that article of food. Export from a residency represents prosperity, Import, relative want.
Now when one examines and compares those statements, they seem to show that rice is everywhere so abundant that all the residencies together export more rice than all the residencies together import. I repeat that in this there is no question of Imports and Exports oversea, the statement of which is a separate one. The conclusion then is the interesting thesis that in Java there is more rice than there is. That surely is prosperity!
I have said already that the wish never to send other than good reports to the Government would reach the ridiculous, if the results of it all were not so tragic. For what improvement may be hoped with regard to so much wrong, if there is a predetermined purpose to twist and distort everything in those reports to the Government? What, for instance, may be expected from a population which, by nature gentle and submissive, has for years upon years complained of oppression, when one Resident after another is seen to retire on furlough or pension, or called away to another office, without the slightest thing being done to redress the grievances under which that population is bowed down? Will not the bent spring in the end recoil? Will not the long suppressed discontent—suppressed in order that one may continue to deny its existence—at last pass to rage, to despair, to madness? Is there not in sight, at the end of this road, a Jacquerie?
And where will then the officials be who for so many years have succeeded one another without ever striking the idea that there is something higher than the favour of Government? Something higher than the “approbation of the Governor-General”? Where then will they be, the writers of cowardly Reports who blind the eyes of Government with their untruths? Will they, who previously lacked the courage to put on paper a resolute word, now suddenly gird on the sword, and save the Dutch possessions for the Netherlands? Will they return to the Netherlands the treasure that will be required to quell insurrection, to prevent complete
