188 INDOLENCE OF JAVANESE. 



and to habits of industry and frugality, and the 

 diffusion of considerable intellectual advancement, 

 would be an easy task to a Government who really 

 wished to adopt proper measures for such a result. 

 The complaint now among all Europeans is that 

 the Javanese peasantry will not work for wages, but 

 only at the command of their native superiors. They 

 say that if a man had a private estate, he could by no 

 temptation of high wages procure any private workmen 

 to cultivate it for him ; that the Javanese obeys the 

 orders of his chief and his officers at once, with the 

 utmost alacrity, and whether he receive any remu- 

 neration for it or not, but that without such order 

 no inducement is sufficient to make him break 

 through his natural indolence and love of ease. 

 Under the present system this is no doubt true ; 

 the Javanese has for ages been trained in habits 

 of implicit obedience to his feudal superior; all 

 his ideas, language, and daily actions, are mo- 

 delled and adapted to such a system ; and no 

 doubt the notion of independent action, independent 

 existence, independent property and personal rights 

 are as strange and unknown to his mind, as is the 

 idea of colour to a blind man. Open the eyes of 

 the blind man, however, emancipate the Javanese 

 from their feudal* servitude, and wait for the 

 result. 



* I use the term " feudal" here as expressing the dependence 

 of each man on a superior, and do not mean that a real feudal 

 system, such as existed in Europe, is to be found in Java. 



