CHAP. VI!,] 



NATIVE CHIEFS. 



European blood causes it naturally and insensibly to dis- 

 appear. It is said that tlie Kesidents, 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 their rice crops have been nmterialJy 

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

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

 set do\TO to the abuse of the system, by the want of judg- 

 ment or want of humanity in the Eesident. 



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

 lated into English, entitled " ^Tax ITavelaar ; or, the 

 Coffee Anctions 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 Kesidents 

 and Assistant Eesidents wink at the extortions of tlie 

 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. 15 very 

 statement of tliis kind is thickly interspersed with italics 

 and capital letters; but as the names are all fictitious, and 

 neither dates, figures, nor details fire ever given, it is im- 

 possible to verify or answer them. Even if not exaggerated, 

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

 oppression by free-trade iudigo-plonters, and torturing by 

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

 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 tliat there have been several 

 nhauges of government, and in the mode of raising revenue. 



H 



