Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait121878roya).pdf/238

 tection and improvement of all our interests in this quarter cannot well be conceired. Since my return to this Country my public attention has been chiefy directed to the proceedings of the Hollanders, who, not satisfied with receiving from us the fertile and important Islands of Java and the Moluccas, have attempted to exercise a supremacy over the whole of Borneo and Sumatra, and to exclude our nation from all intercourse with the other States of the Archipelago. They have been very particular in the means, and they seem to have considered the degradation of the English character as necessary to their own Establishment. You may easily conceive how much annoyance this has given to me, and prepared as I was to remain a quiet spectator of all their actions, I have not found it possible to continue entirely neutral. While they confined their proceedings to the Countries in which European authority was established, we had no right to interfere; these we had by Treaty agreed to transfer to them, and they were of course at liberty to act in them as they thought proper without reference to our interests; but they no sooner found themselves possessed of these than they conceived the idea of driving us from the Archipelago altogether, and when I made my re-appearance in these Seas they had actually hardly left us an inch of ground to stand upon. Even our right to the spot on which I write this, though yesterday a wilderness and without inhabitant, is disputed; and, in return for our unparallelled generosity, we are left almost without a resting place in the Archipelago.

But it is not our interests alone that have suffered by this unexpected return; those of humanity and civilization suffer more deeply. To comprehend the question justly you must consider that it has always been an object of the first importance to our Indian interests to preserve a free and uninterrupted commerce with these Islands as well on account of this commerce itself, as the safety of our more extensive commerce with China, which lies beyond them; and that for the last century, owing to the defects and radical weakness of the Dutch, we have been able to effect this without serious molestation from them. The consequence of this constant and friendly intercourse has been the establishment of numerous independent States throughout the Archipelago. These have advanced considerably in civilization; and as their knowledge increased so did their wants; and their advancement in civilization might be estimated in the ratio of their commerce. The latter is suddenly arrested by the withering grasp of the Hollander; the first article lie insists upon is the exclusion of the English and the mono-