Japan and the Japanese

DUTCH AND CHINESE TRADE. 50 1
had been executed, and another had been driven to cut himself
open, in consequence of complicity in smuggling. The private
trade had been farmed out, for the benefit of those interested in it,
at 80,000 fl. ($12,000) annually the amount at which Kampfer
had reckoned the profits from that source of the director alone.
Among the Dutch imports upon government account, woollens, silks,
velvets, cotton goods, gold, silver, tin, lead, mercury, and a few
other articles, are mentioned. Sugar, formerly a leading article, no
longer appears on the list. The returns continued to be exclusively
in camphor and copper, the latter furnished by the Japanese government
at the o'ld rates, much below the current price, by which
advantage alone was the Dutch trade sustained. Among the private
importations were spices, chemicals, and a great variety of
Paris trinkets, for which various Japanese manufacture? and prod
ucts were taken in exchange.
The Chinese trade had declined not less than that of the Dutch.
The ten junks a year, to which it was now restricted, all came from
Sha-po (not far from Chusan), half of them in January and the
other half in August their cargoes, which include a
great variety
of articles, being partly furnished by private merchants who come
over in them, but chiefly by a commercial company at Sha-po, for
whom the captains of the junks act as supercargoes. Except as to
some trifling articles, this trade seems, like that of the Dutch, to be
pretty much in the hands of the government, who, or some privileged
company under them, purchase the imports and furnish a return
cargo to each junk, two fifths in copper and the remainder in other
articles. The Chinese, however, still continued to be allowed much
more liberty than the Dutch of personal intercourse with the inhab-
itants of Nagasaki.
The settlement of California, the new trade opened thence with
China, and the idea of steam communication across the Pacific, for
which the coal of Japan might be needed, combined with the exten-
sion of the whale fishery in the Northern Japanese seas to increase
the desire in America for access to the ports of Japan. Shortly
after the visit of the Preble, the American government resolved to
send an envoy thither, backed by such a naval force, as would
ensure him a respectful hearing the cases of Biddle and Glynr
seeming to prove that the humoring policy could not be relied upon