If Russia had not been reasonably prompt to take the step, the eyes of British statesmen must sooner or later have been opened to the opportunity. The method by which British intervention proceeds in Asiatic countries is well known. It has always had but slight regard for native sovereignty, no matter how high the state of social or artistic or intellectual development on the part of the native races affected. British administrators, or, if Japan had retained its nominal sovereignty, British "residents" or agents, would really have governed the country through the Tycoon or the Mikado, or both--preferably the Tycoon, for he was a military ruler, and affairs could have been handled more readily through him. Events in Japan must have anticipated the subsequent history of Egypt, on a much more magnificent scale. Again, though there would have been a readier entrance for American and European trade than in the case of Russian intervention, the best of everything Japanese would certainly have gone to England. And once again, the free, independent, powerful, masterful Japanese empire of the present day, thrilling with a new life in which all the civilization of the Occident is made the handmaid of an ancient and undaunted Asiatic people, would not have been. In the unlikely event that the Japanese, in default of Perry's expedition, had been left quite alone for another generation or two, their case would not have been better in the long run. They would simply have missed the chance they got. Left a "hermit nation," they would sooner or later have fallen under the influence of one Western country or another, and been so seriously retarded in the race of civilization that they could never have caught up. America was the only country that could have opened to them the wonderful career that they have had. The high noon of the nineteenth century was the golden moment for the commencement of their development along the line of Western civilization. If the hour had not struck then for them it would not have struck at all. Time, the helping hand, the protecting influence of an unselfish friend among the nations, and the golden gift of destiny, were all represented for Japan in the rescuing sails of Skipper Jennings's bark, that lucky day in the wide Pacific. CHAPTER XIX IF ORSINI'S BOMB HAD NOT FAILED TO DESTROY NAPOLEON III