JAPAN
which he had not explicitly divested himself, while, on the other hand, any prerogative not definitely reserved might in the end be tacitly abandoned, it appeared that the Constitution was admirably adapted both for saving and for surrendering the situation.
It need scarcely be related that the agitators found in this ambiguity a new platform. They had obtained a Constitution and a Diet, but they had not obtained an instrument for pulling down the "Clan Government" (hambatsu-seifu) since it stood secure from attack under the ægis of the sovereign's mandate. Yet to pull down that Government had been the true purpose of their agitation from the outset, and they now saw themselves threatened with failure. They dared not raise their voices against any reservation of the Emperor's prerogatives. The nation would not have suffered such a protest, nor could the agitators themselves have found heart to clamour for more at the very moment when the Throne had given so much. The only resource was to read their own interpretation into the text of the Constitution, and to demonstrate practically that a cabinet not acknowledging responsibility to the legislature is virtually impotent for law-making and even for administrative purposes.
Such are the broad outlines of the contest that began in the first session of the Diet and continued for several years. The special points of controversy need not be mentioned in detail. Just
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