foreign port, and from either of the said five ports to enter any other of them.”  As to duties on articles imported, they were to pay according to a tariff that was made part of the treaty, and in no case were to be subjected to higher duties than those paid, under similar circumstances, by the people of other nations.  Consuls were provided for, to reside at the five open ports, and those trading there were “permitted to import from their own or any other ports into China, and sell there and purchase therein, and export to their own or any other ports, all manner of merchandise of which the importation or exportation was not prohibited by the treaty.”  In short, so far as the five ports were concerned, there existed between us and China a general treaty of commerce.

The Commodore caused to be prepared, in the Chinese characters, a transcript of the treaty, with such verbal alterations as would make it applicable to Japan, with the view of exhibiting it to the Imperial commissioners 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.