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of urgency of those matters should be carefully weighed, so that if, as the Government maintain, and as I admit, the question of naval expansion does not allow of postponement for ten years, Japan should, on the other hand, cut down her other expenditures which entail money leaving the country. The balance of trade should in that way be kept up as much as possible. It is in pursuance of that policy that I must warn you against being swayed in your acts by local interests, as, for instance, in questions of railway construction. I do not warn you alone; I must warn both the Government and the public at large, for any indiscreet resolution in this connection and on questions of a similar nature would be disastrous in consequences—so disastrous that they might even be beyond the power of able men to remedy. It may sound a truism to you to state how in other countries great pains are taken for safeguarding the interests of the national finance, and how devices are made for preventing the outflow of specie. The amounts of the fund thus kept in reserve by the different countries are not, of course, the same, but the quantity of the amount hoarded is amazingly great. Nor is there any unity among them—as I found by inquiries—in their method of preventing the exodus of specie, but they are all one in so far as their object is concerned. Turning to Japan, what do we find? Do you not find doors ajar everywhere? If there be a man who is well satisfied with this state of things, I should think he is one who could afford to pass twenty-four hours of the day in easy slumber. We must wake up and do all we can in the future to attain the object I have dwelt upon. To do so is not the duty of the Government alone; the high and the low alike must not neglect to consider this matter. I may not refer here to the methods, but it is important that they should aim at the attainment of the object in question.