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The Vicar Apostolic, however, gave his grounds for making such a demand calmly and logically depicted the damage already done by an anti-foreign and revolutionary movement in the districts not a thousand miles from Peking, and solemnly forecasted what was soon to happen....
An ill-starred reform movement, initiated by the Emperor, had failed, the government was discredited, and the Empress Dowager seized the throne for herself. All China interpreted the event to presage a return to the old order of things a general anti-foreign movement.
The anti-foreign outbreak along the Yangtsekiang, in the summer of 1891, was an unpleasant incident, from which at one time it looked as if serious consequences might follow; but the ebullition fortunately passed away without an international crisis, and it may be hoped that the improved means of exercising diplomatic pressure at Pekin will render these attacks less frequent, and their settlement and redress more rapid.
Jealousies and anti-foreign enactments, tariff manipulations and commercial embitterment, destructive, foolish, exasperating obstructions that benefit no human being, will minister to this craving without completely allaying it.
Since our revolution, anti-foreign feelings have been suppressed by us, but anti-foreign spirit lives and may take advantage of the critical time and rise in another Boxer movement with general massacre of foreigners.
The schedule of reforms was practically endless. Expensive costumes were seized and burned; theatres were relegated to a remote suburb of the city; actors were ostracized; a censorship of publications checked under severe penalties the compilation of all anti-foreign or immoral literature, and even children's toys were legislated for.
The existence of foreign settlements in Japan, under consular jurisdiction, was in itself a constant exasperation to national pride, an indication of national weakness. It had so been proclaimed in print, in speeches by members of the anti-foreign league, in speeches made in parliament.
Such an edict was in effect an exhortation to every Japanese subject to organize an anti-foreign crusade, and it "publicly committed the Bakufu Court to a policy which the latter had neither the power to carry out nor any intention of attempting to carry out." But at this juncture something like a reaction took place in the Imperial capital.
Travellers, however, who wish to see Japan should do so at once; for the country is changing every day, and in three years more will be so Europeanised that little will be left worth seeing; or a violent anti-foreign revulsion of feeling may have taken place, and then the ports will be closed more strictly than they were even before the execution of the first treaty.
This is our most earnest prayer, presented with all reverence and humility. The advice of these notables was well received. A formal invitation to an audience with the Emperor was extended to the foreign ambassadors. They soon accepted the invitation. Their appearance in the old anti-foreign city of Kioto, before the personage who was considered by the masses as divine, was significant.
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