386 Life of Sir Stamford Raffles. 



yond the claims of custom and usage ; and though it was pre- 

 scribed by custom, that a certain portion only of each crop should 

 be rendered-up, no positive means existed with the cultivators, of 

 preventing a greater levy. The power and the interest of autho- 

 rity was successfully exerted to stille all complaints ; whilst the 

 peasantry, though suffering the greatest injustice, despairing of 

 relief, would endure almost every privation, rather than quit the 

 land that had been tilled by their forefathers, to which they were 

 attached by the strongest ties of habit, of social affection, and of 

 religious veneration. 



Feudal service in its most unmitigated and desolating form, 

 was another of the grievances and oppressions under which the 

 natives of this ill-fated country groaned. No means were provided 

 for obtaining a direct controul over the demands for labour, which 

 were consequently unlimited. The public officers of the Dutch 

 government universally required the services of the people without 

 regular hire : the native chiefs subordinate to them, pursued the 

 same system ; no check upon this system existed ; and thus the 

 energies of the people were crushed, and their labour frittered 

 away, becoming productive neither to themselves nor to the 

 state. They were reduced, in fact, to the lowest degree of vassal- 

 age and subjection. 



The gradual defalcation of revenue was the inevitable conse- 

 quence of this complicated state of disorder; whilst additional 

 pressure was occasioned by the failure of external commerce, 

 during the decline of the Dutch East-India Company. The go- 

 vernment, forced to look within itself for relief, discovered its 

 embarassments to be daily augmenting ; and as the practice of 

 measures inherently dishonest, though under a legal and regu- 

 lated form, imperceptibly familiarizes the mind with the idea of in- 

 vading the rights and property of others in a more palpable shape, 

 so the funds of public societies were now appropriated to the govern- 

 ment-treasury, and the next step, of course, was to obtain the pri- 

 vate property of individuals, for the same purpose, by forced loans. 

 An arbitrary increase of paper-currency was issued, to provide for 

 the daily expenses of the state, and this proving inadequate io 

 defray them, the government was compelled to deliver a propor- 



m 



