atching the embassy.
But its failure was a foregone conclusion. The conditions originally
necessitating extraterritorial jurisdiction had not, by 1871
undergone any change justifying its abolition. It is not to be
denied, on the other hand, that the consular courts themselves
invited criticism. Some of the great Western powers had organized
competent tribunals with expert judicial officials, but others, whose
trade with Japan was comparatively insignificant, were content to
entrust consular duties to merchants, who not only lacked legal
training but were also themselves engaged in the commercial
transactions upon which they might, at any moment, be required to
adjudicate magisterially.

ENGRAVING: DANJURO, A FAMOUS ACTOR, AS BENKEI IN KANJINCHO (A PLAY)

It cannot be contended that this obviously imperfect system was
disfigured by many abuses. On the whole, it worked passably well, and
if its organic faults helped to discredit it, there is no denying
that it saved the Japanese from complications which would inevitably
have arisen had they been entrusted with jurisdiction which they were
not prepared to exercise satisfactorily. Moreover, the system had
vicarious usefulness; for the ardent desire of Japanese patriots to
recover the judicial autonomy, which is a fundamental attribute of
every sovereign State, impelled them to recast their laws and
reorganize their law courts with a degree of diligence which would
otherwise have probably been less conspicuous. Twelve years of this
work, carried on with the aid of thoroughly competent foreign
jurists, placed Japan in possession of codes of criminal and civil
law in which the best features of European jurisprudence were applied
to the conditions and usages of Japan. Then, in 1883, Japan renewed
her proposal for the abolition of consular jurisdiction, and by way
of compensation she promised to throw the country completely open and
to remove all restrictions hitherto imposed on foreign trade, travel,
and residence within her realm.

But this was a problem against whose liberal solution the
international prejudice of the West was strongly enlisted. No
Oriental State had ever previously sought such recognition, and the
Occident, without exception, was extremely reluctant to entrust the
lives and properties of its subjects and citizens to the keeping of a
"pagan" people. Not unnaturally the foreigners resident in Japan, who
would have been directly affected by the change, prot