Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/31

 of Occidental jurisprudence and embodied in exhaustive codes; provision made for the administration of justice by well-equipped tribunals and an educated judiciary; an extensive system of national education inaugurated, with universities turning out students capable of original research in the sciences and philosophies of the West; the State represented at foreign courts by competent diplomatists; the people supplied with an ample number of journals and periodicals; the foundations of a great manufacturing career laid, and the respect of foreign Powers unreservedly won. Such a record may well excite wonder.

But before crediting the Japanese with exceptional qualities for the sake of their modern progress, we must agree upon a standard of comparison, and that is difficult, since the history of nations furnishes only one case approximately parallel to that of Japan. Were any liberal-minded Western people brought suddenly into contact with a civilisation immensely higher than its own, a civilisation presenting material advantages and attractions that the least intelligent must appreciate, who can venture to gauge the impulse of adoption or the speed of assimilation that such a people would develop? Suppose that to the eyes of the English of a hundred years ago there had been abruptly exposed a stage whereon railways ran, steamboats plied, telegraphs flashed their messages to limitless distances, telephones made whispers audible across continents, torpe-