the dissolution of the party began openly amid considerable bickerings, and the cabinet, which had already been deserted by the non-partisan ministers of army and of navy, and could no longer maintain itself, tendered its resignation. Thus the first attempt at a party cabinet in Japan came to an ignominious failure under extremely untoward circumstances. The old parties parted more widely than before, and the unfortunate ministry passed out of existence before it could face the unfriendly house of peers and tackle the enormous national deficit amounting to thirty-seven millions of _yen_. Field Marshal Count Yamagata, who received an imperial summons, formed a cabinet, on the eve of a new diet, in November, 1898, which consisted entirely of Elder Statesmen and their sympathizers. The duty of carrying out the _post-bellum_ measures had devolved upon the new cabinet. The support of the peers could be safely relied upon, but in the lower chamber nothing could be effected without the aid of some party. Perhaps nothing could show more clearly the possibility of the ultimate ministerial responsibility to the diet than the conduct of the field marshal at this juncture. He and some of his colleagues, as well as the majority of the peers, had been known as the most persistent believers in the non-partisan government and in the responsibility of the cabinet to the crown, and yet they could see absolutely no hope of performing their official duties but by allying themselves with the party which once supported Marquis Itō's _post-bellum_ measures. That party was the Liberal, which now monopolized the name Constitutionalist. It demanded certain portfolios, not from the spirit of office-hunting, but, as it was explained, for the sake of establishing the principle that no cabinet can be "transcendental," or absolutely non-partisan. According, however, to an agreement arrived at between the cabinet and the Constitutionalists, the latter satisfied themselves with a manifesto made by Count Yamagata at a social gathering, to the effect that he believed the coöperation of a party or parties commanding a majority in the diet was essential for the discharge of the business of the state. It was significant enough to hear these words from the mouth of the premier from whom they could otherwise have been least expected, and yet it is not too much to say that no cabinet, not excluding partisan cabinets, has succeeded in making a greater use of a party than his. The success was in no small measure due to Tōru Hoshi, formerly Japanese minister at Washington, and at the time under discussion the house leader of the Constitutionalists, who, with his wonderful talent for political tactics, acted for the government as the trustworthy foreman of his party. By his skillful maneuvers, an increase of the land tax, which had, as we saw, failed after causing within half a year the dissolution of two successive houses of representatives, was now,