The attitude of Marquis Itō toward the Yamagata cabinet during the latter's tenure of office was one of a cordial adviser to a modest inquirer. When the late Ōkuma cabinet fell, the marquis was summoned by the emperor to hasten back from China, where he had been traveling, but before he touched the shores of the main island of Japan the organization of the Yamagata cabinet had practically been completed. Itō may have been somewhat chagrined, but it goes to the credit of himself and of the field marshal that they maintained all through the twenty-two months of the latter's administration the utmost mutual respect and good-will that ever could exist between two men of temperaments so widely different from each other. But the time came when Itō at last found favorable opportunities to organize a large model party, which the former Liberals (lately styled Constitutionalists) joined in a body. He had seen too well in his tours round the country to what abuses the existing party system had everywhere led, and how far the nation stood, mainly owing to the flagrant defects of the present parties, from an ideal constitutional government, the legal foundation for which he had himself designed. Gradually and with increasing force he seems to have convinced himself that there should exist a party powerful enough to counteract the present evils, sufficiently organized and disciplined to possess a distinct unity of conduct, and actuated solely by the best and most logical motives of national progress. The patriotic intention of the marquis himself in these ideas cannot for a moment be doubted: it must have seemed plain to him that his assumption of leadership in a party must mean a radical severance of himself from his past career and friends, and even the silent resentment of the latter, while his disciplinary measures would, even with his imposing prestige and influence, become less binding on the party as the latter grew in size. As soon, however, as his desires of organizing a new party were made known, on August 25, men of all classes and motives flocked under his standard in irresistible numbers. The public inauguration of the party, under the name Constitutional Political Association (_Rikken Seiyū Kwai_), took place on September 15, and eleven days later was followed by the sudden resignation of the Yamagata cabinet. Upon Itō now logically devolved the duty of taking the reins of the state in hand, but it was only after a considerable hesitation and some unexpected difficulties that the fourth Itō cabinet was finally organized on October 19. Who can deny that this was a genuine party cabinet, in an even fuller sense than the late Ōkuma cabinet, and that Marquis Itō was after all deeply convinced of the futility of a "transcendental" cabinet, which owes everything to the crown and nothing to the diet?