Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/506

494 advantage, entailing, as it would, on merchants the expense of keeping up establishments in various cities for the same trade which had hitherto more economically centred in the Open Ports.

But all this was merely the beginning of the trouble. As the date for the enforcement of the treaty drew near, and men had to make arrangements accordingly, they found themselves confronted with obstacles which could never have arisen had the negotiators exercised ordinary foresight. The ambiguity of the document was not the least of its defects. A careful consideration of what was not stipulated for, as well as of what was, showed that, under the new treaty, British subjects might, if the Japanese Government so ordained, lose their privilege of publishing news papers and holding public meetings, in a word, their birthright of free speech, and that it was doubtful whether their doctors and lawyers would be allowed to practise without a Japanese diploma. Even the period for which leases could be held was left uncertain; the conditions of the sale and re-purchase of leases in what had hitherto been the foreign "Concessions" were left uncertain; the right to employ labour and to start industries was left uncertain; the right of foreign insurance agencies to continue to do business was left uncertain. As for the question of taxation,—a matter of prime importance if ever there was one,—which almost immediately ramified into a labyrinth, the negotiators had simply not troubled their heads about it. With things in this state, and with new r duties of from thirty to forty per cent levied precisely on those articles which are prime necessities to us but not to the Japanese, could any one imagine such terms having ever been agreed to except as the result of a disastrous war? The authorities in Downing Street apparently considered that a state of things endurable by British communities in certain other countries, should be good enough for the British community in Japan. But surely there is all the difference in the world between acquiescing in inconveniences of immemorial date, and running one's neck into a new noose.