152 JAVA. [chap. vii. 



appear. It is said that the Residents, desirous of showing 

 a large increase in the products of their districts, have 

 sometimes pressed the people to such continued labour on 

 the plantations that then* rice crops have been materially 

 diminished, and famine has been the result. If this has 

 happened, it is certainly not a common thing, and is to be 

 set down to the abuse of the system, by the want of judg- 

 ment or want of humanity in the Resident. 



A tale has lately been written in Holland, and trans- 

 lated into English, entitled " Max Havelaar ; or, the 

 Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company," and 

 with our usual one-sidedness in all relating to the Dutch 

 Colonial System, this work has been excessively praised, 

 both for its own merits, and for its supposed crushing 

 exposure of the iniquities of the Dutch government of 

 Java. Greatly to my surprise, I found it a very tedious 

 and long-winded story, full of rambling digressions ; and 

 whose only point is to show that the Dutch Residents 

 and Assistant Residents wink at the extortions of the 

 native princes ; and that in some districts the natives 

 have to do work without payment, and have their goods 

 taken away from them without compensation. 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, 



