ground in all negotiations with Oriental States, and he possessed the faculty of persuading himself that a naval demonstration might be represented to the European public as a perfectly friendly prelude to a conference. He got together a fleet of British, French, and Dutch men-of-war, and sailed with them to Hyōgō for the purpose of setting forth his project of amicable exchange.
It will be remembered that the two crucial stages of the early treaty negotiations were the passage of foreign vessels into the Bay of Kanagawa and the admission of an American Envoy to the Shōgun's capital. Hyōgō stood in the same relation to the imperial city of Kyōtō that Kanagawa occupied towards Yedo. The arrival of a foreign squadron at Hyōgō could not fail to disturb the nation even more than the apparition of Commodore Perry's vessels at Kanagawa had disturbed the Shōgun's officials. Thus, when eight foreign war-ships cast anchor off Hyōgō in November, 1866, and when the Foreign Representatives, speaking from out of the shadow of fifty cannon, set forth the details of their "friendly" exchange, all the troubles of foreign intercourse seemed to have been revived in an aggravated form. Here were the "barbarians" at the very portals of the Imperial Palace, and it did not occur to any one to suppose that such pomp and parade of instruments of war had been prepared for the mere amusement of
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