Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/28

 a more patient trial would have dispelled her suspicions, and that instead of closing her gates against the world for the sake of Roman Catholicism two hundred and fifty years ago, she might safely have kept them open in its despite, and commenced then the career of progress which promises to carry her so far to-day. But to adopt such a course in the face of such dissuasive experiences, she must have been as much in advance of her time as she ultimately fell behind it by choosing a policy of isolation. No nation with which history makes us acquainted would have acted a part different from the one she selected, and if she clung to her seclusion long enough to be counted a benighted bigot, it was largely because a geographical accident made it easy for her, on the one hand, to live apart, and kept her, on the other, beyond the effective range of influences which would certainly have drawn her out of her hermitage. Besides, on the Occident only, or, to narrow the facts to their exact limits, on the Roman Catholic countries of the Occident only, did she turn her back between 1630 and 1857. The Dutch had commercial access to her dominions, and the Chinese might come and go at will. Grant that the Hollanders were subjected to humiliating restrictions, and grant also that there was no reciprocity of intercourse with China, since Japanese subjects might not cross to the neighbouring empire; yet it must still be conceded that these ultimate vetoes were dictated