If, concluding from the limited sphere of freedom of the _samurai_ in regard to change of domicile, one should suppose that farmers, merchants, and craftsmen were much more restricted in their moving about inter-territorially, he would be grossly deceived. The _samurai_ was _de facto_ linked almost inseparably to their lord the _daimyo_, for the link had been firmly cemented, though not by any formal oath of fealty uttered by the _samurai_, as was the custom in European countries, but by the hereditary relation between his family and that of his master. It became especially so when profound peace settled on Japan during the middle of the Tokugawa period, and if any _daimyo_ had given his _samurai_ the freest choice to leave his territory, very few of them would have availed themselves of their freedom, for by doing so they would have had to part with a great many things which they had long cherished in their hearts. On the whole, the _samurai_ were attached to their _daimyo_ and not to the soil on which they had settled, so that when their master was removed to some new territory by the order of the Shogunate, most of the _samurai_ used to follow their lord and serve him in the new locality. The dialectic peculiarities, which have been vanishing in Japan very rapidly these years, show still a trace of these _samurai_ migrations. If any foreigner should remark a considerable difference in dialect between some provincial town and its suburbs, it shows that the family of the _daimyo_ who was the last to lord it over the territory, was one transplanted there together with the attendant train of _samurai_ by order of the Shogunate in a time not so very remote.