The new cabinet, with its illustrious leader, its absolute majority in the lower house, and its immense following in the country, seems to have been attended from its beginning by no inconsiderable difficulties, some of which, indeed, proved more serious than could have been expected. Foremost among them stood the financial ghost, which would never down, but which now, with the dispatch of troops to North China, made an unusually ominous appearance before the inchoate government. The increased tax measures, mainly in sugar and _saké_ taxes and customs duties, intended to raise twenty-one million _yen_, readily passed through the house of representatives, where the landed interest still outweighed the urban, but met a different treatment from the peers. That these would be cool toward the cabinet may have been expected, but no man had imagined that they would present so stubborn an opposition and such adroit tactics as they did. Their stand was as determined, when it was taken, as it had previously been unsuspected. Between February 25 and March 12, 1901, were employed in vain the persuasion of the premier, reconciliation by four Elders, and two successive suspensions of the diet. Never before in the history of the Japanese Constitution had the house of peers so seriously opposed the government, nor had its action ever caused a suspension of the imperial diet. The anomaly of the situation becomes more evident when one recalls that the upper chamber was now wielding its weapons against its creator, who had called it into being as a conservative force to check the radicalism of the other chamber. Above the fear of a dissolution, as they were, the peers caused a complete deadlock. How it was removed by an imperial word, and how unprecedented the procedure was, has been described in connection with our account of the Constitution. The survival of the Itō cabinet through this crisis, and the conduct of the premier in allowing his trouble to be remedied by an aid from the throne, were not unattended by the increased ill-will of the peers and even by some significant whispers among the rank and file of his own party.