Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/321

 of 23rd March, to sit there as a supposed haven of refuge, and yet to be an impotent protector.

“It was heartrending to listen to the complaints about ill-treatment, extortion, poverty, starvation when now even I myself was going to face, with wife and child, both hunger and poverty.

“And yet even then I was not at liberty to betray the Government. I was not at liberty to say to those poor people: ‘Go and suffer still, for the Administration wishes you to be exploited!’ I was not at liberty to confess my impotence, linked as I was to the disgrace and unscrupulousness of the advisers of the Governor-General.

“This is what I answered:

“So I thought, ashamed of the breach of my pledge of assistance, that I might make my ideas harmonize with my duty towards the Administration,, and I should have continued this until the arrival of my successor, if an unusual occurrence to-day had not necessitated my putting a stop to this equivocal relation.

“Seven persons had complained. I gave them the above reply. They returned to their homes. On the way they met their village-chief. He must have forbidden them to leave their kampong again, and—as it has been reported to me—taken their clothes away from them to compel them to stay at home. One of them escaped, came to me, and declared

“I absolutely do not know what I am to say to man!

“I not protect him I  not confess my impotence to