In this crisis the only course for the Cabinet to pursue was to go on quietly, managing the routine of affairs until time should open up some line of action. The Gorochiu, therefore, with Neito at its head, and nominally under Tayass as Regent, continued to carry on the ordinary duties of government. Events have shown that the Regent was right in his judgment of the men whom he sought to remove from his path as obstacles--Mito, Etsizen, Satsuma, Owarri--as these have all since his death reappeared as leaders of the party opposed to his policy in the Obiroma or council of the Kokushu. Etsizen, afterward known by his retired title Shoongaku, was the first among these magnates who attempted to take a lead in the government of Yedo. He had been removed from his position as Daimio and placed in arrest; but, having subsequently been released, was able to move about and obtain an influence in high places. He obtained from the Emperor a letter [afterward considered a forgery], appointing him and Awa to fill the place of co-regents, under the name of Sosai Shoku or Sodangeite. But the fermentation of revolution had already begun to work, and at such a time the first actors upon the stage seldom play the prominent parts they deem themselves fitted to fill. They generally fail to see the causes of the boiling going on around. Such a man is like an atom in a pot of boiling water, and knows and sees nothing of the fire which is causing all the upturning around him. To even a superficial looker-on at the state of things in Japan, it was evident that such a dual condition of government as that then existing could not long continue to carry on foreign relations. The discord and weakness arising from the permission of an _imperium in imperio_ by the exterritoriality clause was greatly increased by the government attempting to carry on foreign relations without the consent or against the will of the higher power in Miako. The two powers must work harmoniously; and so long as the internal affairs of the empire are the only possible cause of rupture, the weaker, though more exalted, will find it to be its interest to be on good terms with the lower but more powerful, the executive. So soon as the latter begins to act as supreme power toward other nations, it places itself in a wrong position, and foreign nations will not treat with such a pretense. The opposition finds a head in the Emperor, and the only way to avert a rupture is for the lower power to give way and to act only as the representative of the head of the empire. If he fails to see this, he sets himself against the Emperor, who is then supported, not only by his own nobility, but also by those powers with whom he has entered into relations. The party of the Shiogoon deserts him, and his only _rôle_ is to work with and under the Emperor; or, if he refuses to do this, civil war ensues, and he falls.