of 23rd March, to sit there as a supposed haven of refuge, and yet to be an impotent protector.
“It was heartrending to listen to the complaints about ill-treatment, extortion, poverty, starvation . . . when now even I myself was going to face, with wife and child, both hunger and poverty.
“And yet even then I was not at liberty to betray the Government. I was not at liberty to say to those poor people: ‘Go and suffer still, for the Administration wishes you to be exploited!’ I was not at liberty to confess my impotence, linked as I was to the disgrace and unscrupulousness of the advisers of the Governor-General.
“This is what I answered:
“ ‘I cannot help you immediately! But I shall go to Batavia, and I shall speak to the Great Lord about your misery. He is just, and he will stand by you. For the present go home peacefully . . . do not resist . . . do not yet leave the place . . . wait patiently: I think, I . . . hope that justice will be done!’
“So I thought, ashamed of the breach of my pledge of assistance, that I might make my ideas harmonize with my duty towards the Administration, as it still pays me this month, and I should have continued this until the arrival of my successor, if an unusual occurrence to-day had not necessitated my putting a stop to this equivocal relation.
“Seven persons had complained. I gave them the above reply. They returned to their homes. On the way they met their village-chief. He must have forbidden them to leave their kampong again, and—as it has been reported to me—taken their clothes away from them to compel them to stay at home. One of them escaped, came to me again, and declared that he durst not return to his village.
“I absolutely do not know what I am to say to that man!
“I cannot protect him . . . I may not confess my impotence to
