POSSESSION'S IN THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
143 
go, and causes to revive amongst us the remembrance of the nume¬ 
rous exploits and the important discoveries which rendered our 
forefathers illustrious when guided by the same tricolor which shall 
serve to conduct our young fellow citizens to victory, if the service 
and the honour of the country shall some day again require their aid. 
But, let us return to the object for which these conquests and dis¬ 
coveries, ancient as well as modern, have been undertaken. This 
aim has been nothing else than simply to develope more and more in 
these distant countries the means adapted to augment the resources 
of the commerce of the mother country ; to produce and consume 
are the principal faculties which she labours to favour. Born of the 
womb of peace these two auxiliaries of commerce can only bear fruits 
under this protecting- aegis. 
It is consequently the reign of peace which she strives to maintain 
and to establish upon a solid basis. To consolidate the empire of the 
laws and to restrain that of the arbitrary ; to govern the native popu¬ 
lations according to their institutions ; to respect the prejudices and 
the usages of these peoples but half civilized, when their customs are 
not found in direct opposition to immoveable and natural laws ; to 
protect them against the invasion of the privileged race,—the Euro¬ 
peans,—these are the principal means which a prudent and enlighi- 
ed government will endeavour to put in practice. 
But to arrive at this, it is necessary to know exactly and by a pro¬ 
found study, the languages, the written and oral laws, the traditions, 
the religious dogmas, the manners and the usages, in short the whole 
social system of a nation, above all when it affects the interests of a 
people whose ancestors have formed part of a social state organized 
upon a respectabl gtf jid ^olid footing. To dictate laws to the Java¬ 
nese, it is necessary before all that the Government should be perfectly 
instructed upon all that relates to the history of the country, and that 
the delegates of power in India to whom it confides the execution af 
its designs, should be able to execute its orders with a discernment 
and a knowledge which study and practice can alone furnish. 
Under the Government of the Company of the Indies it was very 
generally the usage to depend with respect to the knowledge acquired 
by their servants, on the influence of a sojourn in the Archipelago* 
more or less prolonged. Special measures destined to ensure sys¬ 
tematically the co-operation of employes enlightened by the sciences, 
and formed by the study of the ancient and modern history of the 
Javanese, were not deemed strictly necessary under an administra- 
