But when every liability had been taken into consideration it was the Vice-minister’s somewhat mournful conviction that the Reserve was not equal to even one-tenth of the total of the bills and various other kinds of paper money in existence, for there were 20,000,000 _yen_ worth of the _Hans_ notes out somewhere, and 55,000,000 worth of the Dai-jo-kwan paper, issued to meet the unavoidable cost of setting up the new administration in 1868. This financial difficulty, indeed, was but one of the many problems that the Government of the Restored Imperial Rule was faced with at the beginning of its career, apart from all considerations of the opposition that it had to expect from those who were averse to the change and resolved to appeal to arms in support of their convictions. Indeed, the insight which even a superficial examination of the financial position in the early years of Meiji is apt to afford the student must tend to add to the wonder always experienced that the marvellous results which it is on all sides acknowledged were achieved by the men in power were attained with no greater sacrifices than those which had to be recorded. The spirit in which the individual members of the administration set about their tasks is, however, well exemplified by the tone of the memorandum addressed by the Department to the Government in December 1872. These were its terms:— “It is our purpose to persist in our efforts to increase the Reserve Fund and bring it up to an amount which may one day prove to be of great service to the financial administration of the country. It is, therefore, our earnest prayer that not only during the time that we are in office, but down to a hundred years yet to come, in pursuance of the plan here laid out, efforts shall be made year after year to augment the fund, thus protecting and advancing the prosperity of the nation, in order to establish the foundation of popular confidence in the national currency, and furthermore that the fund shall positively never be spent for expenditures under the General Account. Should the Cabinet find our scheme acceptable, we would most humbly beg for the immediate sanction of his August Majesty, with the counter signatures of all the Ministers of State. With these prayers we hereby submit this memorandum to the careful consideration of the Government.” From that time forward the Government never neglected any opportunity of augmenting the Reserve Fund, and when at a later date the change to the adoption of a gold standard was in preparation the fund which had been so wisely initiated in 1872 was of the greatest help in partly paving the way for the resumption of specie payments by Count Matsukata.