Tne word "extra-territoriality" is one which is used perhaps oftener iv China and Japan than in any other countries, and is regarded as a mysterious Magna Charia by subjects and as a fiery cross by Foreign Secretaries who know that sooner or later, wherever it is employed, it bodes disturbance and complication.
A well-known British official, who las done, in his time, good service to his Sovereign in China and Japan, was nick-named for years "Mother Carey's chicken," because, like the stormy petrel, his presence everywhere and always menaced a storm. Wherever he appeared the waves were agitated and the winds blew in ominous gusts. What that official was in a small) way the word extra-territoriality undoubtedly is toa greater extent. It indicates approaching difficulty and danger. The Japan Mail has been discussing the question of extra-territoriality in Japan at some length recently, and the articles on the subject hitherto printed are really a contribution of value to the We must not for 4 moment be supposed to endorse all the opinions of the writer, as we are assured that the word he so cordially bates and the principle he so vehemently denounces, represents, or did represent when it was first introduced, a necessary safeguard for the lives and liberties of civilized residents in barbarous countries. Still, the objections to extra-territoriality have rarely been urged more ably than by the contributor to the Mail.
The doctrine which is enforced is that the extra-territorial authority of foreign Ambassadors and Consuls in eastern countries is "a power fearfully "abuse" when he simply means "transgress." Still arguments and quotations against the principle are piled up in formidable array. The prestige of the Sovereign of a country is sensibly and injuriously weakened when whole communities of foreigners are withdrawn from the common restraints of the territorial Inws, and there is a most effective quotation from a speech of Lord Brougham which, to some minds, will clinch the question, "When the Roman citizen," said the great Whig Chancellor, "carried abroad with him his rights of citizenship, and boasted that he could plead in all the courts of the world Civis Romanus sum, his boast was founded not on any legal principle, but upon the fact that his barbarian countrymen had overrun the world with their arms and reduced all laws to silence, and annihilated the independence of foreign legislatures." This is true in a souse, but it cannot be denied that, however obtained, Rome, when she gifted ber citizens with this talisman, lind at her command all the culture and learning a8 well as the preponderating material force of the world, It. is true she had not originated that which was best in ancient civilization, but where she could not originate she could buy, and her rule meant a much higher civilization than could be found elsewhere. So it is now in Enstern countries. To the posi= tion of the European Minister grave exception may be taken; with the conduct of the citizens of European States grave fault may be found, but between the legal tribunals of the most corrupt European State and the legal tribunals of China, for instance, there is a great gulf. It is idle to imagine that Western Governments will entrust
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.