These interests,
growing out of the seed planted in the early Canton Factory days,
had their origin in the termination by the act of the British
Government of the trading monopoly enjoyed until the thirties of
last century by the East India Company. Left without proper
definition until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had formally won
the principle of trading-rights at five open ports, and thus
established a first basis of agreement between England and China
(to which all the trading powers hastened to subscribe), these
interests expanded in a half-hearted way until 1860, when in order
to terminate friction, the principle of extraterritoriality was
boldly borrowed from the Turkish Capitulations, and made the rock
on which the entire fabric of international dealings in China was
based. These treaties, with their always-recurring "most-favoured
nation" clause, and their implication of equal treatment for all
Powers alike, constitute the Public Law of the Far East, just as
much as the Treaties between the Nations constitute the Public Law
of Europe; and any attempt to destroy, cripple, or limit their
scope and function has been very generally deemed an assault on
all the High Contracting Parties alike. By a thoroughly
Machiavellian piece of reasoning, those who have been responsible
for the framing of recent Japanese policy, have held it essential
to their plan to keep the world chained to the principle of
extraterritoriality and Chinese Tariff and economic subjection
because these things, imposing as they necessarily do restrictions
and limitations in many fields, leave it free to the Japanese to
place themselves outside and beyond these restrictions and
limitations; and, by means of special zones and secret
encroachments, to extend their influence so widely that ultimately
foreign treaty-ports and foreign interests may be left isolated
and at the mercy of the "Higher machinery" which their hegemony is
installing.
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