When the year 1903 dawned upon Japan it found her political conditions extremely unstable. The alliance of the Associationists and Progressives seemed unnatural, and the discipline of Marquis Itō over the former appeared no longer tenable. The coalition had been based on no positive political principle, nor could the bulk of the Association be successfully controlled by one, however personally respected, whose double capacity as trusted Elder Statesman and an opposition leader was ever liable to lead him into positions highly repugnant to those who preferred an open and relentless warfare with the cabinet. The two parties had already parted hands when the eighteenth diet was convened for an extra session in May. As to the impossible situation of Marquis Itō, to which reference has just been made, it was not long before it was demonstrated anew and with a decisive effect. The occasion was again in connection with the naval extension measure, the urgent character of which was freshly brought home to the thoughtful people by the partial failure of Russia to effect the second evacuation of Manchuria and her simultaneous pressure upon the Peking court and the Korean frontier. The cabinet presented to the house some supplementary estimates to the budget for the fiscal year of 1903, together with eight bills, two of which related to the navy and the new three per cent. land tax. The manifest hostility of the house again called forth on May 21 a suspension of the diet. On the 23d, at a general meeting of the Association, Marquis Itō made an earnest appeal to his party to accept the compromise measure which he, as an Elder Statesman, and under the entreaties of his non-partisan friends, had agreed with the cabinet to support. Under the terms of this agreement the government was understood to reintroduce the land tax bill for show, but to consent finally to raise the required annual naval expenditure of eleven and a half millions by a yearly flotation of public bonds for six millions, retrenchment in administrative expenses to the extent of one million, and deflection from the outlay for railroads and other works to the sum of four and a half millions. The appeal of the marquis was not accepted by his party without a powerful opposition and a great sacrifice, which we shall presently see. The painful compromise measure was further mangled when the house cut the supplementary budget estimates by five millions, covering the cost of a few important undertakings, and, in return for the passage of the naval programme, exacted from the government pledges to effect a drastic reorganization of finance and administration, and to place the railroad accounts under the "extraordinary" class of national expenditures. The climax was reached when the defeat of an address to the throne proposed by the Progressive members, censuring the cabinet, was quickly followed by the passage of a resolution of similar censure which was proposed by the Associationists themselves.