Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/270

 where political parties exercised no legislative function nor found any opportunity to attack the Government or to debate problems of national interest. Thus the convening of a Diet and the sudden transfer of financial and legislative authority from the Throne and its entourage of tried statesmen to the hands of men whose qualifications for public life rested on the verdict of electors themselves apparently devoid of all right to guide their choice,—this sweeping innovation seemed likely to tax severely, if not to over-tax completely, the progressive capacities of the nation.

Some reassurance was derived from closer inspection of the election law. It then appeared that, owing to the various restrictions imposed, only four hundred and sixty thousand persons would be enfranchised out of a nation of forty-three millions. Yet against that discovery had to be set the certainty that the new constituencies must consist chiefly of farmers, manufacturers, and merchants. A parliament of samurai would have appeared reasonable and natural, inasmuch as administrative and executive duties had been discharged by samurai for many centuries, and such a parliament it was that the chief advocates of representative government originally had in view. But the times had dealt harshly with the samurai. Although wholly without business experience, many of them had not hesitated to risk in commercial or industrial enterprises the entire sums re-