cuAF. XXX.] lAJF OR NO LAW!' 215 



get money any way they can. They are most of them 

 people who have the very worst reputation for honesty as 

 well as every other form of morahty, — Chmese, Bugis, 

 Ceramese, and half-caste Javanese, with a sprinkling of 

 half- wild Papuans from Timor, Babber, and other islands, — 

 yet all goes on as yet very quietly. This motley, ignoi'ant, 

 bloodthirsty, thievish population live here without the 

 shadow of a government, with no police, no courts, and no 

 lawyers ; yet they do not cut each other's throats, do not 

 plunder each other day and night, do not fall into the 

 anarchy such a state of things might be supposed to lead 

 to. It is very extraordinary ! It puts strange thoughts 

 into one's head about the mountain-load of government 

 under which people exist in Europe, and suggests the idea 

 that we may be overgoverned. Think of the hundred 

 Acts of Parliament annually enacted to prevent us, the 

 people of England, from cutting each other's throats, 

 or from doing to our neighbour as we would not be 

 done by. Think of the thousands of lawyers and bar- 

 risters whose whole lives are spent in telling us what 

 the hundred Acts of Parliament mean, and one would be 

 led to infer that if Dobbo has too little law England has 

 too much. 



Here we may behold in its simplest form the genius of 

 Commerce at the work of Civilization. Trade is the magic 

 that keeps aU at peace, and unites these discordant elements 



