The Right Honorable Earl of Clarendon to Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, April 20, 1870

Earl of Clarendon to Lord Lyons, G. C. B.

My Lord: I inclose for your excellency’s perusal a further dispatch from Sir Harry Parkes respecting Christian persecution in Japan, and also a copy of a dispatch which. I have addressed to him in reply.

Your excellency may communicate the substance of Sir H. Parkes’s dispatch to the French minister for foreign affairs, and give him if he desires it a copy of my instruction; and you will at all events suggest to his excellency the expediency of sending an instruction to the same effect to the French representative in Japan.

It is clear from Sir H. Parkes’s dispatch that measures have only been taken against native converts and that the Roman Catholic missionaries have not themselves been molested; and however much the deportation of the converts from their homes and their dispersion throughout Japan may be a measure of harshness as regards the immediate victims, there is certainly no small amount of truth in the observation made to Sir H. Parkes by one of the Japanese ministers, that the distribution of the converts in nineteen different localities is more calculated to facilitate the propagation of Christianity throughout Japan than their unmolested residence in the locality in which they have heretofore been permitted to reside.