Note Return to text — EXTRINSIC SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT IN JAPAN.

This objection would be fatal, if we were advocating that the Asiatic people ought to have constitutional government. But we have not been. We have been arguing that since constitutional government has irresistible attraction to those who can understand what it is, and since it has already been established in Japan, the other Asiatic nations will begin to desire it, notwithstanding their seeming ignorance and conservatism; and because they are adapted for it in all the respects but one, the want of desire to establish it, when that desire is enkindled within their breasts, then a "great democratic revolution," which De Tocqueville said was going on in Europe,[18] and which is still going on there, will also go on in Asia. We may observe in passing, that Sir Henry Maine's arguments against the irresistibility of popular government[19] have no connection with our position, being directed against the ultra-democratic tendency of modern times which is beyond the scope of our present discussion.