him, frankly avowing their want of knowledge respecting it, and trusted to his acting justly. He framed such a tariff as he regarded best for the interests of Japan, placing raw products, food supplies, and building materials on the free list or at a duty of five per cent., manufactures, etc., at a duty of twenty per cent., and liquors at thirty-five per cent. He intended to give Japan the power of revising the duty at the end of ten years, but the construction placed by the powers upon the language used by him made the concurrence of all the nations necessary to any change.
Lord Elgin, who negotiated the British treaty a short time after that of the United States, succeeded in having placed in the five per cent. column manufactures of wool and cotton, the articles most largely exported to the East by British merchants. Under the most favored nation practice all countries shared in the rate, and it had the effect, when the tariff revision of 1866 took place, of a reduction of all imports to a five per cent. duty.
This tariff proved disastrous to Japan. It destroyed the cultivation of cotton and in great measure the small manufactories, throwing many thousands of laborers out of employment. It deprived the government of all revenue from this important source, the duties collected barely paying the cost of maintaining the customs service, and amounting to less than one thirtieth of its income, while in the United States and many other countries the customs receipts equal or exceed one half of the national revenues. But the most serious objection to its maintenance was the humiliation it caused
