--'Well, Prince Shimazu was the lord of Satsuma. The greater parts of the provinces Hiuga and Osumi were also included in his dominion. His family had been great lords in that part of the country for some seven hundred years. When the famous Hideyoshi invaded Kiusiu, and reached Satsuma, the prince, namely, the lord of Satsuma, surrendered to that great hero after several battles. Hideyoshi did not consider it politic to push the matter to extremes, so the prince retained his former position. When Tokugawa assumed the Shogunate, the prince was left undisturbed in spite of his having once taken up cudgels against Tokugawa at the famous battle of Sekigahara. His seat of government was Kagoshima, but there was scarcely any establishment worth calling a castle. A certain number of his retainers lived around his residence, but a large number of them lived in different parts of his territory, their lives being partly devoted to agriculture. Satsuma was one of the few strong clans, and its combination with Chosiu resulted, as I said before, in the restoration of the Imperial régime.' --'Will you please explain in outline the financial system of the Shogunate, and how it was transferred to the Imperial government?' asked one. 'The Shogunate had under its immediate control territorial possessions which were roughly reckoned, in the terms of rice, eight million koku. The Shogunate was clever enough to have the lions share of the landed possessions, which included the best parts of the country, generally comprising prosperous towns, as, for instance, the city of Osaka. The expenditure of the Shogunate was maintained by the income from those territories. No feudal lord had to contribute anything to the exchequer of the Shogunate, except that they were at times ordered to undertake some public works allotted to them; for example, the reparation of some river banks or damage done to the Shogun's castle. The revenue of the Shogunate was scarcely sufficient for maintaining the Shogunate in its normal state, and towards its latter days, when the external relations and internal disturbances began to press heavily, the financial difficulty was much felt. As to the Imperial court, it had no regular revenue at all, except a comparatively trifling sum contributed by the Shogunate, which was supposed to be the equivalent to the taxes collected by the Shogun's officials in the provinces in the immediate vicinity of the Imperial seat. There was no land under the direct control of the court; even the city of Kioto itself was under the administration of the officials of the Shogunate. Consequently the Imperial court was always in a needy condition. It follows, also, that the court nobles were also in an extremely needy condition, though high in personal rank. They only received paltry annual allowances out of the Shogun's contribution, though a very few high court nobles had small landed possessions. Such being the case, it was natural that the