However that may be, the party cabinet, for such it was in practice, did not recede from the government service without receiving deep scars on the prestige of the party itself. The internal inharmony of the cabinet so unfortunately caused by the inexplicable conduct of Viscount Watanabe seriously reflected upon the credit of the leaders then in office. For the cabinet and the party at large, however, perhaps no event was of a more serious import than the immense power, followed by the assassination, of Tōru Hoshi. A man of blameless character in his home life and an indefatigable student of the world's new thought, Hoshi, with undaunted courage and consummate talent for party leadership, not unattended by unscrupulous conduct in money matters, had become within a short time a peerless whip of the old Liberals. He was probably the greatest instrument in their secession from the hasty union with the Progressives. During the Yamagata administration the success of the cabinet was mainly due to his efficient maneuvers in the lower house, where he was at once the contractor and the foreman of his party. When the Liberals joined in a body Marquis Itō's new party, no man could have been at once more dangerous and more indispensable to its president than Hoshi. The latter's word was as reliable and his success as assured as his rule in the party was despotic and his means detested. In the proportion that the new association was proclaimed by its founder and expected by the nation to be a model party, the peers and other neutral people deprecated Hoshi for his corrupt deeds and the marquis for allowing them to pass under his eye. The politician, on his part, was too proud to condescend to explain that he retained not a farthing for himself, and that abuses were showered on him some of which should belong to others. The respectable society looked askance at him, but in the political world no one could resist the action of this intrepid and clever politician. During the first months of the Itō cabinet Hoshi was at once minister of state for transportation and a member of the municipal council of Tōkyō, but it was not long before he incurred the ire of the peers and others and resigned his former post. It was mainly as a councilor of Tōkyō, however, that his influence was feared to contaminate the municipal government in all its branches. Finally, on June 21, 1901, he fell victim at the age of forty-one to the dagger of an assassin. The latter, Sōtarō Iba by name, formerly a fencing master and now a man of respectable social standing, and of the same age as Hoshi, had been actuated by the simple fear of the widespread corruption wrought by this engrossing enemy of the public, on whose removal he staked his life. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment. With the passing of Hoshi, the Constitutional Political Association and its president lost their most powerful and most detested figure. Marquis