his early career, when, try of All with his life-long friend and colleague Count the Talents. Inouye, he was smuggled in disguise on board an English

vessel for conveyance to England, there to study the manners and institutions of the West, being as familiar to most foreigners as is the part which he subsequently played in the Restoration, and as a pioneer in the evolution of Modern Japan. In his own country his experience, his tact, and his individual responsibility for the new Parliamentary Constitution, render him the most respected and influential of Japanese public men. Already once Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council, and the first President of the House of Peers, he now returned after an interval in which he had seen other Ministers come and go in the preliminary flux consequent upon a new order of things, in order to mould into durable shape the offspring of his own political creation, and to endeavour to give something like stability to the administration of his country. With him were associated in the Cabinet his old friend Count Inouye, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and, perhaps, the most daring and original of Japanese statesmen; Count Yamagata, himself a former Premier, to whom was entrusted the portfolio of Justice; and Viscount Mutsu, a travelled and highly-accomplished statesman, who had represented his country at Washington before being transferred to the Foreign Office. The only public man of the

1 Count Ito has himself published a learned commentary on the Japanese Constitution, which has been translated into English and is published in Tokio. Since the war he has been made a Marquis.

2 After the preliminary successes of Japan in the recent war, Count Inouye was sent in the autumn of 1894 to Korea to organise the new Government, and to superintend the introduction of the so-called reforms. The experience of a year's dictatorship has left him a wiser, and probably a sadder, man. But he is still engaged upon the hopeless task.

3 Count Yamagata, with the rank of Field-Marshal was invested with supreme command of the Japanese forces in Korca after the victory of Ping-yang in September 1894, and subsequently led the army corps that invaded Manchuria. He was afterwards made a Marquis.

In earlier life Viscount Mutsu was implicated in the Satsuma Rebellion, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, before being pardoned and released.