JAPAN
moments when the great southern clan showed a disposition to assist the Shogunate, it seems certain that the motive of the rapprochement was to gain the position of residuary legatee for Satsuma rather than to secure a new lease of life for Tokugawa. Doubtless some injustice would be done to the Satsuma leaders were they all included in this verdict. A few of them clearly understood that the very existence of their country in the greatly altered conditions of the time depended upon abolition of the dual system of government and unification of the nation under one sovereign. By these men, too, the councils of the clan were ultimately swayed. It may be confidently asserted, however, that the majority of their comrades originally saw in the sequel of the revolution a Satsuma Shogunate, not an Imperial administration, and that they laboured, not for the fall of military feudalism, but for its continuance under a new head. They had ostensibly abandoned that ambition before they cemented with Choshiu the alliance which assured the success of the revolution. But the sincerity of their reformed mood remained open to suspicion, and an important result is attributable to the fact. For this suspicion operated so strongly with the leaders of the revolution that, in order to provide a safeguard against all self-seeking aspirations on the part of any one clan, they asked the Emperor to publicly register a solemn oath that a broadly based deliberative assembly should be convened
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