Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/222

 bursed by the former feudatories in their new capacity of governors, who also retained the control of the only available troops, the samurai, and exercised the right of appointing and discussing officials in their districts.

The reformers pursued their purpose steadily. Having recourse once more to the device of persuasion, they contrived that several of the administrative districts, that is to say, the former fiefs, should petition the Throne for permission to surrender their local autonomy and to pass under the direct rule of the central Government. No immediate action was taken, however, in the sense of these petitions: their suggestive influence upon the public mind was left to mature.

Meanwhile the samurai presented a still more serious obstacle to political progress. Their differentiation from the farmers to whose ranks they originally belonged and their elevation into an independent class had been essentially a feudal development. They might indeed be regarded as the basis of the feudal system, for without them its existence would have been impossible. Hence their abolition as a body of hereditary soldiers and officials and their re-absorption into the mass of the people were even more necessary than the mediatisation of the fiefs. Here, too, the same method of procedure by suggestion was adopted. A number of the samurai were persuaded to seek Imperial sanction for laying aside their swords and reverting to agriculture.