The succeeding cabinet was headed by the great financier, Count Matsukata, and was for a time supported by the Progressives, whose leader, Count Ōkuma, occupied the portfolio of foreign affairs. The tenth diet (1896-1897) ran its course smoothly, as there appeared no important financial measure to stir up the partisan blood in the lower house, but the next diet, which met in December, 1897, witnessed an altogether different scene. In spite of the painful manipulations of the items of the budget, and of the fact that the issues of the recently raised taxes had reached the exchequer, a large deficit of over fourteen million _yen_ stared the Matsukata cabinet in the face, and, moreover, promised to rise considerably higher the next year. Count Matsukata now resolved to increase the revenue by twenty-five millions by raising the rates of certain taxes, one of which, the land tax, was probably among the fairest sources of an increased income, but was destined to arouse a stormy opposition of the representatives. No sooner was the count's design known than the Progressives, with their versatile leader, deserted the cabinet. This was the first time that the lower house, one of whose old cries had been to revise land values and reduce the land tax, was called upon to discuss a financial measure to which the interest of the constituencies of their overwhelming majority was diametrically opposed. We might perhaps consider the eleventh diet, for this reason, as marking a new stage in which the question of class interests, so promising of ominous consequences, began to manifest itself. The determined opposition of the house against the cabinet was quickly followed by the dissolution of the former and the fall of the latter.