The nearest approach to a precedent was to be found in our treaty with China, made in 1844. This therefore was carefully studied by the Commodore. Its purport was "a treaty or general convention of peace, amity, and commerce," and to settle the rules to "be mutually observed in the intercourse of the respective countries." So far as "commerce" is concerned, it permitted "the citizens of the United States to frequent" five ports in China "and to reside with their families and trade there, and to proceed at pleasure with their vessels and merchandise to or from any foreign port, and from either of the said five ports to enter any other of them." As to duties on articles imported, they were to pay according to a tariff that was made part of the treaty, and in no case were to be subjected to higher duties than those paid, under similar circumstances, by the people of other nations. Consuls were provided for, to reside at the five open ports, and those trading there were "permitted to import from their own or any other ports into China, and sell there and purchase therein, and export to their own or any other ports, all manner of merchandise of which the importation or exportation was not prohibited by the treaty." In short, so far as the five ports were concerned, there existed between us and China a general treaty of commerce. The Commodore caused to be prepared, in the Chinese characters, a transcript of the treaty, with such verbal alterations as would make it applicable to Japan, with the view of exhibiting it to the Imperial commissioners of that country should he be so successful as to open negotiations. He was not sanguine enough to hope that he could procure an entire adoption of the Chinese treaty by the Japanese. He was not ignorant of the difference in national characteristics between the inhabitants of China and the more independent, self-reliant, and sturdy natives of the Japanese islands. He knew that the latter held the former in some degree of contempt and treated them in the matter of trade very much as they treated the Dutch. He was also aware that the Chinese, when they made their treaty, did know something of the advantages that might result from intercourse with the rest of the world; while as to the Japanese, in their long-continued isolation, either they neither knew nor desired such advantages, or, if they knew them, feared they might be purchased at too high a price in the introduction of foreigners, who, as in the case of the Portuguese, centuries before, might seek to overturn the empire. It was too much, therefore, to expect that the Japanese would in all the particulars of a treaty imitate the Chinese.