In the use of firearms the prejudices of the natives have been needlessly offended. Shooting game is not generally allowed to the people, yet foreigners here often been reckless in the pursuit of sport, regardless where they sought it, and terrifying the people. Again, riding on horseback is allowed only to the nobles, and it is a source of provocation to all classes to witness the equestrian performances of foreigners of every station in life, whose amusement at times consists in making pedestrians scatter as they gallop through crowded streets. Moreover, the Chinese servants in the employ of foreigners habitually insult and oppress the natives, presuming on immunity as retainers of the privileged stranger. As the Japanese hold the Celestials in supreme contempt, and as that feeling is fully reciprocated, collisions are the consequence, and it is pretty certain that the 'servants' of the legation who were murdered were offending Chinamen. Guizot remarks, in his 'History of Civilization,' 'of all systems of government, it may be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that the most difficult to establish and render effectual, is the federative system--which eminently requires the greatest maturity of reason, of morality, and of civilization, in which it is applied. The very nature itself of feudalism is opposed to order and legality.' It was with the executive of a feudal federative system that European and American governments negotiated these treaties, a duplicate sovereign over six hundred and twenty feudal barons, commanding above two hundred thousand armed retainers, governing a people wanting in reason and morality. The existence of the theocratic element served further to complicate the machinery of government at Yedo. It may be questioned whether the ministers of the tycoon were ever heartily in favor of an abandonment of the policy of exclusivism. It is probable that they yielded to the demands made upon them, as the least of two evils, a refusal promising to involve them in wars, which might eventually lead to their subjugation to one of the least scrupulous of the aggressive powers. In the inauguration of the system, Japanese statesmanship was exposed to a severe ordeal. On one hand was the task of pacifying the native opponents of the fundamental change in polity, and on the other, the duty of evading, as far as possible, the concessions that had been wrung from them by the foreigner. Something answering to demagoguism is found in the Ultra Orient: there was not only the honest opposition of the patriot, but the factious hostility of the office seeker, against whom the ministry were called to contend. As a consequence, those who were responsible for the innovation soon lost their lives or their posts. Their successors found themselves, as is often the case in political changes, obliged, when in power, to carry out the general policy which, when in opposition, they decried. Instead of abrogating the treaties,