402 CELEBES. [chap. xvti. 



arrack, which would be carried over the country and 

 exchanged for coffee. That drunkenness and poverty 

 would spread over the land ; that the public coffee plan- 

 tations would not be kept up ; that the quality and quan- 

 tity of the coffee would soon deteriorate ; that traders and 

 merchants would get rich, but that the people would re- 

 lapse into poverty and barbarism. That such is invariably 

 the result of free trade with any savage tribes who pos- 

 sess a valuable product, native or cultivated, is well known 

 to those who have visited such people ; but we might even 

 anticipate from general principles that evil results would 

 happen. If there is one thing rather than another to 

 which the grand law of continuity or development will 

 apply, it is to human progress. There are certain stages 

 through which society must pass in its onward march 

 from barbarism to civilization. Now one of these stages 

 has always been some form or other of despotism, such as 

 feudalism or servitude, or a despotic paternal government ; 

 and we have every reason to believe that it is not possible 

 for humanity to leap over this transition epoch, and pass 

 at once from pure savagery to free civilization. The Dutch 

 system attempts to supply this missing link, and to bring 

 the people on by gradual steps to that higher civilization, 

 which we (the English) try to force upon them at once. 

 Our system has always failed. We demoralize and we 

 extirpate, but we never really civilize. Whether the Dutch 



