mmissioners 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.

Of the difficulties encountered, even after the Japanese had consented
to negotiate, the best account may be given from the conferences and
discussions between the negotiators, of all which most accurate reports
were kept on both sides, in the form of dialogue. At the first meeting
of the Commodore with the Imperial commissioners, on March 8th, he acted
on the plan he had proposed to himself with respect to the treaty with
China, and thus addressed them:

_Commodore Perry_. I think it would be better for the two nations that a
treaty similar to the one between my country and the Chinese should be
made between us. I have prepared the draft of one almost identical with
our treaty with China. I have been sent here by my Government to make a
treaty with yours; if I do not succeed now, my Government will probably
send more ships here; but I hope we shall soon settle matters amicably.

_Japanese_. We wish for time to have the document translated into the
Japanese language.

This was but one among a hundred proofs of their extreme suspicion and
caution; for there was not one of the Imperial commissioners, probably,
who could not have read, without the least difficulty, the document as
furnished by the Commodore; and certain it is that their interpreters
could have read it off into Japanese at once.

The Commodore, who wish