he will of its government is joined
the correlative, that of compelling the feeble state to abdicate its
sovereignty to the extent of exempting the intrusive foreigner from
local jurisdiction--of according the advantage of extra-territoriality.
The pliant Chinese readily yielded to this new order of things on
discovering that foreign nations possessed the will and the power to
enforce it; but the intractable Japanese must have their spirit cowed by
violence ere they can become resigned to the national degradation. It
was soon discovered that the measure was highly unpopular: the
functionaries who acceded to the demands of the hated foreigner
forfeited their lives or their posts. Nobles who were intensely hostile
to the regime, succeeded to the administration; and on them devolved the
task of inaugurating a new era, of accommodating the institutions of
their country to what they could not but regard as the first stage of a
revolution.

The delicate undertaking, of reconciling the antagonistic principles of
an encroaching commerce and of a feudal despotism, was committed to two
diplomatists eminently fitted for its proper performance. Mr. Townsend
Harris, who by long and patient study had conciliated the people and won
the confidence of the Government, as United States consul general at
Simoda, was appointed as American minister to Yedo; and Sir Rutherford
Alcock, whose experience as a British consular officer in China dated
from the period of the treaty of Nanking in 1842, was delegated as his
country's ambassador to that metropolis, the capital of the Tycoon.
Several difficulties were to be encountered at the threshold. First came
a question of currency. Commodore Perry's treaty allowed foreign coins
to be taken at only a third of their value, and under the new treaties
our merchants found that by the rate of exchange the price of native
products had been raised fifty to seventy per cent.; on the other hand,
they were able to purchase gold with silver, weight for weight. The
correspondence on this subject, written and verbal, plainly disclosed
that the free extension of trade was not contemplated by those
islanders. Next we find the Japanese gaining a diplomatic victory in the
location of the foreign factories, having managed to have them placed at
Yokuhama, instead of Kanagawa, the site stipulated for in the treaties,
an arrangement which serves to isolate and almost imprison the foreign
settlement; but as Yokuhama was