“The Javanese will never change their skin. Those of the present day are simply a few grades lazier than their progenitors. Since the last great war Java has been declared a neutral territory; all nationalities have equal rights to trade on it, and what do you think has been the result? That of the few hundred-weights of coffee and sugar which the island continues to produce, scarcely anything finds its way to our own market; most of it goes to Marseilles and other parts of the Mediterranean.”
At this point Bacon interrupted our conservative friend, and spoke as follows: “I am no trader, sir; but unless I am improperly informed, the Javanese people feel much happier now than when they were under the rule of the East Indian Company or the Culture System. It appears to me that possessions which are not colonies proper impose peculiar obligations on the temporary possessor, and that the latter is hardly justified in dealing with the inhabitants as the leech does with the patient. Wherever a superior race holds sway over an inferior one, it is the duty of the former to raise its inferiors to any such state of culture as they may prove themselves susceptible of. From the nature of things, such rule is always temporary, as history has often taught us. The time must come when the bonds will be rent asunder; but they will hold so much longer together, and be so much more easily dissolved, as the government has less borne the character of oppression. A moral ascendancy is on the whole the most powerful, and that maintains itself best by fair and just treatment of the weaker by the stronger. I for one feel perfectly convinced that the only reason why your country has even kept the island as long as it has, was exclusively owing to the few necessary reforms which your government consented to make in the nineteenth century. But for those concessions, Java would have been lost to you long before; and with regard to the shifting of the market, don’t you think yourself, sir, that that was chiefly brought about by the Suez Canal?”
“Perhaps so,” replied the Hollander, not very good-naturedly; “I won’t argue the point with you; you are an Englishman, and you fellows think that you know everything better than we do; this, however, I maintain, that if this kind of thing is to continue, we shall go down as fast as we can.”
I silently rejoiced to think that my telescopical observations had more than convinced me of this, that my countrymen had by no means so visibly yet come down, and I was inclined to conclude from this consoling fact that they had known in time how to apply the old Dutch proverb: “When the tide turns, turn your beacons.” However, I did not venture to set my thoughts to words, for I should certainly have given offence to the “trunculant figure,” whose solitary line of conduct apparently went along his own individual interests, and whose knowledge of political economy and of the rights of man was evidently at a very low ebb.
Railway Nets.
During this somewhat prolonged conversation we had slightly deviated from our former course. We now moved along in south-easterly direction, and the native towns gradually disappeared from my sight. Looking towards the east, I observed a small black speck which obviously moved with great rapidity along the surface of the earth, and seemed to advance nearer and nearer to us. It became larger and larger as it approached our conveyance, under which it finally glided away. I had just had sufficient time to recognise an immense train of huge waggons in the fleeting meteor below us. “From where,” asked I, “did this train start?” Bacon consulted his railway guide. “That’s the morning train,” replied he, “which left Pekin the day before yesterday, and runs along the great central-east-west-line.”
“From Pekin? Right across or over the high mountains of Central Asia and Ural?”
“Oh, my friend, such obstacles have ceased to exist in the twenty-first century. Surely you yourself remember the piercing of Mount Cenis? You will soon observe that what was done in your time between France and Italy has since been accomplished between Italy and Switzerland.”
There could be no doubt in the matter; for the white-coated tops of the Alps already appeared at the horizon. The mountains themselves had not been affected by the hand of time or civilization, but the route went no longer across the Splügen, the Simplon, or the Saint Bernard, but underneath the mountain range, so that the same trains which we saw enter the tunnels on the Swiss side, made their appearance very shortly afterwards on the Italian side, and proceeded in their course through the plains of the valley of the Po.