386 EXPEDITION TO JAPAN. 



when they make a compact of any kind they intend it shall endure for a thousand years. For 

 this reason it will be best to deliberate and examine well the facilities for trade and the suitable- 

 ness of the port before any one is determined on." Probably nothing but the exercise of the 

 most perfect truthfulness and patience would ever have succeeded in making with them a treaty 

 at all; and from the language of one of their communications, it is obvious that, with character- 

 istic caution, they meant that their present action should be but a beginning of intercourse, which 

 might or might not be afterward made more extensive according to the results of what they 

 deemed the experiment. Thus they say : " As our ideas of things and what we each like are still 

 very dissimilar, as are also our notions of the prices or worth of things, this makes it indispen- 

 sable that we both first make a mutual trial and examination." This shows the spirit in which 

 they negotiated. The treaty has already been laid before the reader. A brief analysis of it is 

 all that is here necessary. And it is to be remarked first, that it evidently implies, in its 

 language and proper construction, future and more enlarged regulations as to commerce. Thus, 

 in article VI, it is declared: " If there be any other sort of goods wanted, or any business 

 which shall require to be arranged, there shall be careful deliberation between the parties in 

 order to settle such matters." And again, in article VII, "It is agreed that ships of the 

 United States, resorting to the ports open to them, shall be permitted to exchange gold and 

 silver coin and articles of goods for other articles of goods, under such regulations as shall be 

 temporarily established by the Japanese government for that purpose." In both these articles 

 the Japanese substituted the word " goods" for " merchandise," as from their ignorance of the 

 customs and terms used in foreign trade, they did not know what might be included in the 

 technical meaning of the word " merchandise ;" while "goods" had, to their minds, a well 

 defined and perfectly intelligible signification. The words "shall be," in the sixth article, 

 point to the probable necessity of future treaty-making with us, to " settle" " any business which 

 shall require to be arranged." Tliis, it must be remembered, was the first formal treaty they 

 ever made on the subject of foreign trade, at least since the expulsion of the Portuguese, and 

 they evidently meant to proceed cautiously by single steps. Again, in article VII, the word 

 " temporarily" is used, inserted by them, and meant to imply some future action toward a more 

 complete commercial arrangement or treaty, for which, at the present, they were not prepared. 

 They meant, therefore, their action to be initiative only now, but contemplating, prospectively, 

 a more enlarged commercial intercourse. 



Secondly. There is observable throughout, the predominating influence of the national 

 prejudice against the permanent introduction of foreigners among them. The word "reside" 

 is but once used in the whole treaty, and that in the eleventh article relative to consuls. The 

 details of conferences, already given, show how anxiously they sought to avoid having consuls at 

 all. Indeed, Commodore Perry says, " I could only induce the commissioners to agree to this 

 article, by endeavoring to convince them that it would save the Jaj>anese government much 

 trouble, if an American agent were to reside at one or both of the ports opened by the treaty, 

 to whom complaints might be made of any mal-practice of the United States' citizens who 

 might visit the Japanese dominions." They wanted no permanent foreign residents among 

 them, official or unofficial. This was shown most unequivocally in tlie remark already recorded 

 in one of the conferences : " we do not toant any women to come and remain at Simoda. ' ' Simoda 

 was one of the ports open for trade with us, they knew that our people had wives and daughters, 

 and that a man's family were ordinarily resident with him in his ])erraanent abode, and that if 

 the head of the family lived in Simoda as a Japanese would live, there would certainly be 



