There are about 2,500 foreigners (excluding Chinese) and about 37 millions of Japanese in Japan. For the sake of the Former the great Powers of the world have kept the latter in practical bondage since 1808. If it be thought that "bondage" is too strong term, think for a moment what the state of affairs is. Japan has no power over her own tariff, and is compelled to tax her agricultural class excessively to provide a revenue, She has no jurisdiction over a single foreigner, every one of whom must be tried before his own Consul in accordance with the laws of his own country, for no Power except the United States acknowledges the authority of Japanese law at all. Any Japanese with a grievance against a foreigner must take action before that foreigner's Consul, according to that foreigner's law as'administered by a man who has frequently had no legal training whatever, for a dozen out of the 16 Consular Courts are presided over by men whose only education has been in the countinghouse. The foreigners in Japan are entirely exempted from taxation and the treaty limits within which they reside are municipal government is 'a farce there. practically exempt from any law at all, for Japan has spent five million dollars lighting and buoying her coasts and spends 200,000 dollars a year in maintaining the system; but foreign ships pay no light dues and no harbour or tonnage dues, but simply steam in, empty their ballast till the anchorage is being ruined, and steam out again, Japan is absolutely entitled by sacred treaties to change all this, yet the outcome of all her efforts to bring the 16 Treaty Powers to agree upon the details of Treaty Revision have resulted, as I showed in my last letter, in the serious proposal of conditions equally unjust, impolitic, un-ni and humiliating—conditions stituting a howling shame" as the representative of a very Power described them to me. Is such a state of things likely continue? It is not. Then how is going to be altered First let us see which are the Treaty Powers, what are their interests and by whom are they represented? The fullowing table tells the story Total Countries.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.