poly on account of his own Government of whatever may be the principal produce of the place; the private merchant is thrust out altogether; or condemned to put up with vexations and impositions but above all the unhealthy climate of Batavia; at which Port alone the Dutch seem determined that all the trade of these Islands shall centre. Surely after the millions that have been sacrificed to this hateful and destructive policy, they ought to have had some common feeling for humanity, some object in view beyond the cold calculations of profit and lose. Let them do what they please with Java and the Moluccas, and these contain a population of at least five millions: bat with the population of Borneo, Sumatra and the other Islands, which is at least equal in amount, they can have no right to interfere by restrictive regulation. Let then turn their own lawful subjects to what account they please, but let them not involve our allies, and the British character, in the general vortex of the ruin they are working for themselves.
I must beg your pardon for troubling you with politics, but it is necessary I should give you some account of them to explain the cause of my movements, which have been various and rapid. I had not been six weeks in Bencoolen before it was necessary to penetrate into the interior of the Southern Districts of Sumatra. I had hardly accomplished this when my attention was directed to the Central districts and the original seat of Malayan Empire[1]; on my return from there I had to send a party across the Island from Bencoolen; being the first attempt of the kind ever made by Europeans, and finally I had to proceed to Bengal to report my proceedings and to confer with the Governor General as to what was best to be done to check the further progress of the Dutch. Here I fortunately met with every attention; the subject was fairly and deliberately considered, and to use the emphatic words of Lord Hastings there was but one opinion as to the moral turpitude of the means employed by our rivals and their determination to degrade and injure the British. In this crisis it remained to be considered what was best to be done in this country without exciting actual hostilities; and what should be recommended to the authorities in Europe. It was clear that the object of the Dutch was not only to command for themselves all the trade of the Eastern Islands, but to possess the power in the event of future war of preventing our regular intercourse with China.
- ↑ Menangkabau; an interesting account of this visit is to be found in Crawfurd's Descriptive Dictionary p. 273.
