The first period, then, opens with the existence of two popular parties, the Liberals and Progressives, led, respectively, by Count Itagaki and Count Ōkuma. The members of the parties who sat in the first lower house represented an overwhelmingly preponderant interest of the landowning class of the country, so that a revision of land values and consequently a reduction of the land tax were among their rallying cries. At the same time they aimed at overthrowing the existing cabinet, which they considered under the exclusive control of men of certain provinces of the south, principally Satsuma and Nagato (Chōshū), which had once been instrumental in upsetting the feudal régime and restoring the imperial government. It is remarkable that the party men almost identified the future downfall of sectionalism, as they deemed the foundation of the administration to be, with the cause of the establishment of a responsible cabinet, or a cabinet responsible to the throne as well as to the diet. Needless to say that, from the party standpoint, a responsible cabinet was _ipso facto_ a party cabinet. It will be recalled that the Constitution, which had recently been promulgated and according to whose provisions the diet had been called into being, defined, so far as the explicit verbal meaning was concerned, that the government was answerable for its political conduct to the emperor. The theory of the full sovereignty of the throne was loyally and enthusiastically supported by the entire nation, but the parties did not fail to see the apparent possibility of reconciling it with a practical control of the cabinet by the diet. It is little wonder that they straightway crystallized their principle into the phrase, "a responsible cabinet," which they at once conceived as merely the positive side of another of their mottoes, "the downfall of sectionalism." The government and the Elder Statesmen, it is not improbable, possessed a clearer vision of the foibles of the young parties, and consequently a more conservative but truer foresight of the future progress of the political training of the nation. The question between the parties and the government appears, in the last analysis, to have been largely a question of time, the former harassing the latter for not giving them at once what they probably knew it would cheerfully surrender when the proper time came. Yet, by the law of reaction, the parties rashly attacked the government, and the latter not infrequently resorted to measures of self-defense which appeared to the partisan opponents unwarranted and even arbitrary. Bitter feelings were not seldom aroused, and the sentiment of the people at large was at times so highly wrought that it was by no means uncommon to see neighbors in a village range themselves according to their sympathy with either the government or the party side in their heated controversies by the fireside. Election scenes often presented exciting incidents. It should be noted that the