INTERCOLONIAL COMMERCE. 299 foreigners and natives. Thenceforward no foreign nation should have leave to come into the country, and none of the emperor's subjects to go abroad." Three circumstances may be stated as the causes v^diich led to this, the most singular and sur- jirising resolution that ever a people came to, and which the Japanese have pertinaciously abided by for 18^ years. The first of these was an import- ant change which, in the year 1585, after the Por- tuguese had been 42 years residing in the empire, took place in the form and character of the go- vernment itself. Before then the empire of Japan consisted of a confederation of princes, each of whom ruled within his own dominions, acknowledging the supremacy of the Dairi, or spiritual monarch, who executed his slender share in the govern- ment principally through the agency of the mi- litary chief of his army. This last office happen- ed to fall into the hands of a peasant, who had liaised himself by extraordinary talents to so emi- nent a station in a period of anarchy and turbu- lence. This was the celebrated Taikosama. He wrested the whole secular authority from the Dairi, and, subverting the authority of the inferior princes, made himself absolute monarch of the whole em- pire. It was in the prosecution of this last object that the Christians came in his way. Many of the inferior chiefs had embraced the religion of the Christians, — the priests of that worship were umbi-
