Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/139

Rh wont to regard the native nobles and the mercantile communities of the ports from on high.

The colonial government has never welcomed aliens to the isles, whether those bent on business or on pleasure. Dutch suspicion still throws as many difficulties as possible in the way of a tourist, and it took strong preventive measures against an influx of British or other uitlander planters when the abandonment of the culture system made private plantations desirable, and the opening of the Suez Canal brought Java so near to Europe. As a better climate, better physical conditions of every kind, and a more docile, industrious native race were to be found in Java than elsewhere in the Indies, there was a threatened invasion of coffee- and tea-planters, more particularly from India and Ceylon. The Boer of the tropics, like his kinsman in South Africa, found effectual means to so hamper as virtually to exclude the uitlander planters. Land-transfers and leases were weighted with inconceivable restrictions and impositions; heavy taxes, irksome police and passport regulations, and nearly as many restraints as were put upon Arabs and Chinese, urged the British planter to go elsewhere, since he could not have any voice in local or colonial government in a lifetime. Six years' residence is required for naturalization, but the Briton is rarely willing to change his allegiance—it is his purpose rather to Anglicize, naturalize, annex, or protect all outlying countries as English.

The governor-general of the colony may revoke the toelatings-kaart of any one, Dutch as well as alien,