Townsend Harris American Quotations

As the treaty made with the United States was the first treaty entered into by your country with other countries, therefore the President regards Japan with peculiar friendliness.

It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.

The President is of opinion that if Japan makes a treaty with the United States, all other foreign countries will make the same kind of a treaty, and Japan will be safe thereafter.

We do not wish to open your ports to foreign trade all at once.

If a man use opium once he cannot stop it, and it becomes a life-long habit to use opium; hence the English want to introduce it into Japan.

I replied that the customs of my country forbade any one to eat in a house where the host, or his representative, did not sit down to table with him.