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and the like, acquired a new force and a new meaning. The body of the old Senate passed into the new House of Peers, in which were also present all the male members of the Imperial Family and the two highest classes of nobility, the counts, viscounts and barons being represented through class elections. Marquis Ito was nominated by the Emperor the first President of the House of Peers. In the House of Commons Count Itagaki’s party returned the greatest number of members, and that of Count Okuma was also largely represented, but neither commanded an absolute majority. The first session was sufficiently stormy, but ended well, chiefly out of respect to the Emperor, whose earnest desire to see the smooth working of the Constitution—a thing so new in the whole East—filled the hearts of all with sympathy and the spirit of moderation.

In May, 1891, Marquis General Yamagata voluntarily laid down his office, and Count Matsukata became the next Minister President. Viscount Aoki was still the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but he was forced to resign a few days after on account of the unlucky incident which befell the Crown Prince Nicholas of Russia. The latter was in Japan on his way to Vladivostok, whither he was sent by his father, in order to inaugurate the commencement of the building of the great Siberian Railway, when an infatuated policeman, perhaps seeing in him the future enemy of Japan, wounded him with a sword on the temple. Viscount Admiral Enomoto, Privy Councillor—that very same Enomoto who had fought against the Imperial forces in 1869—was appointed the next Minister for Foreign Affairs. He had some plans for the treaty revision, but the fall of the Matsukata Cabinet, in consequence of the conflict with the third Diet, did not allow him time to announce them.

In retrospect, we might say that for Japan, with her people yet unprepared to live side by side with foreigners, her system of government absolute, though by no means despotic, and her laws yet little developed, to try to revise the treaties was to try an impossibility—if only for this reason, that the civilized nations of Europe make the protection of the life and property and commerce of their subjects abroad the primary object of their foreign policy; and as long as Japan had not given the guarantee that she, too, had the same end in view, no Government could safely trust their subjects to our care. Until such guarantee had been given, the Western nations must of necessity cling to the system of ‘settlements’ and ‘consular jurisdiction.’ But now, when the same constitutional form of government, the same system of the administration of justice, and the codes of laws based on the same principles as in Europe and America, had been promulgated and begun to work smoothly in Japan, the real objec-