Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/239

Rh On the contrary, it is the merchants who, no doubt, create the most serious difficulties. It may be all very natural and what was to have been anticipated, but it is not the less embarrassing. And in estimating the difficulties to be overcome in any attempt to improve the aspect of affairs, if the ill-disguised enmity of the governing classes and the indisposition of the Executive Government to give practical effect to the treaties be classed among the first and principal of these, the unscrupulous character and dealings of foreigners who frequent the ports for the purposes of trade are only second, and scarcely inferior in importance, from the sinister character of the influence they exercise.

Of course the foreign merchant found many causes of legitimate dissatisfaction. Prominent among them was official interference in business matters. From the very earliest times the country's foreign commerce had been subject to close and often vexatious supervision by officials. The trade with Korea had been controlled by one great family; the trade with China by another, and the trade with the Dutch factory in Nagasaki by governors whose interference tended only to hamper its growth. Even a statesman of such general breadth of view as the Tairō, Ii Kamon-no-Kami, entertained a rooted conviction that all goods imported from abroad should pass through official hands on their way to Japanese consumers. A tendency to act upon that conviction caused vexatious meddling with the course of