This situation and the subsequent events, however, require a more detailed consideration. According to Brinkley, the great Saigo Takamori, who was a member of the Cabinet at this time, and who had been Chief of the Army and one of the most powerful agents in bringing about the Restoration, “saw in a foreign war the sole remaining chance of achieving his ambition by lawful means. The Government’s conscription scheme, yet in its infancy, had not produced even the skeleton of an army. If Korea had to be conquered, the _samurai_ must be employed, and their employment would mean, if not their rehabilitation, at least their organization into a force which, under Saigo’s leadership, might dictate a new polity. Other members of the Cabinet believed that the nation would be disgraced if it tamely endured Korea’s insults. Thus several influential voices swelled the clamor for war. But a peace party offered strenuous opposition. Its members perceived the collateral issues of the problem, and declared that the country must not think of taking up arms during a period of radical transition.”[13] The part of China at this time, as ever, in encouraging difficult and threatening relations between Japan and Korea cannot be overlooked. In the events of 1866 the Chinese did not maintain neutrality as between the forces of the Shogunate and of the Imperial party, but secretly sold arms to the former. They also engaged in the trade of kidnapping and selling the children of indigent Japanese.[14] When, after the treaty of 1871 was concluded (namely, in 1872), the natives of Formosa murdered some shipwrecked Loochoo islanders, the Peking Government declined to acknowledge any responsibility for the conduct of the natives of Formosa. And it was only through the offices of the British Minister that the Chinese, after procrastinating and vacillating, agreed to pay 100,000 _taels_ to the families of the murdered, and 400,000 _taels_ toward the cost of a punitive expedition which had been despatched against the Formosans. In 1875 another envoy was sent to Korea, but he returned with the customary result; and in August of the same year a man-of-war _en route_ to China, which had put into the harbor of Chemulpo for fuel and water, was fired upon by the Koreans. Whereupon the crew attacked and burned the Korean fortress. And now the same question recurred in a still more exasperating form: What shall Japan do with Korea, for whose bad conduct China, while claiming rights of suzerainty in all her foreign relations and actually exercising a determining influence over her internal affairs, nevertheless declines to be responsible; and who will not of herself regard any of those regulations, or common decencies of international intercourse, which modern civilization has established as binding upon all countries?