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136 in Korea shows them to be destitute of moral and intellectual fibre. They are debauched in business, and the prevalence of dishonourable practices in public life makes them indifferent to private virtue. Their interpretation of the laws of their settlements, as of their own country, is corrupt. Might is right; the sense of power is tempered neither by reason, justice nor generosity. Their existence from day to day, their habits and their manners, their commercial and social degradation, complete an abominable travesty of the civilisation which they profess to have studied. It is intolerable that a Government aspiring to the dignity of a first-class Power should allow its settlements in a friendly and foreign country to be a blot upon its own prestige, and a disgrace to the land that harbours them.

There are some twenty-five thousand Japanese in Korea, and the Japanese settlement is the curse of every treaty port in Korea. It is at once the centre of business, and the scene of uproar, riot, and confusion. In the comparative nakedness of the women, in the noise and violence of the shopkeepers, in the litter of the streets, there is nothing to suggest the delicate culture of Japan. The modesty, cleanliness, and politeness, so characteristic of the Japanese, are conspicuously absent in their settlements in this country. Transformation has taken place with transmigration. The merchant has become a rowdy; the coolie is impudent, violent, and, in general, an outcast more prone to steal than to work. Master and man alike terrorise the Koreans, who go in fear of their lives whenever they have transactions with the Japanese. Before the Chino-Japanese war this spirit had not displayed itself to any great extent in the capital of the Hermit Kingdom. With the successful conclusion of that campaign,