"First, that the ministers of state are charged with the duty of giving advice to the emperor, which is their proper function, and that they are not held responsible on his behalf; second, that ministers are directly responsible to the emperor and indirectly to the people; third, that it is the sovereign and not the people that can decide as to the responsibility of ministers, because the sovereign possesses the rights of sovereignty of the state; fourth, that the responsibility of ministers is a political one and has no relation to criminal or civil responsibility, nor can it conflict therewith, neither can the one affect the other. Save that all criminal or civil cases must be brought before the ordinary courts of law, and that suits arising out of administrative matters must be brought before a court of administrative litigation, the cases of political responsibility are left to be dealt with by the sovereign as disciplinary measures." The marquis further emphatically repudiates the theory of joint responsibility of the cabinet as a state of things that can never be approved of according to the Japanese Constitution. The argument here again is that the ministers are individually appointed by the sovereign, to whom they are individually responsible for the business of their respective departments, and that for the same reason the minister president, or premier, cannot have control over the post of each minister, nor shall the latter be dependent upon the former. The reader will readily see that the whole line of Itō's argument is consistent with the fundamental theory of the Japanese body politic, that is, the full sovereignty of the emperor. No one can, however, fail to perceive between the lines here quoted a great latitude for the future growth of another theory whose gradual expansion might, imperceptibly, perhaps, but none the less steadily, reduce the political responsibility of the minister to the throne to the position of a mere legal fiction. As has already been intimated, the past changes of the cabinet have not always been directly occasioned by the opposition of the diet, nor has the majority of the opposition in the lower house newly elected after its dissolution always forced the ministers from their chairs. As will be seen in the next chapter, the second Yamagata cabinet (1898-1900) resigned despite its commanding a majority in the diet, and was succeeded by the fourth Itō cabinet (1900-1901), which also retired for reasons quite independent of the conditions of the legislative chambers, where it had the following of an absolute majority of the representatives. On the other hand, nearly all of the eight changes of the cabinet have been caused by difficulties more or less financial in nature, and these are, it will be remembered, under the effective control of the lower house, so that the "indirect" responsibility of the cabinet to the diet already bids fair to become more logical and perhaps less indirect. Moreover, the