17 
THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
* 
forcibly reminded of free and jovial, if rude, manners of the 
lower rural classes of the West.. Freed from the repeltant pre¬ 
judices arid artificial trappings of Hindu and Mahomedan civiliza¬ 
tion we see in the man of the Archipelago more that is akin than 
the reverse to unpolished man of Europe. 
When we turn to the present political condition of the Archi¬ 
pelago, we ?re struck by the contrast which it presents to that 
which characterised it, three or four centuries ago. The mass of 
the people, it is true, in all their private relations, remain in nearly 
the same state in which they were found by the earliest European 
voyagers, and which they had existed for many centuries previously. 
But, as nations, they have withered in the presence ot the uncongenial, 
greedy and relentless spirit of European policy. They have been sub¬ 
dued by the hard and determined will of Europeans, who, in general, 
have pursued the purposes for which they have come into the Archipe¬ 
lago without giving any sympathy to the inhabitants. Ihe nomadic 
spirit, never extinguished during all the changes which they under¬ 
went, had made them adventurous and warlike when they rose into 
nations. But now, long overawed and restrained by the power of 
Europeans, the national habits of action have, in most parts of the 
Archipelago, been lost, or are only faintly maintained in the pirati¬ 
cal expeditions of some. Their pride h.is fallen. Their living li¬ 
terature is gone with the power, the wars, and the glory, which in¬ 
spired it The day has departed when Singapore could be invaded 
by Javanese,—when Johore could extend its dominion to Borneo 
on the one side, and Sumatra on the other,—when the fleets of 
Acheen and Malacca could encounter each other in the Straits to dis¬ 
pute the dominion of the Eastern Seas,—when the warrants of 
the Sultan of Menangkabaii were as potent over the Malayan na¬ 
tions as the bulls of Rome ever were over those of Christendom, 
_when a champion of Malacca could make his name be known all 
over the Archipelago,—and when the kings of the Peninsula sent 
their sons, escorted by celebrated warriors, to demand the daugh¬ 
ter of the emperors ot Majapahitin marriage. The Malayan princes 
of the present day, retaining ail the feudal attachment and homage 
of their subjects, and finding no more honorable vent for the asser¬ 
tion of their freedom from restraint and the gratification of their 
self-will, have almost every where sunk into indolent debauchees and 
