ranks, have the custom of blackening and filing the teeth, it being considered as disgraceful to allow them to remain "white like a dog's." The operation is performed when the children are about eight or nine years old, and is a very painful one. The object is to make the front teeth concave, and by filing away the enamel, to render them better adapted for receiving the black dye. This extraordinary and barbarous custom tends to destroy the teeth at an early age, and with the use of tobacco, siri, and lime, which are continually chewed, generally greatly disfigures the mouth. The Javans, however, do not file away the teeth so much as is usual with some of the other islanders; nor do they set them in gold, as is the case with the Sumatrans.'

In the victualling part of their economy, if we may so call it, the Javans, excepting a very partial conformity to the restrictive institutions of Mahomedanism, have free scope to indulge their taste. And with rice (as throughout the greater part of Asia) for the grand basis of subsistence, they have a great variety of edibles, condiments, and cookery. Their fine soil and climate throw plenty and diversity around them, and, says our Author, 'they seem by no means inclined to reject the bounties of Pro'vidence: they are always willing to partake of a hearty meal, ' and have seldom occasion to make a scanty one. Yet among 'them a glutton is a term of reproach, and to be notoriously fond of good living, is sufficient to attach this epithet to any one.' They are hospitable in a very high degree. In the matter of drinking, they are pronounced to be a sober nation; though the Europeans, that is the Christians, have taken great pains to corrupt, in this respect, the chiefs, and in some cases with too much success. A considerable number of the people have been seduced into the use of opium, which they eat in one mode of preparation, and smoke in another; and which is described as producing a fatal effect on their health, and sometimes a still more malignant one on their character and actions, impelling them to a desperate sacrifice of every personal and social interest, and infuriating them to the most horrible atrocities of revenge and cruelty. The use of opium, however,' says our Author, though carried to a considerable extent, is still reckoned disgraceful, and per'sons addicted to it are looked upon as abandoned characters, and despised accordingly.'

The Javans are so decidedly an agricultural people, that the proportion of them so employed, as compared with those occupied in all the other branches of industry, is calculated to be, on the general average, not less than three and a half, or four, to

one.

To the crop the mechanic looks immediately for his wages, the soldier for his pay, the magistrate for his salary, the priest for his stipend, and the government for its tribute. The wealth of a province or village is measured by the extent and fertility of its land, its facili

ties for rice irrigation, and the number of its buffaloes. When government wishes to raise supplies from particular districts, it does not inquire how many dollars or rupees it can raise in taxes, but what contribution of rice or maize it can afford, and the impost is assessed accordingly.'

Yet over far the greater part, seven-eighths of the island, the soil is either entirely neglected or badly cultivated, and the population scanty. It is by the produce of the remaining eighth that the whole nation is supported; and it is probable, if it were all under cultivation, no area of land of the same extent, in any other quarter of the globe, could exceed it, either in quantity, variety, and value, of its vegetable productions.'

Again and again, our Author's language glows almost into poetry, yet we really believe without extravagance, in describing the incomparable physical character and felicity of the Island, combining, as it does, all climates, and as it may, all their respectively appropriate productions. It possesses the grand advantage over most other tropical regions, of having almost every where, or at least very generally, plenty of water, by means of which the cultivator can, at will, spread over the ground the verdure of a rainy season under a scorching sun.' The cultivation, however, of this favoured and prolific tract, is an extremely slight and inartificial concern; an adequate supply of rice for subsistence, for payment of dues to superiors and to government, and for purchase of a very few articles of necessity or luxury, being, with the greatest proportion of the people, nearly all that is sought to be obtained from the fertility around them; and that being easily obtained without the slightest exercise of skill, and with a very moderate share of labour, except where the people are suffering great oppression. Irrigation, a rude kind of ploughing, and the use of the hoe, which serves as a spade, constitute the substance of the agricultural operations. The whole set of the farmers' implements costs but from seven to ten shillings. The brute animal strength employed in aid of his own, is that of a pair of buffaloes or oxen. Cows, which are in general very little serviceable in the way of yielding milk, (an article, indeed, for which the people have no partiality,) are often used in draught. Horses are not employed in husbandry, except in the transport of produce from one district to another. An inconsiderable number of goats, a still smaller of sheep, (the coarse wool of which is scarcely any thing worth,) and some poultry, complete the account of live stock in this country of farmers. A very long and circumstantial detail is given of the cultivation of rice, of which, it seems, there are a hundred distinguishable varieties. The most important difference is between that which is grown on the wet grounds, and that which is grown on the dry. The latter is esteemed of the superior quality; but

it is produced in far less quantity than the other. The two kinds are so materially different that neither of them can be made to flourish in the situation belonging to the other.

The agricultural operations are regulated, as to their course and succession, by a kind of calendar, which it is the business of the priests to keep, that they may announce to the cultivators the approach of the day for beginning, at each new term, the employment allotted to it. These terms, or artificial divisions of the seasons, are twelve, of very unequal lengths, several of them exceeding forty days, and several containing little more than twenty. These divisions are said to have some reference to the sun's course; but they are more intelligibly marked by their correspondence to certain phenomena in the vicissitude of the year. Thus, during the first of these terms, (containing forty-one days, and commencing after the rice harvest which falls in August and September,) the leaves fall from the trees, and vegetation is interrupted. In the second season, which 'lasts twenty-five days, vegetation again resumes its vigour.'Maize, cocoa-nut, oil-giving plants, sugar-cane, coffee, and even wheat and potatoes, are included in the account of the cultivated productions, with numerous statements and observations. The description of the management of the coffee plantations, is very curious; and it is followed by an interesting but provoking account of the infamous system of oppression under which the Dutch enforced the cultivation. It was introduced by them into the Island early in the last century, and they compelled many of the inhabitants to plant and take care of a certain number of the trees, under a strict obligation to deliver the whole produce to the government at the rate which itself was pleased to fix: this rate was so cruelly inadequate, that great numbers of the people perished in consequence of an impost, which denied them at once the time and means for raising their own provisions, and a sufficient payment for the coffee to obtain the necessaries of life by purchase. This vile system was nearly broken up by the time that the Island was to be surrendered by the English, to be again subjected to the operation of Dutch humanity and policy. It was found, as might be expected, that the abolition of this compulsion and monopoly, caused no failure of a supply of coffee at such a price as the labour of cultivating it might fairly claim.

