Page:The empire and the century.djvu/794

 as the old reactionary forces which resented foreign intrusion had been finally overcome. It was a great Englishman, Sir Harry Parkes, who first unravelled the tangled thread of Western diplomacy in Japan, and the makers of modern Japan soon realized that they had no more sincere and enlightened well-wisher than the plain-spoken British Minister who represented his country in Tokio from 1865 to 1888. But there was one unfortunate circumstance which militated for a long time against a generous recognition in this as in other European countries of the real character of Japan. Most of the British residents were engaged in trade, and lived in the treaty ports set apart under our earlier treaties, as in China, for foreign settlement. Thus it happened that they were brought almost exclusively into contact with the Japanese trading-class, a class which, under the old feudal system, occupied a very low place in the social hierarchy, and was the last to adapt its methods to the new conditions of Western intercourse. The British merchants in Japan were, therefore, apt not merely to compare the Japanese merchant unfavourably with the same class in China—where it represents per contra the healthiest and most intelligent element in the social organism—but also to judge the whole of Japan equally unfavourably by the light of their limited experience. Sounder views, nevertheless, prevailed in the long run, and in spite of considerable opposition from the British communities in Japan, Lord Rosebery's Government had the courage to admit, even before the signal proof of national efficiency she gave to the world in the course of her war against China, that Japan was entitled to be released from the disabilities in matters of international intercourse, which it has been the custom of Western Powers to impose upon Oriental nations on a lower plane of civilization. The revision of the British treaties with Japan in 1894, and our renunciation of the special privileges of extra-territoriality and of exclusive jurisdiction over British subjects, were fully justified by the event. The