"No fixed policy. Then, when you have sufficiently disgusted the foreign Powers, they will wait until the Liberals and Radicals are fighting very hard, and then they will blow you out of the water."
"You are not making fun? I do not quite understand," said he. "Your Constitutions are all so bloody."
"Yes. That is exactly what they are. You are very much in earnest about yours, are you not?"
"Oh yes, we all talk politics now."
"And write politics, of course. By the way, under what—h'm, arrangements with the Government is a Japanese paper published? I mean, must you pay anything before starting a press?"
"Literary, scientific, and religious papers—no. Quite free. All purely political papers pay five hundred yen—give to the Government to keep, or else some man says he will pay."
"You must give security, you mean?"
"I do not know, but sometimes the Government can keep the money. We are purely political."
Then he asked questions about India, and appeared astonished to find that the natives there possessed considerable political power, and controlled districts.
"But have you a Constitution in India?"