Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/246
‘The duty of 10 per cent. will be imposed on import articles in general, of 5 per cent. on some specified articles as before, of 7½ per cent. on cotton and wool, and of 20 per cent. to 25 per cent. on articles of luxury.
‘The duty of 5 per cent. will be imposed on all exports as before.
‘The duties shall be ad valorem at the place of import and export.
‘The new tariff will not come into force before the end of 1889.
‘The extraterritoriality will not be entirely done away with at once, but at first only remodelled, and for this purpose the foreigners in Japan shall be made to have different status according to their place of abode.
‘During the three years after the treaty revision, the foreigners living in the seven treaty ports shall be entirely outside the Japanese jurisdiction—i.e., Consular jurisdiction will be kept up in regard to them.
‘But even during the same three years the foreigners residing and possessing property in the interior shall be subject to Japanese jurisdiction, except in cases of capital punishment, to which the laws of their own countries find application.
‘In the civil and criminal cases against foreigners in the interior, foreign jurists shall be employed as juries, but these juries are to be in the hire of the Japanese Government, and do not represent the State they belong to.
‘During the twelve years after 1891 inclusive, the arrangement is to be as follows: The distinction between the foreigners in the treaty ports and those in the interior is abolished, but in all civil and criminal cases concerning foreigners the Japanese laws shall be applied in the joint court of the Japanese judges and the foreign judges representing their Governments.
‘After the expiration of the said twelve years, the Japanese Government shall exercise unlimited jurisdiction over all foreigners.’
The revision itself was perhaps the best obtainable at the time, but the conditions under which it was obtained, namely, the Europeanization of Japan, disgusted a certain class of men both in and out of the Government. When the draft of the revised treaty was submitted to a Cabinet Council in May, a unanimous consent could not be obtained. The late Count Katsu, who had formerly been a member of the Tokugawa Government, and to whose rare statesmanship and personal influence was due the peaceful transition of power from the Shogun to the New Imperial Government, presented memoranda to the Cabinet enumerating ‘twenty-one faults of the time’ emanating from an attempt to imitate the externals of Western civilization. Later it was a member of the Cabinet itself, General Tani, Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, lately returned from Europe, who pointed out seven defects in the draft of the revised treaty, and resigned his office. M. de Boissonade, the French jurist who was engaged in compiling our