of Japan to commerce and Christianity. It was a labor which required great patience and toil, and continued through several months. Commissioners of high rank were delegated to conduct the negotiations with him; and although men of the first intelligence in the empire, they acted with the simplicity of children in their conferences with the American negotiator. Twenty years after the event the papers of the Shogun were made accessible to the American legation at Tokio, and a translation of the accounts of some of these conferences as recorded by the imperial commissioners was transmitted to the Department of State, which shows a curious state of mind on the part of the commissioners.[1]
Mr. Harris was invited by them to state what he desired to accomplish in the negotiations, and to give them an account of the condition of political and commercial affairs in the outer world. He discoursed to them for more than two hours, and this was followed by a series of questions and answers. In his journal he records that as the shades of evening began to gather he ordered in the lamps, "but the commissioners told me I had fairly beaten them in my powers of endurance, and they must beg to be excused." The Japanese record shows that in the course of the conferences the commissioners asked, among other things, if it was necessary after establishing treaty relations to admit ministers, and when the American "ambassador" had replied in the affirmative, they asked—
Question. What is the duty of a minister?
- ↑ D. W. Stevens to Secretary of State, Foreign Relations, 1879, p. 621.
