pan was
due to the feudal ideas which prevailed for so many centuries. The
people were impressed with the productive power of the soil, and
jumped at the conclusion that the merchant class must necessarily be
immoral, since it purchased the produce of the soil at a low price and
sold it at a profit. Very similar ideas have prevailed in countries
other than Japan. It is not so very many years ago that in England a
man of good family, much less a member of the aristocracy, going into
trade was looked upon with no very favourable eyes. We know that the
ideas that not so very many years ago obtained in this country in
reference to this matter have entirely altered. Trade is now
considered to furnish most excellent scope and opportunities for the
energy and capital of all classes of the community. And the same ideas
have been working in Japan. The merchant there is no longer a member
of a despised class. The scions of the most ancient families in Japan,
as in England, have embarked in trade and brought to their business
those high ideals which they have derived from their ancestors. The
criticisms of commercial morality in Japan which were so prevalent not
very many years ago are now entirely obsolete. I fear, however, that
the effect of them still to some extent remains, and that there are a
large number of people in this country who even now believe that the
Japanese, from a commercial point of view, are what is termed
"tricky." I hope my remarks on this head may serve to disabuse the
minds of some of those persons who still entertain these extremely
erroneous ideas.

I do not think that there is a very large amount of social intercourse
between the Europeans in Japan and the Japanese themselves. The
European in the East, or at any rate the Englishman in the East, so
far as I have been able to judge, always appears to me to assume an
air--it may be an unconscious air--of superiority to the inhabitants
of the country in which he resides. That this is frequently extremely
galling to them there can be no question. Any one who has conversed
with the intelligent native of India must be aware of that fact.
Whether the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon race be in some degree or in
a large measure due to the belief that the Anglo-Saxon has in himself
is a question I need not consider. But I think there can be no doubt
of the fact that this sense of superiority, however much or little
justification there may be for it, is a characteris