complications which must have ensued had they been entrusted with jurisdiction which they were not prepared to discharge satisfactorily. But the consular courts were not free from defects. A few of the powers organized competent tribunals presided over by judicial experts, but a majority of the treaty states, not having sufficiently large interests at stake, were content to delegate consular duties to merchants, not only deficient in legal training, but also themselves engaged in the very commercial transactions upon which they might at any moment be required to adjudicate in a magisterial capacity. In any circumstances the dual functions of consul and judge could not be discharged without anomaly by the same official, for he was obliged to act as advocate in the preliminary stages of complications about which, in his position as judge, he might ultimately have to deliver an impartial verdict. In practice, however, the system worked with tolerable smoothness, and might have remained long in force had not the patriotism of the Japanese rebelled bitterly against the implication that their country was unfit to exercise one of the fundamental attributes of every sovereign state, judicial autonomy. From the very outset they spared no effort to qualify for the recovery of this attribute. Revision of the country's laws and reorganization of its law courts would necessarily have been an essential feature of the general reforms suggested by contact with the Occident, but the question of consular jurisdiction certainly constituted a special incentive. Expert assistance was obtained from France and Germany; the best features of European jurisprudence were adapted to the conditions and usages of Japan; the law courts were remodelled, and steps were taken to educate a competent judiciary. In criminal law the example of France was chiefly followed; in commercial law that of Germany; and in civil law that of the Occident generally, with due regard to the customs of the country. The jury system was not adopted, collegiate courts being regarded as more conducive to justice, and the order of procedure went from tribunals of first instance to appeal courts and finally to the court of cassation. Schools of law were quickly opened, and a well-equipped bar soon came into existence. Twelve years after the inception of these great works, Japan made formal application for revision of the treaties on the basis of abolishing consular jurisdiction. She had asked for revision in 1871, sending to Europe and America an important embassy to raise the question. But at that time the conditions originally calling for consular jurisdiction had not undergone any change such as would have justified its abolition, and the Japanese government, though very anxious to recover tariff autonomy as well as judicial, shrank from separating the two questions, lest by prematurely solving one the solution of the other might be unduly deferred. Thus the embassy failed, and though the problem