Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/279

 have acted very wrongly, as the Assistant Resident of Lebak ought in no case to pass over the Resident of Bantam; and he had added, that this could in no case be justified, as it was not likely that that high functionary would side with extortion and tyranny.

Such countenance of injustice was not to be supposed, in the way that Havelaar meant, namely, that the Resident would derive any advantage or gain from these crimes; but still there was a cause which made him unwilling to do justice to the complaints of Havelaar’s predecessor. We have seen how this predecessor had often spoken to the Resident about the prevailing abuses, and of how little use this had been. It is therefore not quite without interest to examine why he who, as the head of the whole Residency, was obliged to take care as much as the Assistant Resident, yes, even more than he, that justice was done, chose rather continually to oppose it.

When Havelaar was staying at the Resident’s house at Serang, he had already spoken to him about the Lebak abuses, and had received for answer,—“that this was everywhere the case in a greater or less degree.”

Now Havelaar could not deny this. Who could pretend to have seen a country where nothing wrong happened? But he thought that this was no motive to tolerate abuses where they were found; above all, not when one is appointed to oppose them; and, moreover, that after all that he knew of Lebak, the question was not of