"chap, vii.] NATIVE CHIEFS. 153 



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

 oppression by free-trade indigo-planters, and torturing by 

 native tax-gatherers under British rule in India, with which 

 the readers of English newspapers were familiar a few 

 years ago. Such oppression, however, is not fairly to be 

 imputed in either case to the particular form of govern- 

 ment, but is rather due to the infirmity of human nature, 

 and to the impossibility 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 inhabitants have been so recently under the rule of 

 their native princes, that it is not easy at once to destroy 

 the excessive reverence they feel for their old masters, or 

 to diminish the oppressive exactions which the latter have 

 always been accustomed 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 cannot be very greatly 

 oppressed or very badly governed. The present system of 

 raising a revenue by the cultivation of coffee and sugar, 



