256 



CELEBES, 



the immediate vicinity of the town of Menado are a tribe 

 called Banteks, of a much less tractable disposition, who 

 have hitherto resisted all efforts of the Dutch Government 

 to induce them t/o adopt any systematic cultivation. These 

 remain in a ruder condition, but engage themselves will- 

 ingly as occasional porters and labourers, for wliich their 

 grf^ater strength and aetivity well adapt them. 



No doubt the system here sketched, seems open to serious 

 objection. It is to a certain extent despotic, and interferes 

 with free trade, free labour, and free communication. A 

 native cannot leave his village without a pass, and cannot 

 engage himself to any merchant or captain without a 

 Government permit. The coffee has all to be sold to 

 Government, at less than half the price that the local 

 merchant would give for it, and he consequently cries out 

 loudly against " monoiioly" and " oppression." llt^ forget**, 

 however, that the cutiee plantations were established by 

 the Government at great outlay of capital ami skill that 

 it gives free education to the people, and that the monopoly 

 ia in lieu of taxation, lie forgets that tlie product he 

 wants to purchase iind make a protit by, is the creation uf 

 the Government, without whom the people would still be 

 savages. He knows very well that free trade would, as 

 its first result, lead to the importation of wdiole cargoes of 

 arrack, which would be canied over the country and 

 exchanged for coffee. That drunkenness and poverty 

 would spread ovf;r the land ; that the public coffee plan- 

 tations woukl not he kept up ; that the quality and quan- 

 tity of the coffee wtmld soon deteriorate ; that traders and 

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

 lapse into poverty aiid Laibarism, That such i.'^ invariably 

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

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

 to tho.^c who have vi^iited such people; but we might even 

 anticipate from genend principles that evil results would 

 happen. If there is one thing rather than another to 

 whicli the grand law of continuity or development will 

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

 ihrough which society must pass in its onward march 

 from barbarism to ci\'i ligation, Now one of these stages 

 baa always been some form or other of despotism, such aa 



