ENLIGHTENED GOVERNMENT
body politic, and the Emperor had recovered the full power of the purse. Such sweeping changes might have been expected to cause considerable commotion. But they were accomplished with little disturbance, first, because the way had been skilfully prepared for them; secondly, because those mainly affected by them had some compensations; and thirdly, because the samurai, without whose coöperation no disaffection could be serious, remained in full possession of their emoluments, and found nothing irksome to themselves in the new arrangement. As to the second of these reasons, it has to be explained that although the former feudal chiefs, deprived of their official status and reduced to the position of private gentlemen without even a patent of nobility to distinguish them from their old vassals and retainers, seemed to have received a stunning blow, they did not in truth find their altered positions and circumstances intolerably painful. To be suddenly stripped of official and military authority which had been exercised by their families for centuries, could not fail to be a bitter experience. But, on the other hand, possession of such authority had been merely nominal in the great majority of cases, since the seneschals (karo) had grasped its substance, leaving the shadow only to their masters. Thus what was expunged from the lives of these feudal autocrats had not bulked largely in their existence, and their regret at parting with it must have been in some degree tem-
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