been lacking for the above desire to take a definite shape. Such knowledge was, however, soon acquired, as we are told by Itō himself, when the Japanese embassy, of which he was a member, visited the principal constitutional countries of Europe and America, and saw with their observant eyes and were convinced that the comparative progress of these nations and the relative backwardness of their own were in a large measure due to the presence in the former and absence in the latter of a regular constitutional machinery of government. The imperial oath preceded by at least ten years, and the journey of the embassy by seven years, the inauguration of party life in Japan. Nor should it be forgotten that, during the long centuries of its existence, the imperial house of Japan had seldom proved to be despotic, and, when its real authority was restored in 1867 from the hands of the feudal overlord, the movement had been started, not by a powerful imperial army, which did not exist, but by the combined strength of men rising from all ranks of the nation at large. While it is true that without the awakening of the nation the Constitution would never have seen light, it was more truly granted by the emperor and his advisers than wrested from them. This fact, that the Constitution was granted by the emperor, may be said to be the keynote of that remarkable document. It was hardly the result of a compromise between the emperor and the nation. Still less did it delegate to the former a part of the sovereignty of the latter. The emperor, in the Japanese Constitution, assumes full sovereignty, and graciously associates with him representatives of the nation in the government of the country. The people are, therefore, not givers, but receivers, of certain rights, the concession of which, however, does not diminish the sovereignty vested in the emperor. This fundamental notion clearly characterizes from beginning to end this document of 1889, which, as we shall see later on, otherwise contains ambiguous and expansive passages at a few critical points. "The emperor is the head of the empire, combining in himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them according to the provisions of the present Constitution." (Article IV.) Whence does he derive his power? He is "sacred and inviolable" (Article III.), as he is--says Itō, the framer and commentator of the Constitution--Heaven-descended, divine, and sacred, and, though he indeed has to pay due respect to the law, the law has no power to hold him accountable to it. "The rights of sovereignty of the state," says the emperor himself in the Preamble of the Constitution, "We have inherited from Our Ancestors," who, according to tradition, charged their descendants to reign over and govern the country for eternity. Upon this peculiar Japanese theory of the divine right of the emperor is based the noted Article I. of the Constitution, which merely states in words the principle which has been upheld in history and is