Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/269

 nated by the sovereign; the House of Representatives (Shūgi-in) consisting of three hundred elected members. Freedom of conscience, of speech, and of public meeting, inviolability of domicils and correspondence, security from arrest or punishment except by due process of law, permanence of judicial appointments, and all the other essential elements of religious liberty were guaranteed. In the Diet full legislative authority was vested: without its consent no tax could be imposed, increased, or remitted, nor could any public money be paid out except the salaries of officials (which the sovereign reserved the right to fix at will), and the annual budgets had to receive its endorsement. In the Emperor were vested the prerogatives of declaring war and making peace, of concluding treaties, of appointing and dismissing officials, of approving and promulgating laws, of issuing urgency ordinances to take the temporary place of laws, and of conferring titles of nobility.

No incident in Japan's modern career seemed more hazardous than this sudden plunge into parliamentary institutions. There had been some preparation. Provincial assemblies had partially familiarised the people with the methods of deliberative bodies. But provincial assemblies were at best petty arenas,—places where the making or mending of roads and the policing and scavenging of villages came up for discussion, and