e required, weeding out the worthless and
reducing to the ranks all officers that conducted themselves in a
manner unbecoming a gentleman and by election of officers giving every
soldier equal opportunity to rise to the highest rank. This great
measure eliminated the aristocracy in the Army and made the Emperor the
idol of the soldiers, so that from that time forward every effort of
the aristocracy to oppose the Emperor in giving to the country a
Government by the people was futile for the Army supported him with a
force that was irresistible. He ordered the districts laid out
according to latitude and longitude, making due allowance for
population, the smallest district being one degree of latitude in
breadth and two degrees of longitude in length, and the largest (which
were situated in the frozen regions of the Arctic or in the great
desert) five degrees of latitude in breadth and ten degrees of
longitude in length, and when they were surveyed he ordered that the
land should be assessed without improvements at its full value, and the
owner had to swear that he would sell to the Government the land at its
assessed valuation.

"The aristocracy almost to a man swore to a low valuation, so when five
years had passed the Emperor issued a decree appropriating to
Government use all land over and above six hundred and forty acres held
by private owners and paying for it one-fifth of the total assessment
for the previous five years with twenty per cent. added for
improvements, the aristocracy had to accept it and their power was
broken forever, for the Emperor leased the land to the cultivators of
the soil at the rate of four per cent. per annum of the price that the
Government paid for the land, dividing the land into small farms and
giving the renter the right of purchase at any time.

"The aristocracy and the Church have been in every country the enemies
of liberty and human progress. The Emperor saw the evil effects of the
liquor traffic and to abate the evil he abolished the manufacture and
sale of liquors by individuals and placed their manufacture and sale in
the care of the Department of Manufactures and year by year he added
tobacco, drugs and chemicals, sugar, salt, tea, coffee, coal oil, stone
coal, charcoal and all the metals, and placed the coinage and currency
of the Empire under the control of the Department of Finance known
throughout the world as the Bank of Eurasia. He established our present
system of edu