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no men of any education should ever forget the welfare of the country. On these points, however, my views are often at variance with those in official circles.

I think that the Japanese as a people are inclined to go about their business too recklessly; they squander their money with scarcely a thought as to their wealth. It was in 1880 that the prefectural assemblies were first established. Before putting this new scheme in operation, the Government convened a meeting of prefectural Governors, of which I was chairman. When I look over the course of events between that year and the year of the promulgation of the Constitution, I notice that the prefectural expenditure increased very considerably in that interval. True, many troublesome occurrences happened, and the resolution passed by the assemblies had often to be voted. On the whole, however, in so far as the question of public burdens was considered, instead of the Government having to ask for more, the people seemed to be bent on giving more. This was decidedly unexpected. In any other country the people would demur at being burdened; but in Japan they appeared to think more of the State than of their own pockets, and they never seemed to be chary of giving. This condition of things made me think that the Japanese were not a people to refuse any increase in their burdens, even though they were given to the National Assembly. In this respect my views differed at the time from those of others in the Government. People in official circles were imbued with the idea that the opening of a National Assembly would be the opening act of some awful drama.

Then, subsequent to the inauguration of the Parliamentary régime, the people demanded of the Government the curtailment of administrative expenditures; and I think I remember to have been once or twice harassed on that same question by the representatives of the people. However, when I calmly reviewed the result of all those demands about financial retrenchment, I discovered them to have merely been a pretext for annoying the Government. For the facts that transpired subsequently to the Chino-Japanese War significantly demonstrate the expansion, not only of the expenditures of the central Government, but also prove how the expenditures of the provinces, where the members of the Diet hail from, have been trebled, or even quadrupled. Not that I absolutely approve of an increase of central and local administrative expenses. My position is simply this, namely, that the administrative expenses must be made commensurate with the resources of the country and the provinces.

Let me see how matters stand at present, and in doing so I must review the history of the national finances. When