A very little consideration of the position in which Taikosama, as ruler of Japan, was standing to these foreigners must lead to the conclusion that he could take no other step than that which he had taken. They had come to the country uninvited. They had found the country in the possession, so to speak, of a religion which had never shown a persecuting spirit. They had come in their own vessels. From the very outset they had displayed a hard, persecuting spirit, with a tendency to re-embroil the country in war, out of which it was only now emerging. They had insisted on every one coming into subjection to them, with the alternative of leaving house and home in case of refusal. They were, as usual, now calling in the assistance of the temporal power to force the yoke of their priestly supremacy on the people of Japan. Had Taikosama been able to send them away in vessels of the country, he would no doubt have done so. But having no vessels, he gave them the alternative of living peaceably in the country, or of leaving it. They forced the ruling powers of Japan, by their encroachments and persecuting system, to retaliate upon themselves, and then gloried in considering themselves martyrs. They were, in short, constituting themselves and their flocks, over whom they, as priests, had no political authority, an _imperium in imperio_. They were teaching them to be rebels to their own government, and the priests themselves were obliged to end in the spirit in which they ought to have commenced--a spirit of meekness among their enemies. It would seem, from old as well as from recent experience, that, for Christians to live among heathens, it is necessary to have an “exterritoriality” power; but that is equivalent to saying simply that the Christian power is the strongest, and it means to enforce what it thinks right. According to the resolutions of the meeting at Firando, the Roman Catholics kept quiet and in retirement in the several provinces in which they were settled. The first of the line of Owotomo began as personal servant of Yoritomo; and a portion of Satsuma’s territory was given to him, after which the family rose to greatness during the wars between the Emperors of the North and South. About 1374 they acquired a large territory in the northeast of the island of Kiusiu, covering the whole of Boongo and parts of Boozen and the adjoining provinces--Tsikugo and Tsikuzen. In the middle of the sixteenth century this territory included nearly one-half of the island. The family was ruined in the persecution of the Roman Catholics. The principality of Arima covered, at one time, the greater part of the province of Fizen. The territory, as was often the case with small proprietors in feudal times, was at different times enlarged and contracted. Latterly, it seems to have included only the peninsula on which the town of Simabarra stands, and but little more.