16th June, Norwrrsstanvia the slight confusion of metaphors, which somewhat impaired the effect of the. otherwise forcible sentence which we quoted yesterday morning from the Japan Jail, it was clearly to be seen that that journal re" gards the political situation of Japan as extremely critical. When the Constitution was granted and the first Diet was summoned, no one was more certain than the editor of the dail that the country. was ready for this concession of representative government, There were many who shook their heads and doubted whether the people had solidity enough to be trusted with such dangerous weapon, and when we jokingly urged some time since that no people in a country constantly subject to earthquakes can be expected to treat politics seriously, the Afail did its best to crash the unworthy suggestion. It could not then find words strong enough to condemn those who doubted whether the education of the Japanese people eae grounded in them, to make it had gone far enough, aid was well
safe to trust them with privileges which it has taken European nations centuries to deserve; the Emperor and his government had determined that Japan was ripe for a Constitution as well as ripe for the conclusion of treaties on equal terms with foreign Powers and those who urged that Japan was still in statu pupillari were as malicious as they were ignorant. The world was asked to watch the opening of the Diet and see how truly the Emperor and his Ministers had gauged the advance of the nation, and how right they had been in not conferring power. on the people before they were fitted to ex-excise it, but yet had not withheld it when the people had acquired the ne-fitness. The Mail now explains that all this was a mistake. The people show that they were unfit for what was given them by demanding a great deal more. The Diet has only the shadow of power as long as the Ministry is only responsible to the Emperor; it wants the substance; it wants to be abletoappoint and remove the Ministers it wants party government in the English sense, It is no use telling the Diet that it has the best of all governments; that no one can still lead the country better than the men who made the Restoration and have led the nation on ever since from success to success, until they have induced the greatest western Powers to almost recognise it as an equal. The majority of the Diet, the monster which the imperial Frankenstein has created, is not satisfied with the limitations imby its creator. The Constitution is not big enough for it. But in the words of the Dfail:—
"The Constitution of Japan is a free gift from the Emperor. "It is in no sense recognition of previously existing creates those rights for ther
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.