By the magnitude of these difficulties should be measured the signal success of the Yamagata cabinet in obtaining the passage in the lower house of the land tax bill, on December 20, 1898, by the majority of 161 to 134. It was, however, bought with a heavy cost both to the cabinet and to its allies, the Constitutionalists. The former had been compelled to relinquish its "transcendentalism," and the latter risked the displeasure of their constituencies. Nor was the bill passed without a hard struggle and serious amendments. The original proposition of the government contemplated a permanent increase of the tax rate to four per cent., but the bill as it was adopted fixed it at 3.3 per cent. (the rate of the house land in the cities being, however, 5 per cent.), and limited its validity to the short period of five years, so that the estimated increase in the income of the tax, after its going into plenary force, was only over eight million _yen_, or less than half the originally intended increase. Even this reduced measure was not agreed to until the government yielded to the demands to revise the land valuation in the country in such a way as to cut the total assessed value by 3,200,000 _yen_, and, what is more, to transfer the charge of the prison expenditures, amounting to four millions, from the local to the central exchequer. The net gain by the increased tax measure would hardly rise above four million _yen_ annually, and this slight gain would be temporary, while the losses entailed on the government from the reassessment and prison expenditure would be permanent. After the expiration of the five years the government would be left worse off than at the beginning of the term. In spite of these drawbacks, the credit of raising the income of the land, income, and _saké_ taxes by forty-six millions of _yen_, and thus enabling the _post-bellum_ measures to be carried out to any real extent, belongs justly to the Yamagata cabinet. If we add to this remarkable success the establishment of the gold standard in 1898 and the passage of the new election law in 1900, and also remember that the cabinet possessed a strong unity, it becomes difficult to understand why it resigned in September, 1900, at the prime of its success. The reason was probably the characteristic modesty and prudence of the field marshal, who saw that he had attained to a success large enough to satisfy any premier, while the prolongation of his office might involve him in embarrassing relations with the new party just formed by Marquis Itō, with which the retiring premier had little sympathy.