108 Java. 



Every statement of this kind is thickly interspersed with 

 italics and capital letters ; but as the names are all fictitious, 

 and neither dates, figures, nor details are ever given, it is im- 

 possible to verify or answer them. Even if not exaggerated, 

 the facts stated are not nearly so bad as those of the oppres- 

 sion by free-trade indigo-planters, and torturing by native 

 tax-gatherers under British rule in India, with which the read- 

 ers of English newspapers were familiar a few years ago. 

 Such oppression, however, is not fairly to be imputed in ei- 

 ther case to the particular form of government, but is rather 

 due to the infirmity of human nature, and to the impossibili- 

 ty of at once destroying all trace of ages of despotism on 

 the one side, and of slavish obedience to their chiefs, on the 

 other. 



It must be remembered that the complete establishment 

 of the Dutch power in Java is much more recent than that 

 of our rule in India, and that there have been several changes 

 of government, and in the mode of raising revenue. The in- 

 habitants have been so recently under the rule of their na- 

 tive princes that it is not easy at once to destroy the excess- 

 ive reverence they feel for their old masters, or to diminish 

 the oppressive exactions which the latter have always been ac- 

 customed to make. There is, however, one grand test of the 

 prosperity, and even of the happiness, of a community, which 

 we can apply here — the rate of increase of the population. 



It is universally admitted that when a country increases 

 rapidly in population, the people can not be very greatly 

 oppressed or very badly governed. The present system of 

 raising a revenue by the cultivation of cofiee and sugar, sold 

 to Government at a fixed price, began in 1832. Just before 

 this, in 1826, the population by census was 5,500,000, while 

 at the beginning of the century it was estimated at 3,500,000. 

 In 1850, when the cultivation system had been in operation 

 eighteen years, the population by census was over 9,500,000, 

 or an increase of "73 per cent, in twenty-four years. At the 

 last census, in 1865, it amounted to 14,168,416, an increase 

 of very nearly 50 per cent, in fifteen years — a rate which 

 would double the population in about twenty-six years. As 

 Java (with Madura) contains about 38,500 geographical 

 square miles, this will give an average of 368 persons to the 



