If it be asked why, apart from history and national sentiment, Japan should object to a Russian Korea, the answer is, first, because there would thus be planted almost within cannon-shot of her shores a power of enormous strength and insatiable ambition; secondly, because, whatever voice in Manchuria's destiny Russia derived from her railway, the same voice in Korea's destiny was possessed by Japan as the sole owner of railways in the peninsula; thirdly, that whereas Russia had an altogether insignificant share in the foreign commerce of Korea and scarcely ten bona-fide settlers, Japan did the greater part of the over-sea trade and had tens of thousands of settlers; fourthly, that if Russia's dominions stretched uninterruptedly from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Gulf of Pechili, her ultimate absorption of north China would be as certain as sunrise; and fifthly, that such domination and such absorption would involve the practical closure of all that immense region to Japanese commerce and industry as well as to the commerce and industry of every Western nation except Russia. This last proposition did not rest solely on the fact that to oppose artificial barriers to free competition is Russia's sole hope of utilizing to her own benefit any commercial opportunities brought within her reach. It rested also on the fact that Russia had objected to foreign settlements at the marts recently opened by treaty with China to American and Japanese subjects. Without settlements, trade at those marts would be impossible, and thus Russia had constructively announced that there should be no trade but Russian, if she could prevent it.