The Right Honorable Earl of Clarendon to Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, May 23, 1870

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

My Lord: With reference to my dispatch No. 351, of the 2d instant, and. to previous correspondence respecting religious persecution in Japan, I now transmit to your excellency a further dispatch, and its inclosures, which I have received from Sir H. Parkes on this subject, and reporting what had passed at an interview which he had with the foreign minister and vice-minister respecting the question of the return of the native converts to Urakami. At this interview, as your excellency will see, special reference was made by the Japanese authorities to the correspondence which passed in 1867 between the French minister, M. Roches, and the Tycoon’s government, at which period an assurance was given by the former that propagandism on the part of the Roman Catholic missionaries should be strictly interdicted. The Japanese minister now again reverts to this argument and urges that the instructions issued by M. Roches in 1867 to the French consul at Nagasaki and to the French bishop should be adhered to, and that the French missionaries should be enjoined not to visit Urakami for missionary purposes and not to encourage the Japanese in offering any opposition to their own laws or authorities. M. Roches’s instructions, above referred to, were communicated to your excellency at the time, but as you may have not retained copies of them, they are herewith annexed. Her Majesty’s government concur in the prudence of the instruction then issued by M. Roches, and are of opinion that the Japanese government have a fair claim to ask that they should be acted upon; and if the French government adopt M. Roches’s views and instructions there is every reason to believe that the differences which have arisen out of the late proceedings of Roman Catholic missionaries in Japan will be brought to a close.

I spoke in this sense two days ago to Mr. Tirrot, when he renewed with me the question of Christian persecution in Japan with reference to a communication received by the French government from that of the United States, which seemed disposed to condemn the conduct of the authorities in Japan.