Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/51

 error to suppose, however, that the course of consular jurisdiction in Japan was disfigured by many abuses. On the whole the system worked satisfactorily, and if it hurt the feelings of patriotic Japanese, it also saved them from innumerable complications into which they would have blundered inevitably had they been entrusted with a jurisdiction which they were not prepared to exercise satisfactorily.

Nevertheless, they determined from the first that no effort should be spared to qualify for the exercise of a right which is among the fundamental attributes of every sovereign State, the right of judicial autonomy. Under any circumstances, the recasting of their laws and the reorganisation of their law courts would have occupied a prominent place in the programme of general reform suggested by contact with the Western world; but the "extra-territorial" question certainly stirred them to special legislative efforts. With the aid of foreign experts they set themselves to elaborate codes of criminal and civil law, excerpting the best features of European jurisprudence and adapting them to the conditions and usages of Japan. They also remodelled their law courts, and took steps, slower but not less earnest, to educate a judiciary competent to administer the new codes.

After twelve years devoted, with partial success, to these great works, Japan, in 1883, renewed her request for the abolition of consular jurisdic-