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equality with the foreign Powers—for stationing foreign troops in Yokohama, as England and France are still doing, is to treat us like a vassal State—to patiently bear such a gross ignominy near at hand, and impatiently move for chastising the remote Corea for much lighter offence, cannot be called reason. The days of animated discussions in the Cabinet between the 14th and the 23rd of October, 1873, form the most memorable epoch in the annals of New Japan, because it was by these earnest discussions, in which both parties contended, not for their personal influence or honour, but for the real good of the country, that the supremacy of the civil or the military party was to be decided, and with it the rapidity or tardiness of reform. The Prime Minister and the Minister of the Right, not being able to decide between themselves upon this all-important question, finally submitted the case to the personal decision of His Majesty the Emperor, who decreed that there should be no war with Corea. All the advocates of war now immediately resigned, except Lord Sanjo, who also petitioned to be relieved of his responsibility, on the ground of indifferent health, but whom the Emperor personally visited in his dwelling, and, consoling him, declared his intention not to let him go under any circumstance. The ex-Generalissimo Saigo retired to Satsuma, and all the Satsuma officers in the army followed him, so that the Imperial Guard was well-nigh disorganized, and the seed of the great civil war of 1877 was sown.

If war with Corea was a popular theme, the simultaneous resignation of the much-beloved Generalissimo and the Councillors, advocates of the war, was a more striking incident, such as had never occurred after the fall of the Shogun Government, and the public excitement, especially of the old Samurai class, was wrought up to a really dangerous pitch. In January, 1874, Lord Iwakura was attacked by a band of assassins, and miraculously escaped with as light wound. In February, Eto, one of the resigned Councillors, raised the standard of revolt in Saga, which was put down with much bloodshed. Graver dangers were also anticipated, and something had to be done in order to give vent to the once aroused feeling. Thus the Formosan expedition was decided upon as the undertaking most easily practicable, and attended with the least danger of international complications.^[1]