society lends excessive power to social intrigues directed against obscure ability, and makes them highly injurious to the interests of the nation;--for at no previous time in her history has Japan needed, so much as now, the best capacities of her best men, irrespective of class or condition. But all this was inevitable in the period of reconstruction. More significant is the fact that in no single department of its multitudinous service does the Government yet offer substantial reward to rising merit. No matter how well a man may strive to win Government approbation, he must strive for little more than honour and the bare means of existence. The costliest efforts are no more highly paid in proportion to their worth than the cheapest; the most invaluable services are scarcely better recognized than those most easily dispensed with or replaced. (There have been some remarkable exceptions: I am stating only the general rule.) By extraordinary energy, patience, and cleverness, one may reach, with class-help, some position which in Europe would assure comfort as well as honour; but the emoluments of such a position in Japan will scarcely cover the actual cost of living. Whether in the army or in the navy, in the departments of justice, of education, of communications, or of [412] home affairs,--the differences in remuneration nowhere represent the differences in capacity and responsibility. To rise from grade to grade signifies pecuniarily almost nothing,--for the expenses of each higher position augment out of all proportion to the salaries fixed by law. The general rule has been to exact everywhere the greatest possible amount of service for the least possible amount of pay.* Any one unacquainted with the social history [413] of the country might suppose that the policy of the Government toward its employes consisted in substituting empty honours for material advantages. But the truth is that the Government has simply maintained, under modern forms, the ancient feudal condition of service,--service in exchange for the means of simple but honourable living. In feudal times the farmer was expected to pay all that he could pay for the right to exist; the artist or artizan was expected to content himself with the good fortune of having a distinguished patron; even the ordinary samurai were supplied with barely more than the necessary by their liege-lords. To receive considerably more than the necessary signified extraordinary favour; and the gift was usually accompanied by promotion. But although the same policy is yet successfully maintained by Government, under the modern system of money-payments, the conditions everywhere, outside of commercial life, are incomparably harder than in feudal times. Then the poorest samurai was secured against want, and not liable to be dismissed from his post without fault. Then the teacher received no salary; but the respect of the community and the gratitude of his pupils assured him