That the Japanese were at
first amiably and liberally disposed toward foreigners, their frank
admission of the Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, and especially of the
English, amply shows. Until constrained for their own safety to do so, they
took no step toward interfering with the almost unlimited privileges they
had granted. It is, indeed, difficult to condemn their course, when we
consider the enormity of their provocation, and the dangers to which they
believed themselves exposed. If Christianity has suffered, the errors of
those who misrepresented it were the cause. How soon it may be possible to
again attempt its introduction is doubtful; for, of all foreign evils, the
Japanese look upon Christianity as the worst, viewing it simply as the
covert means of conquest, and reducing to submission those over whom its
influences extend.
Beyond the removal of their rivals, the Dutch had little upon which to
congratulate themselves in this movement. The monopoly of trade was theirs,
but with the most degrading and humiliating conditions. They were obliged
to give up their factory at Firando, and take a new station upon the small
island of Desima, in the harbor of Nagasaki. To preserve even the most
limited intercourse with the Japanese, they were forced to relinquish all
sense of dignity and self-respect. The history of their relations with
Japan, for the past two hundred years, is a continual record of absolute
contempt and pitiless constraint on the one hand, and the most abject and
disgraceful servitude on the other.
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