The subject of the Tenure of Lands' is treated at very great length; perhaps, indeed, with too much particularity and amplification, since the English can now turn the information to no account in favour of the people of Java. The result of the various investigations of the matter was, that the proprietary right is in the sovereign; that is to say, in the native reigning personages in the parts of the Island remaining under their government, and

in the European government in the larger portion of which an European power has become possessed. There were found, indeed, some particular districts and small allotments, which were held in a certain kind of independent, permanent appropriation by subjects and by religious institutions. But the tenure of some of these, as being conferred by an act of alienation on the part of the sovereign, is alleged in confirmation of the principle, that he is to be regarded as universally the original proprietor. With the exception of these grants,

'neither law nor usage authorizes the oldest occupant of land in Java to consider the ground he has reclaimed from waste, or the farm on which he has exerted all his industry, as his own, by such a tenure as will enable him, and his successors for ever, to reap the fruits of his labour. He can have gained no title, even to a definite term of occupancy, but from the capricious servant of a capricious despot, who himself is not legally bound by his engagement, and whose successor is not even morally bound by it.'

It is true, that the sovereign is, with respect to this his proprietary right, placed nearly out of sight of the actual cultivators, by the intervention of a numerous and formidable order of regents, officers, court favourites, and exacters of various sorts. Of what is demanded from the cultivators upon the authority of the sovereign's right, it is but a small part that goes actually into the treasury of the government. Many of the personages whose rank and luxury were to be supported at the public cost, such as branches or favourites of the reigning families, and delegated governors of provinces, were portioned and paid by grants of the revenue of certain quantities of the land, instead of salaries or gifts from the treasury. They thus stood in place of the government as appropriators of the revenue claimed by the government from those lands; as appropriators, at least, of a large share of it, while they were perhaps required to remit a certain portion to the state treasury. Officers were appointed under them for the business of assessment and exaction; and they also were to secure their share of the good things from the produce of the cultivation, that is, from the labour of the cultivators. They managed the allotment of the shares of land to the cultivators; adjusted every thing in such an order that no man had any discretion, freedom, or scope for advantageous exertion; kept a vigilant eye for inspection, and an active hand for seizure. The Chinese officers especially, (who, from these very habits and qualifications, were generally selected for these appointments,) were relentless and intolerable extortioners. This system of primary and secondary proprietorship, with its gradation of subordinate rights or claims, rounded and completed as it was with all the requisite regulations and powers, was a well adapted machine for forcing from the peasantry, by steady, VOL. XIV. N.S. L

comprehensive, unremitting pressure, every thing that could be spared from the necessities of subsistence. And even the claims and means for that bare object were so indifferently respected by this complication of exacters, that in very many instances the condition of the cultivators but little corresponded to that description of competence, given in terms too general, which we have transcribed from our Author in a preceding page. The pernicious and inevitable operation of such an economy, is well displayed in the following paragraph:

Can it therefore be a subject of surprise, that the arts of agriculture, and the improvement of society, have made no greater advances in Java? Need it excite wonder that the implements of husbandry are simple; that the cultivation is unskilful and inartificial; that the state of the roads, where European convenience is not consulted, is bad; that the natural advantages of the country are neglected; that so little enterprize is displayed, or capital employed; that the peasant's cottage is mean, and so little wealth and knowledge are among the agricultural population; when it is considered that the occupant of land enjoys no security for reaping the fruits of his industry; when his possession is liable to be taken away from him every season, or to suffer such an enhancement of rent as will drive him from it; when such a small quantity of land only is allowed him as will yield him bare subsistence, and every ear of grain that can be spared from the supply of his immediate wants is extorted from him in the shape of tribute; when his personal services are required unpaid for, in the train of luxury or in the cultivation of articles of monopoly; and when, in addition to all these discouragements, he is subject to other heavy imposts and impolitic restraints? No man will exert himself, when acting for another, with so much zeal as when stimulated by his own immediate interests; and under a system of government, where every thing but the bare means of subsistence is liable to be seized, nothing but the means of subsistence will be sought to be attained.'

Soon after the acquisition of Java by the English, a course of active inquiries and exertions was commenced for revolutionizing this iniquitous and pernicious system. And it was prosecuted so earnestly that, by the time of the cession of the Island to its former masters, a better economy was so far introduced as to have produced, over a considerable part of the country, a most happy effect on the condition of the people, and withal an augmentation of the revenue to government. The plain and just principle was recognised, that the ground must belong of right to those who had cultivated it, subject to a tribute to the government for the protection and administration of this and their other rights and interests. It was designed that ultimately they should be formally invested with this right of land-owners in perpetuity, which would place them on an entirely new ground, create a whole set of beneficial feelings to which they had hitherto been strangers, and give a most powerful impulse to their