sovereign has never appointed individual ministers of state at his pleasure, but at the resignation of a cabinet he invariably summons the statesman whose succession to the premiership is the most logical, though not always desired by the latter himself, and leaves to him the task of forming a new cabinet. It would not be too much to suppose that if in the future a cabinet was compelled to resign under the powerful and reasonable opposition of a great popular party in the lower house, the leader of the party would receive the imperial mandate to form a new cabinet. We feel almost safe in predicting that with the growth of an adequate party system, which in Japan is still in its formative stage, the ministerial responsibility to the diet will have become an established usage. It is interesting to note that Marquis Itō himself remarked, in his address, in February, 1899, to the delegates from the cities, that the English cabinet and party system must be more or less adopted in Japan if a harmonious coöperation were to be secured between the cabinet and the diet, and that the practice of government by party would in no way impair the authority of the throne. The same statesman had an occasion two years later to declare in the lower house, when an already mentioned resolution censuring the cabinet for having caused an imperial word to be pronounced was under discussion, that the passage of a resolution would not shake his position as premier, which he owed to the confidence of his majesty. "If the aim of the resolution is my resignation," exclaimed he, "why do you not propose an address to the throne, instead of a resolution?" These statements made by the same framer of the Constitution at two different occasions may not be interpreted as necessarily contradictory to one another, for, if in 1901, an address had been made to the throne, and if the throne had seemed still to uphold the premier in spite of the diet, it is not impossible to imagine that Itō would have quietly resigned. Weighing his statements side by side, might it not be surmised that in the mind of the veteran statesman the responsibility of the cabinet to the people must be commensurate with the political training of the latter, especially in the form of a well-organized and trained party system? At any rate, it would seem inevitable that the actual state of things under the present régime should move in that direction. As to the state of party politics in Japan, to whose development the marquis himself has made a notable contribution, we shall discuss it at length in the following chapter.