Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/309

 blow missed, and the English minister captured one of his assailants. In May 1871, for the first time in history, the mikado granted a private interview to a foreigner, when he expressed his deep gratitude to Parkes for the help he had afforded the reconstituted Japanese state.

From the summer of 1871 to February 1873 Parkes was on leave in England, but not idle. He was an important witness before the House of Commons' committee on the consular service, and he was requested to attend the celebrated Iwakura embassy in its visits to various English cities, as well as at its presentation to the queen. On his return to Japan the effects of the experiences of the Japanese envoys in the west were speedily felt. They had hastily absorbed a number of crude ideas and accepted not a little injudicious advice, and they were less ready than before to listen to the counsels even of so trusted a friend as Parkes, who found himself more frequently at variance with the Japanese government than heretofore. The filibustering expeditions to Loochoo and Formosa in 1874 were against his advice; and it was with no little pleasure and relief that he received the mikado's message of thanks to his old colleague, Sir Thomas Wade, for the able manner in which he had solved the difficulty and averted a war between China and Japan. Parkes was more successful in persuading the Japanese to follow his counsels when there seemed grounds for expecting an invasion of Yezo by Russia. A sign of the improved tranquillity of the country was seen in 1875, when the English guard, which had been maintained at Yokohama since 1864, was withdrawn, along with the French troops. The visitation of cholera in 1878, however, led to protracted discussions on quarantine, and Parkes was absurdly accused of causing the deaths of eighty thousand Japanese. All he and the other European ministers did was to bring the quarantine regulations in line with the treaties, which the Japanese were disposed to override. In 1879 Parkes was suddenly called home by the serious illness of his wife, who had returned to England in the previous year, and who died in November 1879, four days before her husband's arrival in London. He remained in England until January 1882, busily engaged in advising the foreign office on the question of the revision of the treaties with Japan, and returned to Yokohama with the additional honour of the grand cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, never before conferred upon any representative of the crown for service in the Far East. He was received with enthusiasm by the foreign residents of all nationalities, and presented with an address of welcome, in which the foreign community indignantly repudiated the attacks which had recently been levelled at him by some Americans and Englishmen, whose object was to drive him from Japan, in order to secure a less vigilant and more compliant envoy, who would leave the field more open to the interested policy of the American legation. That the revision of the treaties, the main subject of discussion during the last year of his tenure of the legation, came to nothing, was not due to any factious opposition on the part of Parkes; but when it was proposed to abolish the consular extraterritorial jurisdiction, and confide the lives and property of foreigners to the protection of the then immature and inexperienced Japanese law-courts, the British minister could do no less than protest. Not until eleven years had elapsed after Parkes left Japan was any approach made to a settlement of the treaty revision by the new agreements of 1894.

In the spring of 1883 Parkes was offered the legation at Peking, in succession to Sir Thomas Wade. He was gazetted minister to China in July, and left Japan at the end of August, amid the lamentations of the foreign residents, and after receiving the mikado's personal regrets at his departure and cordial thanks for his long and invaluable help. He was prevented only by the rules of the service from accepting the proffered grand cordon of the Rising Sun, which had not been awarded to even the most distinguished Japanese generals. Parkes was welcomed with enthusiasm by the British community in China; but the arrival of so formidable an envoy, whose past career had been marked by a series of triumphs over Chinese diplomacy, was scarcely so agreeable to the emperor's government, who gave, however, no immediate sign of discontent. Parkes had hardly taken up his residence at Peking when he left for Korea, and, arriving at Söul 27 Oct., was back again in China by 30 Nov., with an admirable treaty. ‘He had outdone his Japanese performance of 1865, and, within two months of his arrival in China, proposed, negotiated, and concluded with the Korean government a new treaty as just and reasonable as it was practical in its provisions’ (Dickins, in Life of Parkes, ii. 207). The treaty, which is ‘a model of clear drafting,’ opened three ports and two cities in Korea, and contained carefully worded provisions for every necessity of commercial relations with the ‘hermit state.’ The British government expressed