Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/252

 tation in the full sense of the term. What they wanted was the creation of some machinery for securing to the samurai at large a voice in the management of State affairs. They chafed against the fact that whereas the efforts and sacrifices demanded by the Restoration had fallen equally on the whole military class, the official prizes under the resulting system were monopolised by a small coterie of men belonging to the four principal clans. It is on record that Itagaki would have been content originally with an assembly consisting half of officials, half of non-official samurai, and not including any popular element whatever.

But the Government did not believe that the time had come for even such a measure as the Tosa liberals advocated. The statesmen in power conceived that the nation must be educated up to constitutional standards, and that the first step should be to provide an official model. Accordingly, in 1874, arrangements were made for periodically convening an assembly of prefectural governors, in order that they might act as channels of communication between the central authorities and the provincial population, and might mutually exchange ideas as to the safest and most effective methods of encouraging progress within the limits of their jurisdictions. This was intended to be the embryo of representative institutions. But the governors, being officials appointed by the Cabinet, did not bear in any