Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/24

 reflecting on the superior advantages of British rule.

'The English and Dutch system with respect to the natives is as different as possible, for whereas the gates of the fortification are now open at all times, and the Javanese are suffered to wander about the precincts undisturbing and undisturbed, a native under the Dutch Government was infallibly shot at if he ventured to approach the fortification after dark; and I was also told, while taking our walk in the dusk beyond the village, that a Dutchman would not have ventured to have done so as he valued his life.'

After a visit to the city of Batavia he remarks that 'he was greatly disappointed at its general appearance':—

'We rode by the barracks where the Dutch troops used to be quartered, and where it is said the mortality was so great that sometimes two sets of men were swept off in the twelvemonth. The climate appears to have been far less prejudicial both to our civil or military authorities ... Perhaps the difference in the mortality of the two nations may be owing to the less sedentary and more temperate mode of living practised by the English.' 'In every part of the island'—Lord Amherst observes—'the English travel fearlessly in very small numbers and unarmed, and so far from experiencing injury or insult, have met with nothing but kindness and hospitality.'

Certainly Lord Amherst was an Englishman who believed in England. We had enemies then as now, and their methods in those times were the methods employed to-day.

'The first news the Ambassador received on arriving in Chinese waters was that the Portuguese at Macao had