Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/388

 34>4f SEQUEL OF JAVANESE HISTORY. a troubled reign of twenty-six years. He is one of the most respectable of the Javanese princes, and enjoys a high reputation among his country- men. The most remarkable incidents of his reign are his alliance with the Dutch, and the rebellion of Surapati, 1 shall give a brief account of the character of both these, and add a few anecdotes of his reign, which will assist in giving us a farther insight into the character of the people of Java and their government. What is most remarkable in the character of the political connection of the Dutch with the Java- nese, is the perpetual recourse of the former to ar- tifice and finesse, when the object of their policy would appear more easily and speedily accomplish- ed by a manly, direct, and ingenuous conduct. Al- though they had the earliest experience of the weakness and unskilfulness of the natives, and of their immeasurable inferiority to Europeans, every enterprise they undertook against them was mag- nified beyond all reasonable proportion, and mark- ed by a singular timidity throughout, by a timidity which constantly led them to prefer a policy of ex- pedients to measures of prompt energy, resolution, and good faith, and which too often seduced them into acts of the most abandoned perfidy. It would be unjust to throw the odium of this conduct upon the national character of the Dutch, whose repub- lican integrity, in the days of their glory, is the