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they are held out as the inventors of arts, of which they have not yet learned the most obvious uses and improvements; when a government and laws are vaunted as supremely excellent, which countenance the greatest enormities, and are insufficient to restrain the worst of crimes; and when that nation is praised for the perfection of its morality, where fraud, injustice, and inhumanity characterize the bulk of the people, and influence both their transactions with strangers and with each other, we must conclude that their panegyrists have wasted their time and talents in drawing a very false and exaggerated picture, which the evidence of a few facts totally discredits, and which, even independent of these opposing facts, could not be supported upon the basis of common probability.

About the middle of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese discovered the Japanese empire, which consists of several islands on the eastern coast of Asia, between thirty and forty degrees of north latitude. These islands form an extensive and even a polished state, which, for about a century and a half, has sequestrated itself from all connexion with foreigners, and subsists in peace, tranquillity, and splendour upon its own internal riches. This was not always the case. The character of the Japanese, active and enterprising, and at the same time of a bold, free, and open disposition, led them to encourage the resort of foreigners to their ports, and they formerly equipped fleets of their own, which traded to the neighbouring coast of China and the Philippine Islands; but the insatiable ambition of the Europeans and their destructive policy have produced that change which I mention, and secluded them for ever from any connexion with the empire of Japan.

The Spaniards, soon after they obtained the sovereignty of Portugal, availed themselves of the discovery of these islands, and began to carry on an immense trade to the coast of Japan. The Japanese were fond of this intercourse, and the emperor encouraged it

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but this favourable disposition was nothing more than an incentive to the ambition of the Spaniards to aim at the absolute sovereignty of the country. For this purpose they began by their usual mode of employing missionaries to convert the idolatrous Japanese to the Christian religion. Legions of priests were sent over, and so zealous were they in their function, that toward the end of the sixteenth century they boasted that the number of their new converts amounted to no less than six hundred thousand. The priests of the country, finding their interest daily decaying, were as zealous to preserve their ancient religion as the missionaries to destroy it. They represented the missionaries to the emperor as incendiaries, who came to sow dissensions in his dominions, and had already set the one half of his subjects at mortal enmity with the other. Political tenets, it may be believed, had mingled themselves with religious notions, and the emperor was very justly apprehensive, that this fervour shown by the Spaniards and Portuguese for the conversion of his subjects was but a preparative to their designs against the empire itself: he found it necessary, in the year 1586, to forbid the exercise of the Christian religion by a public edict, reserving still to the Spaniards and the Portuguese the liberty of a free trade in his dominions. The Spaniards were not satisfied. Some cordeliers were sent from the Philippine Islands on an embassy to the emperor, and they began to build a Christian church in his capital city of Meaco. The consequence was they were driven out by force of arms. Still, however, the indulgence of the emperor allowed these foreigners a free trade till the year 1637, when a Spanish ship happened to be taken by the Dutch, near the Cape of Good Hope, on board of which were found letters from a Portuguese officer to the court of Spain, containing the project of a conspiracy, for dethroning and putting to death the emperor of Japan and seizing the government. The Dutch were jealous of the lucrative trade

carried on by the Spaniards in this country, and im mediately conveyed intelligence of this conspiracy to the court of Japan. The Portuguese officer was seized, and confessed the whole design. He was immediately put to death, and the emperor, in a solemn assembly of his nobles, pronounced an edict, forbidding, on pain of death, any of his subjects leaving the kingdom; and commanding that all the Spaniards and Portuguese should be instantly expelled from Japan; that all Christian converts should be imprisoned, and offering a very high reward for the discovery of any priest or missionary who should remain in his dominions. The Christians actually rose in arms, and were mad enough to attempt resistance, but they were overpowered and expelled to a man. The Dutch themselves, who had done the empire this essential service, shared the same fate with all other foreigners. They were even compelled to assist in carrying the emperor's edict into execution, and to employ the cannon of their own ships in bombarding a fortress, where some of the Spaniards had betaken themselves for shelter. The only favour the Dutch received was a permission to land upon one of the smallest islands of the empire, provided they agree to take an oath that they are not of the Portuguese religion, and to trample upon the cross in testimony of it. They are then permitted to exchange their commodities with the natives, but are not allowed to fix their own prices, for this must be done by the Japanese. Such, at this day, is all the intercourse the Europeans have with the empire of Japan; with which, till the middle of the last century, they carried on a most lucrative and beneficial commerce.

CHAPTER XXV.

M. Bailly's Theory of the Origin of the Sciences among the Nations of Asia.

FROM a consideration of the manners, customs, and laws of the Chinese, and a comparison between them and the Egyptians, of whom we formerly treated at large under the period of ancient history, some learned men among the moderns have formed a conjecture thar the Chinese were originally a colony of the Egyptians, and they have thus endeavoured to account for the striking similarity between them in many particulars of their manners, laws, and attainments in the sciences. But this similarity is not confined to the Egyptians and Chinese. These nations, together with the Indians, the Persians, the Babylonians, all exhibit some of the most wonderful features of coincidence; and this circumstance would, therefore, equally conclude for the common origin of all those different nations. This subject opens views of a very curious and interesting nature.

In the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, we find an account of a dissertation read by M. de Mairan, in which that ingenious writer draws a parallel between the Egyptians and Chinese, from which he concludes, as the only means of accounting for their resemblance, that there must formerly have been a communication between these distant nations, and thinks it probable that a band of Egyptians had at some period penetrated into China.

M. de Mairan's parallel consists of the following remarkable instances of similarity, which may be classed under seven distinct heads.

First, the Egyptians and Chinese had the same fixed attachment to their ancient customs and abhorrence of innovations. Secondly, these nations were alike remarkable for the high measure of respect en

tertained by children to their parents for the reverence bestowed on old age, and for the veneration they had for the bodies of their deceased ancestors. Thirdly, the Chinese and Egyptians were alike remarkable for their aversion to war, and deficiency in military genius; and both, in consequence, were frequently subdued by neighbouring nations. Fourthly, both were remarkable for the same general knowledge of the arts and sciences, which they carried to a certain point of advancement, but were unable to go farther. Fifthly, the Egyptians had a hieroglyphical language not representative of the language they spoke, but of ideas only. The ancient Chinese had, in like manner, a hieroglyphical language distinct from the characters they used in ordinary writing. The Japanese and the Coreans derived the use of hieroglyphics from them, and employ them at this day. Sixthly, the Egyptians had a solemn festival called the Feast of the Lights. The most solemn festival of the Chinese is f the Lantern.* And in the seventh and last

the Feast Mairan remarks, that there is a similarity

place, M.

between the features of the Chinese and the ancient Egyptian statues.

A modern hypothesis, of a very ingenious nature, accounts not only for those remarkable circumstances of similarity between these two nations, but for many wonderful coincidences both in manners and in opinions of the Indians, the Persians, the Chaldeans, and, in short, of almost all the great nations of antiquity. The hypothesis alluded to is that of M. Bailly, author of the "History of the Ancient and Modern Astronomy" and is contained in a series of letters ad

*The authors of the Modern Universal History most whimsically derive the origin of this festival from the number of lamps which Noah was obliged to make use of in the ark, and make this an argument in support of their hypothesis, tha Noah himself visited China, and planted there all those arts and sciences which were known to the antediluvian worldSee Mod. Univ. Hist., vol. viii. p. 352.

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