that when Iyemochi obeyed the summons of the Ten-shi to visit Kioto with, in the first place, the avowed object of concerting measures for the expulsion of aliens, he took the fatal step of subordinating his own party’s policy to that of the Court party, and thereby hastened the downfall of the Tokugawa family, for the strength of the Shogunate had lain in the assertion of its prerogatives as inheriting the privileges of its founder, the law-giver Iyeyasu, and who re-established it in the beginning of the Seventeenth Century. But to return to the events of 1864, it was with excellent judgment and an intuitive perception of the favourable turn which affairs were then taking that Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister, who had succeeded Sir Rutherford Alcock, seized the precise moment to despatch two members of his Legation staff, Messrs Mitford and Satow,—the present Lord Redesdale, and Sir Ernest Satow, now British representative at Peking,—to see the Shogun and personally endeavour to arrive at some satisfactory arrangement concerning the opening of the remaining ports to trade for which sanction had been obtained by the provisions of the Elgin treaty. The visit ended with complete satisfaction to the negotiators, and when the four powers directly concerned—viz. Holland, France, the United States, and Britain—urged officially on the Shogun the desirability of speedily opening Hiogo (Kobé) he agreed to write a letter to his imperial master suggesting that this should be done. The Emperor Komei at first refused but ultimately gave his consent. It was settled that Hiogo, and with it Osaka, should be opened to foreign trade and residence on and from the 1st of January 1868, which was five years later than had been contemplated by the framers of the Elgin treaty, but under the then existing circumstances it was highly creditable to the delegates to have achieved so much.