Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/259

In each country cognate causes have produced corresponding consequences. Japan having closed her doors against Occidentals after a brief experi-ence of their religious intolerance, sectarian squab-bles, and mutual jealousies, and having with fierce and relentless determination asserted her right to remain excluded, never had a Canton to furnish, during two centuries, object lessons in the deter-rent features of foreign intercourse. The impris-onment of the Dutch in Nagasaki was so complete and effectual that they had no contact with the citizens of the neighbouring town, nor had their ships' crews any opportunity of being "supplied on the cheapest terms with ardent spirits of native manufacture, generally adulterated with ingre-dients of a stimulating and maddening quality,"^[1] under the influence of which they might per-petrate outrages and violences such as those for which Canton, Macao and their environs became notorious. Thus it fell out that during the eras antecedent to renewal of foreign intercourse in the nineteenth century, no antipathy for Occidentals was created in the breasts of the people of Japan as distinguished from the military class. The latter, believing the man from the West to be a plotter against their country's independence, con-ceived a deep aversion for him, and held it a patriotic duty to exclude him. But the mass of the people had little in common with that senti-ment, and consequently, so soon as the soldier