Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/187

 income. But the reckless expenditure of the Court and of the patrician class necessitated such heavy rates of taxation that the farmers had to borrow money and rice from officials or Buddhist priests, and since they had nothing to offer by way of security except their lands, it resulted that the temples and the nobles began to acquire great estates of which the Government hesitated to resume possession, as prescribed by law, and the agricultural population gradually fell into a condition of practical serfdom. So miserable was their plight that many preferred to embrace the status of slaves, and others turned to highway robbery and piracy. The Court, absorbed in ceremonial observances, elaborate pastimes, and superstitious extravagances, made no serious effort to check these abuses, or to assert its authority over the provincial magnates, who generally took the precaution of allying themselves with some of the prominent families in the capital. Gradually both the provincial magnates and the metropolitan nobles began to openly defy the restrictions imposed by law upon the bearing of arms, attached to their persons large guards of sword-girt soldiers, and maintained autocratic state not much inferior to that of the Court itself. The sovereign might not venture to deprive such men of the administrative posts held by them, and thus the old vice of hereditary office-bearers again came into practice, while, at the same time, the administrative im