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their country they have to support their families. Sometimes they have to support not only their parents and sisters, but also the families of their brothers and sisters. A young man has to maintain ten or twenty persons. Where can these young men obtain employment? The government monopolizes nearly everything and interferes in every business and profession which is not under the control of officials. Thus these young men are, to a certain extent, obliged to seek employment under the government. But if they want to become officials, they must change their principles, because the majority of the Japanese officials, especially those in influential positions, are very conservative. If these young men advocate liberal principles, they will always be looked upon with suspicion. There would then be no hope of promotion even if they were not compelled to resign. They have to choose whether they will starve or change their principles. Considering the hard struggles it requires to maintain one principle throughout, I am not at all surprised that the young men do change. Therefore they have no healthy influence on the government. Only when they can receive sufficient salaries without favor from the government will they speak out their real sentiments.
Meanwhile the government goes on punishing the nominal editors of newspapers, sending them into cruel and unjust imprisonment. They stop all publications which they do not like, and every effort that is made to voice the thought and feelings of the patriotic citizen is suppressed in its incipiency. And besides all this, what, I ask, is the present condition of trade in Japan? Merchants are daily ruined by overtaxation. All Japanese manufacturers are ruined by the excess of imports from England which are brought in almost free of duty.
The Japanese government has been tampering with the subject of the treaty revision for the last sixteen years, and they have not yet arrived at any satisfactory arrangement. On the contrary, the Cabinet seem just now bent on entering into a most disadvantageous treaty.
In two years after the ratification of the proposed treaty, the whole country is to be thrown open to all foreigners. A
