Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/121

 tainer might enter the precincts of a hotel with- out dismounting from his steed, and when leaving an inn every samurai had to obtain from the landlord a document certifying that the visitor had behaved quietly during the night and had paid his reckoning before setting out. Such measures suggest that the lower orders in Tokugawa days received at the hands of the military class treatment not by any means deficient in benevolence, and when the fact is considered in conjunction with the share granted to them in the preservation of public order, it becomes impossible to regard them as the down-trodden serfs spoken of by many commentators.

Official solicitude for the welfare of the agricultural class should be mentioned in this context, though it was probably inspired by the policy of conserving and developing the farmer's tax-paying capacity rather than by any earnest thought for his happiness. Neither had the Tokugawa rulers any monopoly of such a spirit. The Taikō, though he increased the fiscal burdens of farmers, sought to protect them against extortion by enacting that assessments of their land for purposes of taxation must always be made in their presence; that any attempt to exact more than the regulated amount should be punished; that special abatements must be granted in case of poor harvests or natural calamities; that the Government should be responsible for heavy repairs of river banks, and