this afterwards to Stern, who maintained that this was done by coercion, and that he could prove it out of Shawlman’s parcel; but I told him that this Shawlman was a slanderer,—that he had run away with girls, like that young German at Busselinck and Waterman’s,—that I did not attach the least value to his judgment, for that I had now learnt from a Resident himself how matters stood, and had therefore nothing to learn from Shawlman.
There were still more persons from the Indies, amongst others a very rich gentleman, who had gained much money on tea, which the Javanese made him for little money, and which the Government bought from him for a high price, to encourage the activity of the Javanese. This gentleman was also very angry with all those discontented persons, who are always speaking and writing against the Government. He could not say enough in praise of the government of the Colonies; for he said that he had the conviction that it lost a great deal in tea, which it bought from him, and that was therefore very generous in invariably paying such a high price for an article, intrinsically of little value, which he himself did not like, for he always drank Chinese tea. He said also, that the Governor-General, who had prolonged the so-called tea-contracts, notwithstanding the calculation that the nation lost so much on this, such a clever, good man was he, and, above all, a good friend of those who had known him formerly; for that this Governor-General had not paid
