Tokio, Mar. 26.
The final session of the 46th meeting of the Japanese Imperial Diet ended in a free-for-all fight between the Ministerialist party and the various Opposition organizations in that august chamber. The Ministerialist party, which outnumbers the Opposition parties by two to one, won the scrap, and then proceeded to add insult to injury by having certain Opposition members hauled' before the Disciplinary Committee of the House of Representatives for punishment on the ground that they had violated certain techni-colitics regarding the regulations of the House. An attempt made by the Opposition members to apportion the blame for the fistic encounter on the floor of the Diet was first howled down and then voted down by the sheer force of numbers possessed by the Minister-laiists. All of which goes to show what a comic farce the toy parliament of Japan is. These ugly eddies do not in any way hamper the steady ctirrent of the nation's progress for that is yet far removed from the hands of battling parliamentarians and infuriated _party-ists, but as year succeeds year, the general public are manifesting open contempt for the Diet, especially for the Lower House, and the comments of the Japanese press for a number of years have been a combination of bitter sarcasm and sorrowful disappointment that the institution created by the Emperor Meiji has not blossomed into the great hopes entertained when it was first formulated. The Diet, as at present constituted,.will never really have actual power, for the legislature has been completely emasculated of. authority, but it might at least have maintained its respect. Instead, to-day, the prestige and popularity. of the legislature have considerably declined.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.