views the past with a substantial was feeling of humiliation.The Japanese Restoration was as briskly accomplished as the supporters of the Imperial cause had elaborately prepared it for. The forces, which finally drive the Emperor ahead into the situation of an active ruler, were of random scale of power and of different origin, intellectual idealistic, political, and military, some at work for particular centuries and others the conclusion of the two decades instantaneously preceding the event. Of the methods adopted to guarantee the success of this movement, some were the inclination of men of high essence who were loyally and unselfishly dutiful to the national ideal, while others were surely those of jealous and rash samurai, bent on retaliation or development of their own fortunes.Among the true promoters of the progress for the Emperors reparation there were two very distinct views of its meaning. To the Conservatives it was a return to great age, to the Radicals a renewal. As time went on and the exigencies of change began to exercise their intrinsic force, it became evident that the more cautious directors of the movement could no longer craze it upon the pattern of great age. To set up in the middle of the nineteenth century for the government, was an unattainable task, and finally the views of the more radical reformers prevailed. At once it came clear that nothing short of a complete renovation of the Government of Japan would meet the changed state of affairs of the times. The way was opened for the beginning of those exceptional reforms at which the world, frequently uneducated of their true importance, has never ceased to amaze....
