new departure in colonial government. Spain copied the system in its tobacco-growing in the Philippine Islands, but could not follow further. Philanthropic and pharisaical neighbors, political economists, advanced political thinkers, humanitarians, and sentimentalists, all addressed themselves to the subject, and usually condemned the culture system in unmeasured terms. Holland's voluntary abolition of slavery in its East India possessions by no means stilled the storm of invective and abuse. Leaders, speeches, books, pamphlets, even novels,[1] showed up the horrors, the injustice and iniquities said to be perpetrated in Java. It was shown that almost nothing of the great revenues from the island was devoted to the education or benefit of the natives; that no mission or evangelical work was undertaken, or even allowed, by this foremost Protestant people of Europe; and that next to nothing in the way of public works or permanent improvements resulted to the advantage of those who toiled for the alien, absentee landlord, i. e., the crown of Holland,—the country being drained of its wealth for the benefit of a distant monarch. It was estimated that between 1831 and 1877 the natives were mulcted of one billion, seven hundred million francs by the forced labor exacted from them, and the sales of their produce to the government at the low market prices fixed by the purchaser. By continued philippics and exaggerated accusations, the names of Dutch government and Java planter became, to the average European, synonyms for all of rapacity, tyranny,
- ↑ "Max Havelaar," by Edouard Douwes Dekker (Multatuli); translation by Baron Nahuys (Edinburgh, 1868).
