ENLIGHTENED GOVERNMENT
leader, and had been consummated by the former's kinsmen or the latter's adherents, the men that conceived and achieved the revolution of 1867 were chiefly samurai of inferior grade, without official rank or social standing. When the whole list of these agents is compiled, it is found to contain fifty-five names altogether, and among them are only thirteen aristocrats; that is to say, five territorial feudatories and eight court nobles. Nor can any of the five feudatories be said to have acted a prominent part in the movement, while of the eight nobles two alone—Iwakura and Sanjo—exercised a sensible influence on its result. The forty-two men whose spirit informed the revolution, and whose hands carried it to completion, were young samurai who, however patriotic may have been the theories they professed, must be supposed to have been largely swayed by the promptings of personal ambition. The average age of the whole fifty-five did not exceed thirty years.
But if the precedents of history were thus violated in the main, its continuity was preserved in one important respect: the Satsuma clan originally promoted the revolution, not with the intention of restoring the direct sway of the Sovereign, but with the hope of substituting for the Tokugawa administration that of their own chiefs, the Shimazu family. Satsuma had never really bowed to the authority of Yedo. If in dark days of the Tokugawa fortunes there were
185
