"There is another fact that impedes the smooth progress of Constitutional Government. It is the want of a proper balance in the distribution of wealth and education. In other words, the present condition of our society is such that the moneyed class in general are at a discount in point of education, while the intellectually developed are mostly deficient in wealth."

From the above it may be gathered that the political situation in Japan just now is chaotic in the extreme; and when we consider the short time during which the present form of government has been running, it is hardly to be expected that it should have been otherwise.

The full number of members of the Diet is three hundred, and they are paid a yearly salary of about £80.

Suffrage in Japan is by no means universal at the present day, as the following list of the qualifications of voters will show:

1. Male subjects of the Empire of Japan, aged full twenty-five years and upward.

2. Those who are registered in the census of, and have been residing in, the city or prefecture for full one year before the completion of the list of electors.

3. Those who have been paying in the city or prefecture a direct national tax of fifteen yen and upward per year for full one year before the completion of the electoral list, and are still continuing to pay the same; and in case of income-tax, those who have been paying the above stated sum for full three years before the completion of the electoral list, and are still continuing to pay the same.

Chamberlain estimates, presumably under the above regulations, that the number of qualified voters in Japan amounts to only "a little over one per cent. of the whole population." I think this estimate is unduly low.

Violently hostile to each other as were the conflicting parties who went to make up the Lower House, their common war-cry of "Down with the Government" at times enabled them to pull together more or less; but while, as above explained, the Government were practically unrepresented in the popular Diet, the nature of the formation of the Upper House practically assured to the Government a majority there; and, as the Higher assembly could veto any objectionable measure passed in the Lower, the position of the Government was practically so strong that one might have thought that nothing but a revolution could overthrow it. But the existence of a popular Parliament, even under these conditions, made itself felt from the first; and freedom of speech, which was granted simultaneously with the opening of the Diet, furnished another strong weapon in the hands of the Commoners.

While both Radical parties were clamoring for the destruction of the Government, neither of them had formulated any distinct policy to replace the existing methods. It was at this time that numerous other cliques were formed by dissentients from the "Liberty" and "Progress" parties, and matters began to get very complicated, the more so as every political party that sprang up had to be formally registered, after which it was forbidden by law to co-operate with any other party.

This was how matters stood at the commencement of the war with China; a Parliament without a programme, and divided against itself in every