turned to advantage, and the native states, deprived of their fair share of commerce, abandoned all attempts, and sunk into the comparative insignificance in which they were found at the period when our traders began to navigate those seas from Madras and Bengal. The destruction of the native trade of the Archipelago by this withering policy, may be considered as the origin of many of the evils, and of all the piracies of which we now complain. A maritime and commercial people, suddenly deprived of all honest employment, or the means of respectable subsistence, either sunk into apathy and indolence, or expended their natural energies in piratical attempts to recover, by force and plunder, what they had been deprived of by policy and fraud. In this state of decay, they continued to degenerate, till the appearance of the British traders revived their suppressed and nearly extinguished energies, and awoke to new life the commerce and enterprise of this interesting portion of the globe. The decline and corruption of the Dutch power in the East, offered little obstruction ; as our intercourse increased, their establish-
