that an indulgent Government wishes to enjoy the peace ensured by all those who spare it unpleasant tidings, or who, as they put it: “do not embarrass it with vexatious Reports”!
Where the population does not increase, the fact is attributed to the inexactitude of the enumerations of previous years. Where the revenue from taxation does not rise, one counts it a merit: the intention is by low assessments to encourage agriculture, which is just now beginning to develop, and will soon—for preference when the writer of the Report shall have left the district—yield incredible results. Where disturbances have taken place that cannot be concealed, they were the work of a few ill-disposed persons who in future need no longer be feared, as now there is general contentment. Where distress or famine has thinned the population, it was the result of crop-failure, drought, heavy rains, or something of the kind, but never of bad government.
Before me lies the note of Havelaar’s predecessor wherein he ascribed “the departure of people from the district of Parang-Koodyang to outrageous abuses.” This note was un-official, and contained matter on which that officer had to speak to the Resident of Bantam. But in vain did Havelaar search the archives for evidence that his predecessor had plainly and frankly called the same matter by its true name in a public service-minute.
Briefly put, the official Reports from the officials to the Government, and therefore also those based on them to the Government in the motherland, are for the greater and principal part untrue.
I know that this is a grave charge, but I stand by it, and am in a position to support it with proofs. Anyone who may feel vexed at my expressing my opinion without disguise should remember how many millions of money and how many human lives England would have been spared if someone in that country had succeeded in opening the eyes of the nation to the true state of affairs in British India, and how much gratitude everyone would have owed to the man who had shown the courage to be the Job’s messenger,
