INTERCOLONIAL COMMERCE. 305 prison of Deslma at Nangasaki, where they have since continued. The Dutch, in this imprison- ment, were still able to sell as great and purchase as large a quantity of goods as they thought pro- per, and there yet existed no restriction in regard to the nature either of the import or export car- gos^ It was in 1672, after an interval of about thirty years more, that the trade was virtually ruin- ed ; since which, properly speaking, it has never been a national object. The governor of Nanga- saki, the state jailor of the Dutch factory, now took it upon himself to fix a maximum upon their whole import cargos, and to sell them without their know- ledge, leaving with them only the alternative of re-exporting them. The Dutch governor-gene- ral, Von ImhofF, in his Memoir on the Trade of Japan, considers that this new insult offered to the Dutch had its origin in the contempt which the Japanese felt for them, in consequence of the disgraceful manner in which they had lost, a few years before, the neighbouring island of Formosa, certainly the most valuable tropical colony, from its natural capabilities, which an European people ever possessed, and the vicinity of which, in a military point of view, could always, in the hands of a spirit- ed people, overawe the two great empires on each side of it. After the trade had gone on for twelve or thirteen years on this footing, a remonstrance on the part of the Dutch effected a change in it, but a VOL. III. u
