On the 29th of August 1871 an Imperial decree announced the abolition of the system of local autonomy, and the removal of the territorial nobles from the posts of governor. The taxes of the former fiefs were to be paid thenceforth into the central treasury; all officials were to be appointed by the Imperial government, and the feudatories, retaining permanently an income of one-tenth of their original revenues, were to make Tokyo their place of residence. As for the samurai, they remained for the moment in possession of their hereditary pensions. Radical as these changes seem, the disturbance caused by them was not great, since they left the incomes of the military class untouched. Some of the incomes were for life only, but the majority were hereditary, and all had been granted in consideration of their holders devoting themselves to military service. Four hundred thousand men approximately were in receipt of such emoluments, and the total amount annually taken from the tax-payers for this purpose was about £2,000,000. Plainly the nation would have to be relieved of this burden sooner or later. The samurai were essentially an element of the feudal system, and that they should survive the latter's fall would have been incongruous. On the other hand, suddenly and wholly to deprive these men and their families--a total of some two million persons--of the means of subsistence on which they had hitherto relied with absolute confidence, and in return for which they and their forefathers had rendered faithful service, would have been an act of inhumanity. It may easily be conceived that this problem caused extreme perplexity to the administrators of the new Japan. They left it unsolved for the moment, trusting that time and the loyalty of the samurai themselves would suggest some solution. As for the feudal chiefs, who had now been deprived of all official status and reduced to the position of private gentlemen, without even a patent of nobility to distinguish them from ordinary individuals, they did not find anything specially irksome or regrettable in their altered position. No scrutiny had been made into the contents of their treasuries. They were allowed to retain unquestioned possession of all the accumulated funds of their former fiefs, and they also became public creditors for annual allowances equal to one-tenth of their feudal revenues. They had never previously been so pleasantly circumstanced. It is true that they were entirely stripped of all administrative and military authority; but since their possession of such authority had been in most cases merely nominal, they only felt the change as a relief from responsibility. Treatment of the Samurai.