ROBERTSON TO WILKIES AND ROBINSON, 29 NOVEMBER 1871:

I CANNOT CONCLUDE with informing you how in many instances I am precluded from affording aid to my countrymen in disputes with the Customs House from the tone of argument adopted very often in letters addressed to me bringing such complaints to my notice. When the Customs House authorities are carrying out, or perhaps I should say enforcing Trade Regulations in a strict sense, and have a clear defined right to do so, it is useless, worse than useless to call such a compliance with the Regulations unbearable, and impossible to say that such things are intolerable and that foreigners will be driven to protecting themselves. A consul looks to his merchant countrymen for clear dispassionate views on matters connected with trade, and nothing strengthens arguments of mine with the Customs House superintendent more than a temperate expression of an existing grievance from the pen of an English merchant – such a communication as I can unhesitatingly transcribe and communicate or show in original to the Japanese authorities. But I would ask you how I could possibly show such a letter as you have addressed to me to a Japanese officer. Were I to do so, he could but form two opinions on the matter – the one of which would probably be that British merchants adopted a very curious style of diction in bringing complaints to the notice of their consul – the other that I was committing an act of personal discourtesy to him as a Japanese functionary in communicating the substance of a letter the reverse of flattering to the Japanese and even hinting at acts of personal violence. I would beg of you to have some consideration both for yourselves and for me and by a more dignified line of argument place me in a better position to assist you in your disputes with the Customs House authorities at this post.

WILKIES AND ROBINSON TO ROBERTSON (DATE?):

You ask – although ironically – if we think you can show such communications as ours to a Japanese official. We must reply that we do think you can; nay more, there is nothing we would more desire than the extreme frankness should be used towards the Japanese.