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in the national revenue produced by existing taxes, but has, on the contrary, confirmed the same by express provisions.

64. In the Budget are estimated the expenditure and revenue of each fiscal year, to show the limits which the Administration ought to observe. The preparation of an estimate of the expenditures of the State is the first step in the proper management of finance. And it is an important result of constitutional principles of government that the submission of the Budget to the vote of the Diet is required for its consent thereto, and, further, that after expenses have been defrayed as set forth in the Budget, the subsequent approval of the Diet to any expenditures overpassing the estimated appropriation, or to any expenditures not provided for in the Budget, shall be asked for, as control of such matters lies with it. In 1886, the 19th year of Meiji, the Budget was promulgated by Imperial ordinance. This was the first time that a Budget had been promulgated according to a fixed form. The present article goes a step further, and provides that the Budget shall be laid before the Diet. A Budget is simply a sort of gauge to be observed by the administrative officials for a current year. Thus, the Budget requires the consent of the Diet on account of its special character, and is not, properly speaking, a law. Therefore law has precedence over a Budget, which has no power to change a law. It is true that a law must be passed by the Diet; still, it is not correct to say that everything that has been passed by the Diet ought to be called a law. For those rules which, though they may have been passed by the Diet, relate to particular matters have no general binding force, and are different in their nature from law. When, as provided in the second clause, the appropriations set forth in the titles and paragraphs of the Budget have been exceeded, or when expenditures that are not provided for in the same have been incurred, the subsequent approval of the Diet is to be obtained, for even in regard to an indispensable measure the Government has still to submit to the control of the Diet. It is to be borne in mind that a deficit rather than a surplus is, in fact, to be expected from a Budget that has been accurately prepared. If the Ministers of State are not required, merely because they have been settled in the Budget, to make outlays that are unnecessary, neither are they forbidden by the Constitution to make outlays exceeding the estimated appropriations or not provided for in the Budget, that may be necessary on account of unavoidable circumstances. For the functions of Ministers of State are not determined by consent of the Diet to the Budget: they are fixed by the Constitution and the law. Consequently, unavoidable expenses overpassing the estimated appropriations, or unprovided for in the Budget, are all legal. But if they are