194 D. W. Stevens—Japan. 
bringing about the great change of ’68 began their work. They 
were aided in a measure by the cry of opposition to foreign in- 
trusion which the conclusion of treaties with western powers 
immediately aroused. Thtre are conservatives in all countries, 
and the Japanese conservatives of that day formed the Joi or 
anti-foreign party. Like skillful politicians, those who were 
seeking the destruction of the illogical and unwieldly dual gov- 
ernment availed themselves of this, as well as of all other forms 
of discontent and opposition, in order to better accomplish their 
purpose. The facts of history will bear me out in the assertion 
that, like wise statesmen, they permitted it to have no share in 
their policy when they themselves came into power. 
Glance at the first acts of the Emperor when he assumed the 
exercise of all those prerogatives of which his ancestors had been 
deprived for more than three centuries and tell me, if you please, 
whether the men who guided and directed the counsels of the 
youthful sovereign were visionary schemers or practical states- 
men; whether they were merely lucky speculators trading upon 
borrowed ideas, or whether they were men who understood their 
country and their countrymen and cherished a hopeful but not 
an unreasonable or an illogical ambition for both? 
One of the first acts of the Emperor was to issue an edict abol- 
ishing the laws against foreign religions and their propagation 
among the Japanese. 
The daimiyos or feudal chiefs surrendered their fiefs to the 
crown and accepted in leu the bonds of the government at 
amounts, it should be added, much less than the value of their 
original holdings. This, it must not be forgotten, was an entirely 
voluntary act of self-abnegation. 
The samurai or military class, whose privileges, rigorously 
secured and jealously guarded, made them the real masters of 
Japan, especially in times of domestic disorder, like their chiefs, 
the daimiyos, accepted capitalized pensions instead of the regular 
support to which their fealty and their service had entitled them ; 
and I should add that the dangers to be apprehended from the 
discontented and turbulent members of this powerful class thus 
thrown out of employment, and in many cases sadly impover- 
ished, were anticipated and guarded against by the passage and 
enforcement of a law which has proved itself the highest form of 
statesmanship. I refer now to the conscription law, by which 
every Japanese, rich and poor, high and low, is obliged to serve 
