The tax on
alcoholic liquors yields about seventeen millions more.
Since my visit to Japan an imperial decree has been published,
promising that a national assembly shall meet in 1890; so we have
the foundations of representative government almost at hand.
Surely no other nation ever abandoned its traditions and embraced
so rapidly those of a civilization of an opposite character. This
is not development under the law of slow evolution; it seems more
like a case of spontaneous generation. Presto, change! and here
before our very eyes is presented the strange spectacle of the
most curious, backward, feudalistic Eastern nation turning into a
Western one of the most advanced type.
That Japan will succeed in her effort to establish a central
government, under something like our ideas of freedom and law, and
that she has such resources as will enable her to maintain it and
educate her people, I am glad to be able to say I believe; but
much remains to be done requiring in the race the exercise of
solid qualities, the possession of which I find some Europeans
disposed to deny them. They have travelled, perhaps, quite fast
enough, and I look for a temporary triumph of the more
conservative party. But the seed is sown, and Japan will move,
upon the whole, in the direction of progress. And so, once more,
farewell, Japan; and China, now almost within sight, all hail!
* * * * *
CHINA.
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