Page:American Diplomacy in the Orient - Foster (1903).djvu/158

 to their distance from Europe, the early resolution of hese nations to exclude all foreigners from a lodgment on their territory and from all but the least possible intercourse, operated favorably for the preservation of their autonomy. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the principles of international law were undergoing a formative process, and little respect was paid to the rights of nations which could not be enforced by the sword. In the nineteenth century a higher regard was beginning to be shown towards weaker nations, and these two empires could then with greater safety to their independence permit foreign intercourse.

The opening of Japan was a natural sequence of the partial unlocking of the doors of China by British arms. England, France, and Russia were the European nations most interested in bringing about that result. But the development of commerce in the Pacific, as the middle of the century approached, pointed unmistakably to the young republic of North America as the power destined to bring about that important event. The English historian Creasy, in tracing the rapid growth of the United States and its recent great development on the Pacific coast, writing in 1851, predicted the forcible opening of Japan by this government, and, misinterpreting its spirit, which he characterized as "bold, intrusive, and unscrupulous," he added: "America will scarcely imitate the forbearance shown by England at the end of our late war with the Celestial Empire." He looked forward to changes of great magnitude in the Orient to be brought about