Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/307

 give information about the prices of wood, stone, lime, and wages, and how Havelaar had not only to struggle with the power of those who reaped advantage from crime, but likewise with the timorousness of those who, though condemning that crime as much as he, did not mean courageously to combat it. Perhaps the reader, after having perused this letter, will think no more with such disdain of the servile submission of the Javanese, who in presence of his chief revokes like a coward an accusation however well founded it may be. For if you consider that there was so much cause for fear, even for the European functionary, who certainly may be deemed to be somewhat less exposed to vengeance, what then awaited the poor husbandman who, in a village far from the capital, fell entirely into the power of his accused oppressors? Is it surprising that these poor men, afraid of the consequences of their boldness, endeavoured to escape or to soften those consequences by humble submission? And it was not only the Controller Verbrugge who did his duty with a shyness characteristic of neglect of duty. The Djaksa likewise, the native chief, who fills in the council of the country the office of public prosecutor, preferred entering in the evening, unseen and without attendants, the house of Havelaar. He whose duty it was to prevent theft, he whose vocation if was to catch the sneaking thief, sneaked softly in at the back door, as if he were himself a thief, fearing to be seized, after having firstly convinced himself