feelings and interests, independent of principles and issues, come to influence the course of events, the conflicts of their agents must inevitably become at times bitter. As to the marquis himself, however, June 24, 1898, was perhaps another of the turning points of his life, through which he successfully extricated himself from a groove and made a leap forward. The most melodramatic spectacles of the year were yet to come. The new Janus-like Constitutional Party, whose political composition was as incongruous as its two masters, the idealistic Count Itagaki of the Liberals and the nimble-witted Count Ōkuma of the Progressives, suddenly found itself face to face with an opportunity which had for years been its cherished goal, but which it was at this moment hardly prepared to accept with alacrity. A mongrel cabinet was at last organized, with Ōkuma as premier and foreign minister, Itagaki as home minister, two more former Progressives and three Liberals receiving other portfolios, and, finally, Marquis Saigō and Viscount Katsura as ministers of army and navy. It should be noted that the marquis was one of the Elder Statesmen, under whose wings the viscount also had shaped his political career. The party thus failed to form a cabinet of purely its own complexion, which fact must have been especially disheartening in showing that the powerful military institutions of the empire could not be controlled by the inexperienced politicians emerging from the lower house of the diet. Such a matter, however, weighed little by the side of the grave internal difficulties that beset the new party from its start. The traditional sympathies of its two component parts proved too different from one another, and the individual sense of honor and also interest too little subservient to the common cause, for the members of the new government to hold together for half a year. Moreover, the executive authorities of the party at large instituted a shameless movement of systematic office-hunting, in which the old Liberals and Progressives vied against each other and among themselves. The same disorganized condition characterized the general election of August when a concerted action of the party could hardly be found anywhere in the country. What finally precipitated the downfall of the cabinet was a speech of Ozaki, the Progressive minister of education, which roundly denounced the materialistic tendencies of the age, and declared that if Japan should become a republic her people probably would not hesitate to elect a Vanderbilt or an Astor for president. The former Liberals adroitly chimed in with those chauvinists who pretended to have discovered in the speech a sinister, disloyal motive, on the part of the speaker, against the reigning family. When Ozaki's resignation was thus forced, the premier, without listening to the overtures of the Liberals, appointed another Progressive to the vacant post. At the end of October