f that prelate, Hideyoshi's troops were enabled to
follow a secret road to the stronghold of the Satsuma baron, and in
return for such valuable services Hideyoshi may well have been
persuaded to proscribe Christianity.

Some importance, though probably of a less degree, attaches also to
the last of the five questions propounded by Hideyoshi to the
vice-provincial--why the priests allowed merchants of their nation to
buy Japanese subjects and carry them into slavery in the Indies. It
was in Kyushu only that these abuses were perpetrated. With respect
to this matter the following passage appears in the archives of the
Academy of History at Madrid: "Even the Lascars and scullions of the
Portuguese purchase and carry slaves away. Hence it happens that many
of them die on the voyage, because they are heaped up one upon the
other, and if their master fall sick (these masters are sometimes
Kaffirs and the negroes of the Portuguese), the slaves are not cared
for. It even often happens that the Kaffirs cannot procure the
necessary food for them. I here omit the excesses committed in the
lands of pagans where the Portuguese spread themselves to recruit
youth and girls, and where they live in such a fashion that the
pagans themselves are stupefied at it." Nevertheless, the fact that
the Taiko specially exempted the Portuguese merchants from his decree
of banishment indicates that he did not attach cardinal importance to
their evil doings in the matter of slaves. It seems rather to have
been against the Jesuits that his resentment was directed, for he did
not fail to perceive that, whereas they could and did exact the
utmost deference from their country's sailors and traders when the
ends of Christian propagandism were served thereby, they professed
themselves powerless to dissuade these same traders and sailors from
outrages which would have disgraced any religion. He cannot but have
concluded that if these Portuguese merchants and seamen were to be
regarded as specimens of the products of Christianity, then, indeed,
that creed had not much to recommend it. All these things seem amply
sufficient to account for the change that manifested itself in
Hideyoshi's attitude towards Christianity at the close of the Kyushu
campaign.

SEQUEL OF THE EDICT OF BANISHMENT

The Jesuits, of whom it must be said that they never consulted their
own safety when the cause of their faith could be advanced by
self-sacrifice, paid no attention to th