524 TRADE AND COMMERCE. 



Cotton stuffs were less in demand, -and so were spices. In these 

 articles also, the supply far exceeded the demand, and so it did in 

 the case of steel, tin, and lead, mirrors, Danzig bottle-glass, amber, 

 patterned linen, and plain Dutch linen. Of the rich exportation of 

 metal (gold, silver, and copper), only a very modest share seems to 

 have passed through English hands. 



It is easy to see from Cocks' journal how the difficulties and 

 limitations of Japanese foreign commerce grew with the increasing 

 hostility towards Christianity during the reign of the Shogun 

 Hidetada. The Shogun lyemitsu, the energetic grandson of 

 lyeyasu, had scarce grasped the reins of government, in 1623, 

 when the last great outburst against foreigners occurred. Spaniards 

 and Portuguese were banished from the country ; the Christians 

 were persecuted, tortured, and slain ; Japanese subjects were for- 

 bidden on pain of death to leave the land, and commerce was 

 restricted to the Dutch and Chinese. Herewith begins a new 

 period in the trade with Japan, namely : 



b. — The time of trade zvith the Dutch and Chinese in Nagasaki, 

 from 1 641-1 854. 



When the English had withdrawn from the 'Japanese market, 

 and the trade of the Iberian Catholics had been destroyed with 

 those last annihilating blows at Christianity which were de- 

 scribed in vol. i. pp. 304-311, the Dutch found themselves alone, 

 masters of the field indeed, but in no enviable position among the 

 Japanese. Obedient to the Shogun's decree of May 11, 1641, to 

 give up immediately their factory at Hirado and remove to the 

 little, artificial island (De-shima) formerly intended for the Portu- 

 guese, close to Nagasaki, they made the change ten days later. 



It was with unclean hands that the Dutch took possession of 

 De-shima. Excluding all criticism except from their own side, and 

 disregarding the prejudiced opinions of the Jesuits, and judging 

 many of their actions in the spirit of that age, and with an under- 

 standing of the mutual enmity and calumniation between them 

 and the Iberian Catholics — making all these allowances, one still 

 cannot acquit them of complicity in those frightful massacres 

 through which Christianity was extirpated in Japan. Nor can we 

 refrain from the no less heavy charge that they denied their own 

 religion in Nagasaki and sacrificed their honour in order to retain 

 a profitable trade. They proclaimed their subjection to the will of 

 the Japanese and humbled themselves before them on so many 

 occasions, that these — accustomed to regard their own commercial 

 classes rather as a necessary evil, and to put them after the farmer 

 and artisan, like the old Romans — could not but form a bad opinion 

 of their character and their sense of honour. 



On De-shima lived sixteen to twenty Dutchmen in the East 

 India Company's service, restricted in their movements, and 



