their chiefs, to give a portion of their time, to the cultivation of
coffee, sugar, and other valuable products. A fixed rate of wages--low
indeed, but, about equal to that of all places where European
competition has not artificially raised it--was paid to the labourers
engaged in clearing the ground and forming the plantations under
Government superintendence. The produce is sold to the Government at a
low, fixed price. Out of the net profit a percentage goes to the chiefs,
and the remainder is divided among the workmen. This surplus in good
years is something considerable. On the whole, the people are well fed
and decently clothed, and have acquired habits of steady industry and
the art of scientific cultivation, which must be of service to them in
the future. It must be remembered, that the Government expended capital
for years before any return was obtained; and if they now derive a large
revenue, it is in a way which is far less burthensome, and far more
beneficial to the people, than any tax that could be levied.
But although the system may be a good one, and as well adapted to the
development of arts and industry in a half civilized people as it is
to the material advantage of the governing country, it is not pretended
that in practice it is perfectly carried out. The oppressive and servile
relations between chiefs and people, which have continued for perhaps a
thousand years, cannot be at once abolished; and some evil must result
from those relations, until the spread of education and the gradual
infusion of European blood causes it naturally and insensibly to
disappear. It is said that the Residents, desirous of showing a large
increase in the products of their districts, have sometimes pressed the
people to such continued labour on the plantations that their rice crops
have been materially diminished, and famine has been the result. If this
has happened, it is certainly not a common thing, and is to be set down
to the abuse of the system, by the want of judgment, or want of humanity
in the Resident.
A tale has lately been written in Holland, and translated into English,
entitled "Max Havelaar;" or, the "Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading
Company," and with our usual one-sidedness in all relating to the Dutch
Colonial System, this work has been excessively praised, both for its
own merits, and for its supposed crushing exposure of the iniquities of
the Dutch government of Java. Greatly to my surprise, I found it a very
tedious and long-winded story, full of rambling digressions; and whose
only point is to show that the Dutch Residents and Assistant Residents
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