128 te^iminck’s general view of the dutch 
iug far their chief wants ; for, on tiie fulfilment of these conditions 
depends the duration of its greatness ; in short that the empire of Hoi- 
land could not be solidly maintained in its vast possessions, without 
the attachment which the native population bear towards their Euro¬ 
pean masters. So, we now see government adopt a system of culture* 
and a manner of levying direct and indirect taxes, as appropriate to the 
state of civilization in which the Javanese are found, to their customs 
or hadhat, * and to the wants of the population, as all these essays 
successively tried have been able to indicate. The surest means of 
firmly establishing our power in these beautiful countries, formerly 
exposed to so many murderous wars, and a most revolting despotism, 
is to render the population more active, less given up to that in¬ 
dolence, the result of the slavish condition in which the native chiefs 
formerly held them; above all to increase their well being by agri¬ 
cultural industry, while respecting their customs, and maintaining 
their usages. By adopting these rules of conduct as the basis of its 
administrative system in the Indian Archipelago, government will see 
prosperity extending every where throughout its wide dominions, and 
the , wellbeing of many millions of inhabitants will be to it a pledge 
of their fidelity. 
And, in what other manner and hy what other means, can a small 
European state, which scarcely reckons three millions of inhabitants, 
nourish the hope of exercising its predominant influence, and succeed 
infirmly establishing its power, over this immense eastern population, 
-of which the entire amount of all the islands covered by its flag pro¬ 
bably reaches to twenty five millions of souls, and where the number 
of the inhabitants of the metropolitan country alone, the islands of Java 
* Hadhat, according to the Javanese pronunciation, is a word of Arabic 
origin, adat , which signifies, usage, custom, institution : See S. Muller, 
Hijdragen tot de kennis van Sumatra p. 114. We preserve in this work 
the original orthography, generally employed in official documents. The 
Hadhat or adat are the unwritten laws which the Javanese possess by tra¬ 
dition. They arc the customs of their ancestors, transmitted from father 
to son, or rather the old regulations of sovereigns which have acquired the 
force of law 1 , and which like every thing that is ancient, inspire the highest 
veneration in the people. All that has reference to the ceremonial of the 
Courts of Surakarta and Djokjokarta is regulated by the adat. These an¬ 
cient customs are observed with the same punctuality, and followed with 
the same rigour, at the Court as in the meanest village. Adat holds the . 
place of fundamental law with the Javauese ; not to conform to it is to fail 
towards that which is the most sacred, and the most generally revered. 
M. de Steurs tells us, relative to this veneration of the Javanese for his 
adat, that a Malay manuscript contains these remarkable words, which, 
says he, every European functionary should have unceasingly present in his 
Haemory ; if he does not know our adat, he shall be a horror to its. 
