As a matter of fact Itagaki had himself sent up a memorial to Government at the time he quitted the Council, urging the institution of a national assembly, and when he retired from the capital he found ready to his hand the nucleus of the political association that he had it in mind to form in the shape of the Ri-shi-sha, a Society which had been organised for the purpose of promoting the interests of those who espoused the popular cause. Though the Government rejected his memorial, Itagaki had reason to think that his plea had not been wholly unnoticed, inasmuch as an edict appeared summoning the Local Governors to consult at headquarters on matters of provincial administration, the improvement of communications, the regulation of public meetings, and so on, and in 1875 the Gen-Ro-In, or Senate (_lit._: Congress of Elders), was established and discharged its functions as a legislative body until it was superseded by the Diet in 1890. The Local Governors met again in 1878, and meanwhile the Satsuma clan had revolted and the country had been plunged into civil war. Itagaki and his friends had seized the right moment to point out how beneficial in allaying internal dissensions would be the institution of a Parliament which should voice the opinions and hopes of the nation. A memorial addressed by them to the Emperor urged that there could be nothing that would more directly lead to the welfare of the people than for the sovereign to signify once for all his disapproval of despotic measures and to emphasise his wish that public opinion should be consulted in regard to the conduct of affairs of State. The effect of this action on the part of the Emperor, pleaded the memorialists, would be that concurrently with the establishment of a representative assembly the people would show greater zeal in regard to the country’s vital concerns and would be able to take a genuine interest in its affairs, while with the disappearance of all traces of despotism the aspirations of the masses would rise to a higher plane and civilisation would be advanced simultaneously with the increase of national wealth and the cessation of internecine jealousies and antagonism. The leaven had been introduced into the mass of the more reflective section of the population, it was clear, and Itagaki, in his retired home at Kochi, became the acknowledged head of the _Jiyuto_, or Party of Freedom, a term which has come into general use as signifying the Liberal Party as distinct from the Progressive Party originated by Count Okuma some fifteen months later. Tosa had long been the centre, in fact, of an agitation which in 1881 assumed truly formidable proportions, and its endeavours bore fruit in the autumn of that year in the form of an Imperial Rescript, dated the 12th October, in which his Majesty announced the grant of a constitution, to take effect in 1890, and his intention of convoking a Diet for the discussion of national affairs.