on is
rather a monotonous thing to work after the fun of sending members to
Parliament has died out. You have a Parliament, have you not?"

"Oh yes, _with_ parties--Liberal and Radical."

"Then they will both tell lies to you and to each other. Then they will
pass bills, and spend their time fighting each other. Then all the
foreign governments will discover that you have no fixed policy."

"Ah, yes. But the Constitution." The little hands were crossed in his
lap. The cigarette hung limply from his mouth.

"No fixed policy. Then, when you have sufficiently disgusted the foreign
Powers, they will wait until the Liberals and Radicals are fighting very
hard, and then they will blow you out of the water."

"You are not making fun? I do not quite understand," said he. "Your
Constitutions are all so bloody."

"Yes. That is exactly what they are. You are very much in earnest about
yours, are you not?"

"Oh yes, we all talk politics now."

"And write politics, of course. By the way, under what--h'm,
arrangements with the Government is a Japanese paper published? I mean,
must you pay anything before starting a press?"

"Literary, scientific, and religious papers--no. Quite free. All purely
political papers pay five hundred yen--give to the Government to keep,
or else some man says he will pay."

"You must give security, you mean?"

"I do not know, but sometimes the Government can keep the money. We are
purely political."

Then he asked questions about India, and appeared astonished to find
that the natives there possessed considerable political power, and
controlled districts.

"But have you a Constitution in India?"

"I am afraid that we have not."

"Ah!"

He crushed me there, and I left very humbly, but cheered by the promise
that the _Tokio Public Opinion_ would contain an account of my words.
Mercifully, that respectable journal is printed in Japanese, so the hash
will not be served up to a large table. I would give a good deal to
discover what meaning he attached to my forecast of Constitutional
government in Japan.

"We all talk politics now." That was the sentence which remained to me.
It was true talk. Men of the Educational Department in Tokio told me
that the students would "talk politics" by the hour if you allowed them.
At present they were talking in the abstract about their new plaything,
the Constitution, with its Upper House and its Lower House, its
committees, its questions of supply, its