Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/551

Rh was considered a grievous insult; and the fine assessed on Satsuma penalized one of the leaders of the pro-Mikado party. The negotiations at Yokohama betwenbetween [sic] the Japanese and the Anglo-French allies, culminating in an offer of military assistance to the Shogunate against the hostile daimyos, and the rejection of the offer by the government, cannot be dwelt upon here. At Kyoto the hostile party was in the ascendant. At the first conference between the Mikado and the Shogun the latter accepted the imperial commands to expel the barbarians, using peaceful negotiations if possible, but if this did not succeed then they were to be swept away.

Even after this agreement, the Shogunate officials hoped that they might prolong the negotiations and eventually find some outlet from the impasse in which they found themselves. But the opposition very shrewdly refused to trust the Yedo party. It demanded that a specific date be fixed for the expulsion. The Shogun and his advisers tried to avoid such a decision, but on June 5 the issue was joined, and the Mikado fixed the 25th of that month as the date for the expulsion of the barbarians. The Shogun dutifully accepted this decree, knowing full well that it could not be enforced, and fully intending to temporize further if possible. So, at Yokohama, on the morning of June 24, the representative of the Shogun paid over to the British chargé £110,000 in payment of the indemnities for the murder of Richardson and the second attack on the British legation, and shortly afterwards forwarded to the foreign ministers the following communication:

I have the honor to inform your excellency that I have received full powers to act on the subject herein stated.

I have received orders from his Majesty the Tycoon, now residing at Kioto, and who received orders from the Mikado to cause the open ports to be closed and the foreigners (subjects) of the treaty powers to be removed, as our people will have no intercourse with them; hence negotiation on this subject will afterwards take place with your excellency.

This order was the logical outcome of Lord Manabe's equivocal statement early in 1859. The Shogunate had asserted that the foreign relations were only a temporary evil. Now, with the rapid increase in the imperial prestige, the time had come when the Shogunate could be compelled to bring these relations to a close. But the Shogunate knew that it would be madness to attempt to expel the foreigners, especially when at that moment the largest fleet ever