Chapter IV.
Influences that shaped the Growth of the
Representative Idea of Government.
We have seen in the last two chapters how the Shogunate and feudalism fell, and how the Meiji government was inaugurated. We have also observed in the memorials of leading statesmen abundant proof of their willingness and zeal to introduce a representative system of government. We have also seen the Kogisho convened and dissolved.
John Stuart Mill has pointed out, in his Representative Government, several social conditions when representative government is inapplicable or unsuitable:
1.When the people are not willing to receive it.
2.When the people are not willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation. "Representative institutions necessarily depend for permanence upon the readiness of the people to fight for them in case of their being endangered."
3.When the people are not willing and able to fulfil the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them.
4.When the people have not learned the first lesson of obedience.
5.When the people are too passive; when they are ready to submit to tyranny.
Now when we look at the Japan of 1871, even her greatest admirers must admit that she was far from being able to fulfil the social conditions necessary for the success of representative government. Japan was obedient, but too submissive. She had not yet learned the first lesson of freedom, that is, when and how to resist, in the faith that resistance to tyrants is obedience to truth; that the irrepressible kicker
