The emperor had in every city and village officers for the administration of justice; but every householder had the right to dispense punishments in his own family. Justice was very strict and severe, especially in cases of theft; and for crimes against the state the punishment extended to the whole family of the offender. The nobles and military, in case they were convicted of crimes, enjoyed the privilege of cutting themselves open. Merchants and mechanics were held in mean esteem,—the former as cheats and tricksters, the latter as public servants. The cultivators were little better than slaves. The account which Caron gives of domestic manners corresponds sufficiently well with the more extended observations to be quoted hereafter from subsequent observers. He did not regard the Japanese as very devout. The persecution against the Catholics he describes as equal to anything in ecclesiastical history. He particularly admired the steadiness and constancy of many young children of ten or twelve years. All the inhabitants were required once a year to sign a declaration that they were good Japanese, and that the Catholic religion was false. The Catholics had amounted to four hundred thousand; and their number was still considerable[121]. * * * * * The Dutch had all along stimulated the Japanese against the Portuguese. All missionaries bound for Japan, found on board of Portuguese and Spanish prizes taken in the neighboring seas, had been delivered into the hands of the Japanese authorities. The Dutch had even assisted at the siege of Shimabara, for which they had furnished a train of artillery, conducted thither by Kockebecker, the head, at that time, of the Dutch factory. But they were far from realizing all the advantages which they had expected from the expulsion of their rivals. They, too, had excited suspicions by replacing their dilapidated wooden factory at Hirado by a strong stone warehouse, which had something of the aspect of a fortress. In spite of their submissiveness in pulling down[122] this erection, their establishment at that place was suddenly closed, and in 1641 the Dutch factors were transferred to Nagasaki, where they were shut up in the same little artificial island of Deshima, which had been constructed to be the prison-house of the Portuguese. And to this narrow island they have ever since been confined, with the exception of some occasional visits to Nagasaki and its environs, and an annual journey, by the chief officers of the factory, to pay their homage to the emperor at Yedo,—a ceremony which seems to have been coeval with the first arrival of the Dutch. Hitherto the Portuguese and the Dutch also had freely intermarried with the Japanese; but this intimacy now came wholly to an end, and even the Dutch were thenceforth regarded rather as prisoners than as friends.