In August, however, the Emperor invited the British Minister, Sir F. Plunkett, to a private audience, and warmly eulogised the part which Great Britain had taken in the prolonged effort to revise the treaties on a basis acceptable to Japan, also intimating his intention of sending to the then Prince of Wales—now his Majesty King Edward VII.—the Grand Cross of the Order of the Chrysanthemum, by the hand of the Imperial Prince Komatsu. The ceremony of investiture subsequently took place at Marlborough House, and the German Emperor was simultaneously the recipient of the order named, likewise in recognition of the friendly part played towards Japan in connection with the Revision Conference. Count Inouye resigned his post of Foreign Minister, as a matter of course, when the Cabinet refused to endorse his proposition, but he remained in the Government for the time being, his place at the Foreign Office being taken by Count Ito, who was also at that time Prime Minister. Count Inouye became Court Councillor, but in the ensuing summer he was again in the Cabinet as Minister for Commerce and Agriculture, the portfolio of Foreign Affairs having in the previous February been assumed by Count Okuma, on the retirement of Count Ito to become President of the Sumitsu-In, or Privy Council, then newly created as his Majesty’s highest resort of counsel. Ten Cabinet Ministers were given seats as _ex-officio_ members of this council, one of them of course being Count Okuma whose return to official life, after seven years’ retirement following his long service as Minister of Finance between 1873 and 1881, was a source of immense gratification to the people at large as well as to his colleagues in the Ministry, implying as it did a fusion of the interests of the Progressives (Kai-shin-to) and the Government party represented by Counts Inouye and Ito, at a rather critical period in the history of the nation’s affairs. At the Foreign Office the policy of Count Inouye was ably and steadfastly pursued in respect of treaty revision by Count Okuma, who on receiving the congratulations of the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce in 1889 on the promulgation of the Constitution, took occasion to say that “one national aspiration yet remained unsatisfied,—the revision of the treaties.” In 1890 Count Inouye became a Lord-in-waiting, which office had never previously been filled by other than a member of the old Court nobility, and in bestowing this unusual honour on one of the Elder Statesmen the Emperor gave signal proof of his appreciation of Count Inouye’s matured judgment and ability.