ABSTRACT
IT will be time to review the growth of constitutional government in Japan when it has grown. But there is the birth of a Constitution, and there is perhaps its infancy. Possibly it is History, but at any rate it is a story. My view is that it is not so much the story of a birth as the story of an experiment in grafting. Japan, searching for plants of goodly medicinal uses in the garden of European institutions, chanced upon one of great reputed worth, and, fearful of omitting a salient ingredient from her dose of the syrup of modern civilisation, she has cherished this seed of great repute with a design of extracting its saving essence in order to the just dispensation of the mixture. This, rather than the unnatural phenomenon of a birth without parental agency, is the story of the being of the Japanese Constitution. And we wait to witness or to hear of the ultimate action upon the Japanese body politic of the highly ingenious febrifuge brewed or distilled from the foundling plant.
