entirely, as it reaches deep down into the very nature of the population which is the victim of it. The Javanese is generous, especially when it is a matter of proving his attachment to his Chief, to the descendant of those whom his forefathers obeyed. He would even hold that he fell short of the respect due to his hereditary lord if he entered the lordly kratoon without presents. And such presents are, it must be admitted, often of such small value that to decline them would have in it something of a humiliation, and often, therefore, this custom might rather be compared to the homage of a child that seeks to express his love for his father by offering a small gift, than that it should be conceived as a tribute to arbitrary tyranny.
But . . . in this way a gentle custom hinders the abolition of abuse.
If the aloen-aloen[1] in front of the residence of the Regent were in a neglected state, the neighbouring population would be ashamed of it, and it would require considerable authority to prevent them from ridding that area of weeds, and from putting it into a condition corresponding with the rank of the Regent. To offer payment for this would generally be considered an insult. But alongside this aloen-aloen, or elsewhere, lie sawahs that are waiting for the plough, or for a duct to bring the water to them, often from a distance of miles . . . these sawahs belong to the Regent. He summons, in order to work or irrigate his fields, the population of whole villages, whose own sawahs are just as much in need of being worked . . . this is the abuse.
The evil is known to the Government, and when one reads the Government publication in which are printed the laws, instructions and manuals for the officials, one applauds the humaneness that appears to have presided at the framing of these. Everywhere the European who is clothed with authority in the interior is commanded, as one of his most sacred obligations, to protect the population against their own submissiveness and the rapacity of the
- ↑ Court.
