approve the wisdom of the people who quietly waited ten years instead of furthering the revolutionary movement. If they had been impatient, the only alternative would have been a terrible revolution-a disaster to the whole nation.

With Francis Lieber, I feel "that English liberty had been under a remarkable guidance of the divine Ruler of men; that justice, order, stability, freedom, had been reconciled in it in a wonderful way; that its capacity of progress without revolution set it up as a model and a guide to the nation." May the loyal spirit of the Japanese nation combined with the Emperor's love of people, accomplish the same development as that of England, and restrain the impulsive nature which I have mentioned from time to time and which has frequently been likened to the fickleness of the French nation! May the Emperor of Japan ever extend and guarantee the liberty of the people, to the end that justice, order, stability, and freedom shall be reconciled in the throne!

§ 86. Secondly, the masses of Japan were not arbitrarily ruled and taxed as in France before the Revolution; there were no privileged classes exempt from taxation and conscription, and living by the sweat of others. Had Japan's economic condition been similar to that of France in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, there would have been no alternative except disastrous revolution. In France prior to the Revolution, the king and the privileged classes indulged "in fashion, in the talent for self-display and in entertaining, in the gift of graceful conversation, in fineness and in gayety, in the art of converting life into a brilliant and ingenious festivity, regarding the world as a drawing-room of refined idlers in which it suffices to be amiable and witty;" while, on the other hand, a colossal monster rose up, "a monster with millions of heads, a blind, startled animal, an entire

1 Professor Woolsey, in his introduction to the third edition of Lieber's Civil Liberty.

2 Cf. De Tocqueville, France Before the Revolution.

people pressed down, exasperated and suddenly loosed against the government whose exactions have despoiled it, against the privileged whose rights have reduced it to starvation."1 Such a state of things was quite unknown in Japan where the abolition of feudalism in 1870 was the last signal to toll the knell of all class privileges, and since then the steady progress of internal reformation has coalesced with the development of the idea of freedom, culminating finally in the establishment of a constitutional government.

likened to

As Free

87. Thirdly, the constitutional growth of Japan was gradual and steady, and not sudden and radical. In this respect the constitutional growth of Japan may be that of England, and contrasted to that of France. man rightly says, "the English Parliament is immemorial; it grew step by step out of the older order of things. In France the older order of things utterly vanished; the ground lay open for the creation of a wholly new institution, and the States-General were called into being at the bidding of Philip the Fair." From the beginning of the Imperial dynasty, the Japanese people were allowed the liberty of sending in their petition to the Imperial court whenever they had grievances to be relieved. During the middle ages, when the sovereign power de facto fell into the hand of the military magistrates, the people were deprived of this privilege. With the Restoration and the downfall of the military magistracy, not only were the ancient privileges of the people revived, but two deliberative chambers were instantly convoked, although their organization was anything but perfect. Hence, the Constitution-makers of Japan had to perform no such task as the building of an entirely new edifice upon the ground, which is occupied by no fabric based on history.

1 Taine, Ancient Regime, pp. 398–9.

* Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, p. 66.

Cf. supra, ch. V. and ch. VIII.

$88. Fourthly, Japan had learned many lessons from the constitutional history of foreign countries before she inaugurated constitutional government. The insular nation had been fully aware of the horrors and terrors which European nations had passed through before they established constitutional government. Both the people and the government of Japan had been anxious to avoid such disastrous upheavals and were willing to make concessions each to the other if necessary to maintain the welfare and peace of the country.

$89. Fifthly, the Japanese have a peculiar nature of respecting the past. Any movement which aims at the sudden and radical overthrow of an existing regime can in Japan hardly enlist the sympathy of the people. In this respect the Japanese are, it seems to me, somewhat like the English. The ideas which impress the two nations must be based upon the feeling of sympathy with past generations-with traditions, not stereotyped but constantly receiving improvements and reformations. In criticising the French in comparison to the English nation, M. Boutmy eloquently says: "The French delight in the notion of a widespread area into which all nations can enter and join with them in bowing down before the enactments of universal legislation. The English like the idea of a narrow path reaching far back into antiquity, in which they see the centuries of their national life ranged in a long vista one behind the other. The English Constitution is strongly marked by this turn of mind. Historical descent is the very soul of it, just as an ideal fraternity has always been the soul of the French Constitution."1

2

In spite of the impulsive characteristic of the Japanese nation which I have noted in a previous chapter, in spite of our being compared to the fickleness of the French nation, the Japanese, taken as a whole, have the striking peculiarity of respecting the past, the traditions, as does our sister island

1 Boutmy, Constitutional Law, p. 43.

2 Cf. supra, ch. III.

nation on the Atlantic. This again explains in a measure the peaceful adoption of a constitutional government, and the absence of a bloody revolution.

The above five seem to have been main reasons to which Japan's peaceful adoption of a constitutional government is due. It should, however, be remembered that the genius of the Japanese people always challenges our deepest interest in the study of their recent development, political and social, industrial and scientific. The factors above mentioned are simply external. By far the most important factor is the facility with which Japanese minds are adopted to higher ideals and institutions.

CHAPTER XVI

A CRITIQUE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF JAPAN

$90. The aim of the present chapter is not to enter into the minute details of the Constitution of Japan, e. g., the order of the succession to the throne, the composition of the Diet, the method of electing the members of the Diet, etc.; but to discuss the spirit and fundamental principles underlying the Constitution, such as the conception of sovereignty, the nature of ministerial responsibility, the status of the legislature, and the like.

The constitution of Japan was promulgated with six supplementary laws, i. e., the Imperial House Law, the Imperial Ordinance Concerning the House of Peers, the Law of the Houses, the Law of Election of the Members of the House of Representatives, and the Law of Finance.1 To understand the nature of the Japanese Constitution we must take into our consideration not only the Constitution proper, but those organic and supplementary laws as well. The framer of the Constitution, assisted by a staff who had thorough knowledge of western constitutional laws, 2 formulated the constitution proper so as to make it as clear; precise, and simple as pos

1 The English translation of these laws is found in Marquis Ito's Commentaries on Japanese Constitution, Tokyo, Japan. The reader will also find the Constitution and Election Law in Reginald Dickinson's Rules and Procedure of Foreign Parliaments. But the Law of Election of the Members of the House of Representatives was considerably amended two years ago. Therefore the same law as found in these books is not now reliable. The main points of amendment are these: (1) City or Prefecture was made to constitute one election district, while in the old law it was subdivided into several election districts, (2) the property qualification of electors was reduced from the payment of a direct tax of 15 yen to that of 10 yen, and (3) the property qualification of eligible persons was entirely abolished.

2 Cf. supra, ch. XIV.