Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/66

 involve no inconvenient responsibilities to herself. The aggressive impulses of the outside world were to be checked by an unproclaimed understanding that the territories of these States partook of the inviolability of the Middle Kingdom itself, while the States, on their side, must never expect their Suzerain to bear the consequences of their acts. This arrangement, depending largely on sentiment and prestige, retained its validity in the atmosphere of Oriental seclusion, but quickly failed to endure the test of modern Occidental practicality. Tonquin, Annam, Siam, and Burmah were withdrawn, one by one, from the circle of buffers, and from the fiction of dependence on China and independence towards all other countries. With regard to Korea, however, China proved more tenacious. The possession of the peninsula by a foreign Power would have threatened the maritime route to the Gulf of Pechili, and would have given easy access to Manchuria, the cradle of the dynasty now ruling China. Therefore the Peking statesmen endeavoured to preserve the old-time relations with the little kingdom. But they never could persuade themselves to modify the indirect methods sanctioned by tradition. Instead of boldly declaring the peninsula a dependency of the Middle Kingdom, they sought to keep up the romance of ultimate dependency and intermediate sovereignty. Thus, in 1877, Korea was suffered to conclude with Japan a treaty of which the