Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/372

 denied to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” because there never existed an Evangeline? Shall people say to the author of that immortal protestimmortal, not because of art or talent, but because of tendency and impressionshall they say to her, “You have lied: the slaves are not ill-treated; for there is untruth in your book—it is a novel?” Had not she to give a tale, instead of an enumeration of barren facts, a tale which surrounded those facts, to introduce them into our hearts? Would her book have been read if she had given it the form of a law-suit? Is it her fault or mine, that, to find entrance, has so often to borrow the of a ?

And to some who will pretend that I have too much idealized Saïdjah and his love, I ask how they can know this; as only very few Europeans have given themselves the trouble to stoop to observe the emotions of the coffee and sugar machines, called “Natives.” But even if this observation were well founded, whosoever quotes this as a proof against the cardinal tendency of my book,. For that observation when translated is as follows:—“The evil which you combat does not exist, or not in such a high degree, because the native is not like your Saïdjah: there is not in the ill-treatment of the Javanese so much evil as there would be if you had rightly drawn your Saïdjah. The Soondanese do not sing such songs, do not love so, do not feel thus”

No, Colonial Ministers! no, Governors-General in re-