Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/150

 136 LAWS. the punishment of treason. It is a crime which the laws do not even contemplate. Sedition, treason, and rebellion, are one thing. There are no shades of distinction. When a man forgets his allegiance there is no middle course to pursue ; he is at once a rebel, and, like a wild beast, hunted down as a common enemy. When taken, he is unceremonious- ly put to death, for the semblance of judicial trial, unsuitable to the spirit of their political institutions, is, of course, out of the question. Insurrection, the only mode of obtaining a redress of grievances in the East, has been always very frequent among the more considerable and richer tribes of the Archi- pelago, as the Achinese, Javanese, &c. those who had any thing to plunder, and any thing worth struggling for. In Java, when an insurgent C KravianJ is taken, his punishment, by imme- morial usage, is to be tortured to death hi/ the people, on a principle of retaliation, considering him as the common enemy of the tribe, in the manner in which prisoners of war are tortured by the savages of North America. For this purpose, the criminal is exposed in the great square in front of the palace, and slowly tortured to death by the mob. In the reign of Susunan Pakubiiwono, a rebel, called Mas DonOy suffered this cruel death, or, as the native writer expresses it, was " punc- tured to death with needles for the amusement of the people !" During the reign of the last 4