Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
held back pupils from going to the Dutchmen, but
by spies and detectives, by imprisonment and death,
kept thinning out of Japan the most inteUigent and
active spirits. It is the old story of a power upon
its last legs — Learning to the bastille, and courage to
the block ; when there are none left but sheep and
donkeys, the State will have been saved. But a
man must not think to cope with a revolution ; nor
a minister, however fortified with guards, to hold in
check a country that had given birth to such men
as Yoshida and his soldier-follower. The violence of
the ministerial Tarquin only served to direct atten-
tion to the illegality of his master's rule ; and people
began to turn their allegiance from Yeddo and the
Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his seclusion
at Kioto. At this juncture, whether in consequence
or not, the relations between these two rulers be-
came strained ; and the Shogun's minister set forth
for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful
sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to
precipitate events. It was a piece of religion to
defend the Mikado ; it was a plain piece of political
righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody
usurpation. To Yoshida the moment for action
seemed to have arrived. He was himself still con-
fined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelli-
gence ; but with that he sharpened a sword for the
Shogun's minister. A party of his followers were
to waylay the tyrant at a village on the Yeddo and
Kioto road, present him with a petition, and put him
to the sword. But Yoshida and his friends were
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