e
Japanese the work of some supernatural agencies.

In the Nara epoch, the Government spent fully one-half of its total
income on works of piety. No country except in time of war ever
devoted so much to unproductive expenditures. The enormous quantities
of copper used for casting images not only exhausted the produce of
the mines but also made large inroads upon the currency, hundreds of
thousands of cash being thrown into the melting-pot. In 760 it was
found that the volume of privately coined cash exceeded one-half of
the State income, and under pretext that to suspend the circulation
of such a quantity would embarrass the people, the Government struck
a new coin--the mannen tsuho--which, while not differing appreciably
from the old cash in intrinsic value, was arbitrarily invested with
ten times the latter's purchasing power. The profit to the treasury
was enormous; the disturbance of values and the dislocation of trade
were proportionately great. Twelve years later (772), another
rescript ordered that the new coin should circulate at par with the
old. Such unstable legislation implies a very crude conception of
financial requirements.

RECLAIMED UPLANDS

It has been shown that the Daika reforms regarded all "wet fields" as
the property of the Crown, while imposing no restriction on the
ownership of uplands, these being counted as belonging to their
reclaimers. Thus, large estates began to fall into private
possession; conspicuously in the case of provincial and district
governors, who were in a position to employ forced labour, and who
frequently abused their powers in defiance of the Daika code and
decrees, where it was enacted that all profits from reclaimed lands
must be shared with the farmers.* So flagrant did these practices
become that, in 767, reclamation was declared to constitute
thereafter no title of ownership. Apparently, however, this veto
proved unpractical, for five years later (772), it was rescinded, the
only condition now attached being that the farmers must not be
distressed. Yet again, in 784, another change of policy has to be
recorded. A decree declared that governors must confine their
agricultural enterprise to public lands, on penalty of being punished
criminally. If the language of this decree be read literally, a very
evil state of affairs would seem to have existed, for the governors
are denounced as wholly indifferent to public rights or interests,
and as neglecting no means of exp