Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/237

 EUROPEAN NATIONS. 221 to the will of the monopolists. It was necessary, on the success of these political measures, to have recourse to new methods to obtain the productions which had brought the traders of Europe to India. 'JTlie country, depopulated and exhausted by wars, and the incentives to industry and production be- ing removed, w^ould no longer spontaneously af- ford them. The resource was to convert the po- pulation of each particular country into predial slaves, and to compel them, by arbitrary edicts, to cultivate the most favoured products of their soil, and to deliver these exclusively to the monopolists, at such prices as the latter might be pleased to grant. It was on this principle, equally iniquitous and unprofitable, that the English have obtained their supplies of pepper, and the Dutch their pep- per, their coffee, their cloves, and nutmegs. In proportion as each of these articles, from their na- ture, could be subjected to the severity of the mo- nopoly regulations, they became injurious to the growers and useless to the monopolists. This system of fraud and rapacity naturally brought upon the European monopoly compa- nies the aversion and distrust of the native pow- ers, which were aggravated by the odious pic- ture of rancorous hatred, originating in the mean and contemptible spirit of commercial jealousy, which they displayed towards each other. The English traduced the Dutch, — the Dutch the