It may also be added that in the commercial development considerable inexperience and too great zeal in every branch, industrial, financial, and commercial, has been displayed: in the over-rapid increase, for instance, of banks and companies of all kinds, in the mismanagement of new societies, and in the abuse that has frequently been made of credit. All these things are new to Japan, and they have occasionally not been treated as they should have been. We have bestowed so much praise on the economical development of the country that we may surely be allowed to observe that much has been done too quickly. But this has been the case in all new countries, in the two Americas, as well as in Australia, and one must not therefore be too severe on Japan in this respect, but also not surprised if it occasionally results in the paralysis of business and even in an occasional crisis. As often occurs, a rise in salaries accompanied industrial expansion, and proved very inconvenient to export industries, all the more so as these are for the most part mainly nominal, and prices rose almost immediately. During the last two years an inverse movement has taken place, and we must do the Japanese the justice to say that when they saw the danger they displayed considerable sagacity, and both the Government and the public expressed a wish to limit their desire for expansion. If there were serious economic difficulties in Japan in 1897–98, they seem now to have passed away; they were but the result of over-activity, and the present outlook in the Mikado’s dominion, although not as brilliant as it was immediately after the war, is once more normal. The transitory troubles of the Empire of the Rising Sun will not, in our opinion, become very grave if the Japanese thoroughly understand that it is to their interest rather to increase their contact with foreigners than to limit it. Since 1889 there has existed in Japan a reactionary movement against strangers, which apparently reached its culminating point in 1896, and now seems gradually diminishing. It is sincerely to be hoped that this feeling of suspicion will absolutely disappear. One of the numerous reasons which contributed to raise a certain hostility against Europeans was their attitude with respect to the renewal of the treaties. This important question, which so closely concerned the relations between the Japanese and foreigners, has now been settled, and if Japanese statesmen are well inspired, the solution that has been arrived at should greatly enhance the true interests of their country.