Looking back at the whole affair calmly, it seems miraculous, first that two men should have risked certain death in attacking a party of some seventy Englishmen armed with all the newest weapons (though, as I have said, our escort were badly hampered in the use of their lances which after this episode we discarded), and secondly that they should have been able to work such havoc before they were stopped. It only shows how much mischief a man may do if he does not try to save his own skin—that is the whole essence of success in running amok. If he is faint-hearted and looks to his own safety, he cannot do much harm. Another wonder was that Sir Harry, conspicuous in his gold-embroidered coat, should have escaped scatheless. Obviously it was a blind fury. The attack was irrational and to us unintelligible; but the Jō-i were animated by the spirit of a priest of Isé, who lived a century earlier, and wrote a patriotic pamphlet, proving that the children of Japan are the offspring of the gods—the rest of the world the issue of dogs and cats. Was it meet and proper that the descendants of cats and dogs should defile the city, the court, and even the sacred presence of the Son of Heaven? Among the papers of our prisoner was found a document setting forth his political creed; he admitted belonging to the Jō-i—the anti-foreign party; he thought it right that the Mikado should govern; he had heard that a barbarian doctor had polluted the holy city (this alluding to Willis’ two visits with Satow and myself; so a mission of charity was turned into an excuse for murder!). Three days later he was deprived of his rank as Samurai, and put to death by the common headsman. The Mikado’s Government announced that they were prepared to strike at the root of all this fanaticism. They declared that the murder or insulting of foreigners, hitherto regarded by the fanatics as acts of heroism, was an infamous and wicked crime, and they were prepared to publish a decree enacting that those guilty of such acts should be deprived of their swords, their names struck off the roll of Samurai, that they should be executed as felons without the privilege of _Hara-kiri_, and that after death their heads should be exposed on the execution ground. We were bound to confess that such a decree as this would indeed be a drastic measure, meaning far more to a Samurai than the Western man would generally realize. I should add here that the Queen presented swords of honour to Gotō Shōjirō and Nakai in recognition of the gallantry with which they protected her minister. * * * * *