Japan and the Japanese

248 JAPAN. A. D. IG'JO.
less, till the bidder cries out, Here 1 am, and then draws near to
sign tho note, and to put his true name to it with black ink, which
the Japanese always carry about them. The goods first put up
being sold, they proceed to others, which they sell in the samo
manner; and so they go on till the sum determined by the emperor
hath been raised, which is commonly done in two or three, seldom
in four, days of sale. The day after each Kambany the goods
are delivered to the buyer, and carried off. A company of mer-
chants of the five imperial cities have obtained the monopoly for
buying and selling raw silks, of which they would fain oblige us to
make up at least one third of our cargoes.
" The duty or custom levied upon goods has been introduced at
Nagasaki, merely with an intent to take off part of the vast profits
which foreigners get upon their commodities, and to assign them
for the use and maintenance of the poorer inhabitants of the town,
among whom it is distributed in proportion to the trouble they must
be at, on account of the public offices they must serve by turns.
They commonly receive in this distribution from three to fifteen
taels each. The duty laid upon the goods belonging to the Company
is fifteen per cent., producing forty-live thousand taels. The
goods belonging to private persons, which are commonly sold at the
end of the Kambany, pay much more no less than sixty -five per
cent, upon goods sold by the piece, and sixty-seven per cent, on
goods sold by weight. Hating each sort at half the whole amount,
and the whole 'produce is twenty-seven thousand taels. The reason
they give for the difference in the rate of duty is, because private
goods are brought over in the Company's ships, at the Company's
expense, and, consequently, deserve less profit. The like reason,
Chinese, for the
that is, because they are not at the expense of such long
and hazardous voyages as the Dutch, but are nearer at hand, pay
a duty of sixty per cent, for all their goods, which brings in a sum of
three hundred and sixty thousand taels duty. If to this be added the
yearly rent for our houses and factories, which is five thousand five
hundred and eighty taels, and that of the Chinese factory, which is
sixteen thousand taels, it makes up in all a sum of four hundred
and fifty-three thousand five hundred and eighty taels [upwards of
half a million 01" dollars], which the foreign commerce produces
annually to the magistrates and inhabitants of Nagasaki.