Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/473

1770 is obliged to drive on one side of the road, and stop there till they have passed, which distinction is expected by their wives and even children, and commonly paid to them. Nor can the hired coachman be restrained from paying this slavish mark of respect by anything but the threats of instant death, as some of our captains have experienced, who thought it beneath the dignity of the rank they held in his Britannic Majesty's service to submit to any such humiliating ceremony.

Justice is administered here by a parcel of gentlemen of the law, who have ranks and dignities among themselves as in Europe. In civil matters I know nothing of their proceedings, but in criminal they are rather severe to the natives, and too lenient to their countrymen, who, whatever crime they have committed, are always allowed to escape if they choose; and, if brought to trial, very rarely punished with death. The poor Indians, on the other hand, are flogged, hanged, broken upon the wheel, and even impaled without mercy. While we were there three remarkable crimes were committed by Christians, two duellists each killed his antagonist, and both fled; one took refuge on board our ship, bringing with him so good a character from the Batavians, that the captain gave him protection, nor was he ever demanded. The other, I suppose, went on board some other ship, as he was never taken. The third was a Portuguese, who by means of a false key had robbed an office to which he belonged of 1400 or 1500 pounds; he, however, was taken, but instead of death condemned to a public whipping, and banishment to Edam for ninety-nine years.

The Malays and Chinese have each proper offices of their own, a captain and lieutenants as they are called, who administer justice among them in civil cases, subject to an appeal to the Dutch court, which, however, rarely occurs. Before the Chinese rebellion, as the Dutch, or the massacre, as the Chinese themselves and most Europeans, call it, in 1740 (when the Dutch, upon, maybe, too slight information, massacred no man knows how many thousand unresisting Chinese, for a supposed rebellion which the latter to this