Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/221

 revolution? Will they bring back to life the thousands that will have fallen through their guilt?

And those officials, those Controllers and Residents, are not the guilty. It is the Government itself, which, as though struck with incomprehensible blindness, encourages, invites, and rewards the tendering of favourable Reports. And this is particularly the case where there is a question of oppression of the population by native Chiefs.

Many attribute the protection of the Chiefs to the ignoble calculation that the latter, having to display pomp and splendour in order to exercise over the population that influence which the Government needs to uphold its authority, would require for this a much higher remuneration than they receive now, if they were not left the liberty to supplement the deficiency by unlawful disposal of the possessions and the labour of the people. However this may be, certain it is that the Government applies the instructions which are said to protect the Javanese against extortion and robbery only when such application is unavoidable. Most frequently a reason is found in considerations of high policy transcending ordinary judgment, and often evolved from the imagination, to spare Regent or  Chief; and indeed it is in India an opinion which has almost become a proverb, that the Government would rather dismiss ten Residents than one Regent. And those pretended political reasons, if having any foundation at all, are usually based on false information, as every Resident is personally interested in giving an exalted impression of the influence of his Regents over the population, so that he may some day shield himself with it if remarks should be made about too great an indulgence towards those Chiefs.

I will for the present pass over the abominable hypocrisy of the humane-sounding instructions—and of the oaths!—which protect the Javanese on paper  against tyranny, and invite the reader to remember how Havelaar, in repeating those oaths, acted in a manner that suggested contempt. For the moment I will