The result of this centralisation was that Tokyo became the centre of the whole national life. Men seeking office hurried to it; students entered its schools; the trades and professions seemed to thrive only in the capital. The measures which the government took at the time tended still further to make Tokyo attractive. For the Restoration and the consequent national reorganisation were for the most part the work of the military class, or rather of the samurai of a few clans under the guidance of a small group of leaders. The country bowed to the inevitable; but the people had little or no voice in the matter. Whatever drastic measures the government might take, the nation at large could not at a word of command throw off the immemorial traditions in which it had been brought up; it failed to realise the drift of the new policy its leaders were entering upon. Consequently, the first and most important duty of the government was to guide its people in the path it had taken. New laws were published with minute instructions; schools of all kinds were established on the western plan, the higher colleges being located in Tokyo; model government factories were built in the environs of the city; in short, nothing that a paternal government could do was omitted to take the people by the leading-strings. The higher schools were soon filled; their graduates found ready employment. The country was ruled by a huge army of officials, who, taking as they did the place of the old samurai in the popular estimation, commanded respect and deference often out of proportion to the importance of their posts, which, with the comparatively high salaries they enjoyed in those days, made government service the most attractive of all occupations. In fact, in the early days, Tokyo may be said to have derived its enhanced prosperity from the superabundance of officials. Then too, men of the legal, medical, and other professions all opened practice in Tokyo; only in recent years when every rank has been overcrowded in the city, have they sought fresh fields in the provinces.