Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/382



inferior rank as, belonging to the family of the Regent, may be expected to mar the impartiality of the examination to be instituted.
 * 1) “To order that examination to take place immediately, and to report circumstantially on the issue. I take the liberty of submitting to your consideration the advisability of countermanding the visit of the Regent of Tjanjar.

“Finally, I have the honour to give you, as one who knows the district of Lebak better than it is as yet possible for me to know it, the assurance that, from a point of view, the strictly just treatment of this affair has no. difficulty at all, and that I should be rather apprehensive if it was  cleaved up, for I am informed that the poor man is, as a witness told me, ‘poessing’ (tired, sick, disgusted) of all the vexation he has suffered, and that he has long sought relief.

“I have partly derived the strength to fulfil in writing this letter, from the hope that I may be allowed in due time to bring forward one or two excuses for the old Regent, for whose position, though caused by his own fault, I nevertheless feel great compassion.—The Assistant Resident at Lebak,

(Signed) “”

The next day the Resident of Bantam replied no, but “Mr. Slymering” did so, in a private letter.

That reply is a precious contribution to the knowledge