_Japanese_. Very well. A few miles will make no difference. You are
requested not to leave agents until after you have experienced that it
is necessary.
_Perry_. I am willing to defer the appointment of a consul or an agent
one year or eighteen months from the date of the signing the treaty; and
then, if my Government think it necessary, it will send one.
In fact, not an article of the treaty was made without the most serious
deliberation by the Japanese. In answer to a question from Captain
Adams, in the very first stages of the negotiation, they replied: "The
Japanese are unlike the Chinese; they are adverse to change; and when
they make a compact of any kind they intend that it shall endure for a
thousand years. For this reason it will be best to deliberate and
examine well the facilities for trade and the suitableness of the port
before any one is determined on." Probably nothing but the exercise of
the most perfect truthfulness and patience would ever have succeeded in
making a treaty with them at all; and from the language of one of their
communications, it is obvious that, with characteristic caution, they
meant that their present action should be but a beginning of
intercourse, which might or might not be afterward made more extensive,
according to the results of what they deemed the experiment.
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