This is the substance of the Convention of 1905. Its effect was to substitute Japan for Korea in all official relations with foreign Powers, past as well as future. In other words, foreign nations must hereafter deal directly and exclusively with Japan in everything affecting their diplomatic relations with Korea. Japan, on her part, is equally bound to respect and maintain all treaty rights and all treaty engagements granted by Korea in the past. The “principle of solidarity which unites the two Empires” implies, and in fact actually includes, even more than this. While the functions of Japan’s direct and exclusive control were primarily confined to matters connected with the direction of foreign affairs, some measure of control over Korea’s domestic affairs also is necessarily implied. It is not to be supposed, for example, that Japan could permit internal disorders, or the perpetuation of domestic abuses, or, in brief, any of those disturbing conditions which had hitherto prevented Korean progress and development. International control, dissociated from an orderly and progressive domestic policy, is not practicable; it is not even conceivable. The complications and embarrassments which would inevitably arise from such a complete dissociation of the two functions of government would far outweigh the advantages. One of the most fruitful sources of international difficulties in Korea has always been found in domestic misgovernment. Having assumed the responsibility and the obligations incident to the direction of foreign affairs, Japan has the right to ask, and, if need be, to insist, that her task shall not be made heavier by Korea herself. This did not, indeed, imply, that Japan should assume charge of the administrative machinery of the Korean Government, but that she should enjoy the right to have recourse to those measures of guidance which naturally and properly fall within the sphere of the duties she had assumed. Fortunately, however, any discussion relating to this question must of necessity be purely academic; since not only the Convention of November 17th, but also the Protocols and other Agreements concluded before that time give ample warrant for everything Japan has attempted or accomplished in this regard. If corroborative evidence is needed for the account just given of the negotiations which ended in the Convention of November, 1905, and upon the basis of which Marquis Ito, as the Representative of the Japanese Government, had been conducting his administration in Korea up to the time of the new Convention of July, 1907, it is afforded in fullest measure in the following manner. A notable “Memorial” regarding the circumstances under which the earlier agreement was formed was presented to the Korean Emperor on the fifteenth of December of the same year; this document lends the authority of all the other chief actors in this event to every important detail of the account as already given.[39]