Statesmen, since his clan took by no means the leading part in the course of events immediately antecedent to the Restoration of 1868 that fell to the share of Satsuma, for example, or of Choshiu. Hizen nevertheless was a progressive province and its feudal chieftain had set up an ironworks in his territory, and had commenced coal-mining upon a practical basis, long prior to the establishment of foreign industries in the Empire on a large scale. Thus it was that Okuma Shigenobu, who had studied at Nagasaki, came early to the front in connection with the dissemination of foreign ideas, and it was perhaps as much by his energy as that of Marquis Ito that arrangements were made for the construction of the first line of railway connecting Tokio with the port of Yokohama, immediately that the Central Government was removed to the new Capital. [Illustration: COUNT AND COUNTESS OKUMA] The capital for that railway was found in England, and its Engineers were engaged partly there and partly in India. It seems difficult nowadays to imagine Japan paying 9 per cent. for a Loan, yet that was the rate at which she procured the means of developing the Scheme of Public Works on which the Government embarked, and it is matter of history that the short railway of eighteen miles by which the Japanese metropolis was joined to the chief treaty port in 1872 was phenomenally expensive. In recent times it has been feasible to build railways and execute other works of public utility in Japan on the most economical and satisfactory terms, but thirty-five years ago economy in construction was, owing to the novelty of the undertaking, practically out of the question.