1845.] CONSPIRACY. 41 



"The death-blow of Catholicism in Japan was now 

 about to be struck, and we are told that the fury that 

 dealt it, was roused by the discovery of a conspiracy 

 against the throne, formed by the native Christians and 

 Portuguese. Papers, found on board a Portuguese vessel 

 captured off the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch, are 

 said to have brought this treason to light. It is not, 

 however, necessary to believe this. It is easier to fabri- 

 cate a letter, or a tale of a letter, than to conspire. 

 Forgery is less hazardous than treason. Besides, the 

 story has been denied most solemnly by the Jesuits, and 

 their word cannot be worse than that of the Dutch, on 

 whom its credibility rests. Moreover, another and a 

 better cause is at hand. The patience which had borne 

 with heroic, if not Christian constancy, so many trials, was 

 exhausted ; and the native Catholics of Arima and Sima- 

 bara flew to arms. Thirty-eight thousand of them fortified 

 themselves in the latter place. The besieging army, 

 eighty thousand strong, could not reduce the fortress; 

 and the Dutch director Kockebecker, was summoned to 

 its aid. He came. The walls of Simabara were battered 

 by the Dutch cannon, and its brave defenders perished to 

 a man, fighting to the last. Some apology might again 

 be made for this co-operation at the siege of Simabara, 

 had its defenders been the countrymen of Alva, or Re- 

 quesens, or John of Austria, or Alexander Earnese. But 

 truth requires that the measures of Kockebecker should 

 be regarded as the alternative, which he deliberately pre- 

 ferred to an interruption of the Dutch trade. Our sense 

 of his guilty choice cannot be expressed in stronger lan- 

 guage, than by declaring it unparalleled in the history of 



