LATER PERIOD
of success consisted in widening the breach between the two Courts, and they applied themselves to achieve that end by urging the Emperor to veto the treaty. Intercourse between the feudatories and the Imperial Court was forbidden by the laws of the Shōgun. But the Shōgun himself had departed from the strictest traditions of the Tokugawa administration when he referred the question of foreign intercourse to the feudatories and to the sovereign, and when he entered no protest against the Emperor's edict directing the founding of cannon from temple bells, though such an edict constituted a plain interference in administrative affairs. The feudal nobles might well conclude that the old restrictions had been relaxed. At all events, they acted on that hypothesis; notably the Prince of Mito, who sent emissaries to Kyōtō with instructions to work strenuously for the repudiation of the treaty.
Informed of these things, the Shōgun's chief minister, Hotta, proceeded to Kyōtō. He set out with the conviction that his representations would produce a complete change of opinion in the Imperial capital. But the whole of the Court nobility opposed him, and after much discussion the Emperor issued an order that the question should be submitted to the feudatories and that an heir to the Shogunate should be nominated at once.
A significance not superficially apparent at-
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