POSSESSIONS IN THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 187 
and prudent administration would have ensured through large and 
more liberal views. It is even proved that its system was not 
based on a plan regulated in a stable manner; it favoured for a 
time such and such a culture, to be abandoned promptly when the re¬ 
venue did not answer to its expectations; the price of a product 
rising, it interdicted exportation, and abandoned its right from the 
moment the profits no longer appeared to it sufficiently considerable; 
but, although more constant in the preservation of the monopoly of 
spices, it is not probable that they have ever taken into account 
the sums Which the culture cost them.* 
The lands which it possessed did not yield nearly so much as the 
fertility of the soil permitted, because they occupied themselves .with 
great interests only under the care of employees whom they had not 
the talent, of choosing well, and who were in haste to enrich them¬ 
selves at the expense of those appointing them, who allowed them 
only a small salary. They trusted, for the produce of these lands, 
to contracts with Javanese regents; these contracts as well as the con¬ 
tingents wanting controul, furnished to the unfaithful employee the 
means of committing prevarication and frauds, and the Javanese 
saw himself subjected to many vexations. 
Borne by the concurrence of unforeseen circumstances to a sover¬ 
eignty of which it could not discharge the duties nor support the 
charges, oppressed with debts, and accumulating deficit upon deficit, 
it saw itself reduced to borrow each year the means of distributing t<» 
its share-holders a semblance of profit. 
In this state of crisis, the urgency was felt of sending commission¬ 
ers to India in order to judge upon the spot of the state of affairs. 
The delegates named for this purpose embarked in 1791. After a 
sojourn of three years in Java, these commissioners returned and on 
the 4th June 1795, submitted their report to the company which 
gave information of the real state in which they found the affairs of 
the Society ; it then saw it confirmed by its agents that the commerce 
was nearly annihilated, that the financial resources were exhausted, 
and that in place of being productive of advantage, the Indian pos¬ 
sessions were a heavy expence; it saw itself at this time overwhelmed 
. with a debt of 84 millions of florins, of which 67 millions had been 
advanced by the Dutch nation. 
The States-General of the United Provinces having acquired from 
* We shall give some details respecting these cultures in the article on 
the geographical group of Banda vol, 2. [not yet published.} 
O '. 
