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voted yearly, for the affairs of the State are in a condition of constant activity and motion, and cannot be managed according to a fixed standard. Consequently, the same amount of national expenditures cannot be continued from one year to another. But in the present article exceptional provisions are made for special cases of necessity. In virtue of such provisions, a certain portion of the military and naval expenditures, and expenditures for engineering works, manufactures, and the like, that require several years for completion, may, with the consent of the Diet, be fixed for a period comprising several years.

69. In the present article provision is made for a reserve fund out of which to supply deficiencies in the Budget and to meet requirements unprovided for in the same. Article 69 sets forth that expenditures overpassing the appropriations in the Budget, or that are not provided for therein at all, shall require the subsequent approval of the Diet; but in that article no provision is made as to the source whence such outlays are to be met. Hence the necessity of providing a reserve fund by the present article.

70. The interpretation of the present article is amply furnished by the remarks made under Article 8. The point of difference between the present article and Article 8 is that in the case mentioned in the latter, when the Diet is not sitting, no extraordinary session of it need be called, while in the case of the present one an extraordinary session is required; but even in this case necessary measures may be taken without the consent of the Diet, when the convening of an extraordinary session is impossible on account of some circumstances of a domestic or foreign nature. More precaution is taken in the case of the present article, as it relates to financial administration. By ‘the necessary financial measures’ mentioned in this article is to be understood those measures which, though by their nature they require the consent of the legislative assembly, are taken without it in case of urgency. The withholding of the approbation of the Diet refers only to the continued efficacy of the measures in question, and shall not possess the retrospective effect of annulling past proceedings, as has been fully explained under Article 8. Therefore the Diet cannot cancel the obligations of the Government that have arisen by effect of an Imperial ordinance. The necessity of resorting to the measures in question would occur only in time of great national calamity. So by the present article a formal recognition has been given of the measures that may have been imperatively demanded for the protection of the national existence, while at the same time due importance has been allowed to the rights of the Diet.