"First—the enormous area of the Empire and the defective facilities for communication would greatly impede the assembling of a Parliament, especially in time of emergency. Secondly, the immovable character of Chinese conservatism forbade a change even of the system of taxation, notwithstanding the State’s urgent need of funds, and there was, therefore, still greater difficulty in effecting the radical alterations required by a constitutional system. Thirdly, the Chinese were untrained in local administration, the institution of which was an essential prelude to a national Assembly. He said he was astonished at the silence of Occidental publicists on this question so vital to the peace of the Orient." CHINA: A. D. 1905-1908. Chinese Exclusion Laws of the United States. Boycott of American goods in the Empire. See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1905-1908. CHINA: A. D. 1905-1909. Disputes with Japan. The Fa-ku-menn Railway and the Antung-Mukden Railway questions. Settlement of the latter by Japanese ultimatum. It could hardly have been possible for cordially friendly relations to be maintained between China and Japan, in the circumstances which transferred to the latter the extensive rights and privileges in Southern Manchuria, which Russia had acquired in that Chinese province by treaty and lease. By a protocol of December, 1905, after the closing of the Russo-Japanese War, there was an attempt, between Peking and Tokyo, to define the effects of the Treaty of Portsmouth, especially in the bearings of that article of the Treaty which ceded to Japan, "with the consent of the Government of China, the lease of Port Arthur, of Talien, and of the adjacent territories and territorial waters, as well as the rights, privileges and concessions connected with this lease or forming part thereof," and likewise, of "all the public works and property within the territory over which the above lease extends"; but misunderstandings and differences of opinion were sure to arise. Whether it has been more by the fault of Japan than of China that they arose and increased until, in the past year, they became a serious estrangement, is a question on which the judgment of foreign observers is conflicting. The veteran representative of the London Times at Peking, whose friendship for the Chinese is fast-fixed by long residence among them, lays the greater weight of responsibility on Japan, though he finds a lack of reasonableness on both sides. Japan, he says (writing July 19, 1909), was welcomed in China with open arms after her victorious war. "No nation ever had a greater opportunity, and faulty must have been the policy which in so short a time has wrought so great a change. Japan is now regarded with a comprehensive distrust that is most disquieting.