A feature of the week has been the appearance of
a sort of spasm of courage in the counsels of Pekin. The Chinese Foreign Office has suddenly agreed to a treaty with America under which the port of Mukden and two other ports are opened to foreign trade, and Washington can at once send Consuls there. The agreement was made in the most hurried way, and ratifica- tions are to be exchanged by telegraph, evidently to avoid the effect of any new menace on, the Chinese Court. As we go to press, however, it is announced that the Czar has expressed his acquiescence in this arrangement. A similar treaty was, moreover, ratified on Monday between China and Japan, by which the ports selected are admitted to be places for international residence and trade, and the Japanese are declared entitled to " full participation in all privileges, immunities, and advantages which have been or may be 'granted" to any nation whatever. This covers the grand privilege of "extra-territoriality '—that is, of having all cases tried by a Consular Commission—and finally places the Japanese in China in the honoured position of Europeans. -The Japanese, in fact, are henceforth to be treated as subjects of a Great Power,—an extraordinary advance from the day when they were regarded and described by the Mandarins as tolerated " dwarfs." It is the usual historic) result of any combat between "dwarfs " and "giants."
