It is hard to say that, apart from the nature of the culture-system, the Dutch principle of making a profit out of the countries which they rule is inconsistent with the position of a Christian nation. It is the ancient system of countries having possessions in the East, and upon our side we are not able to show any definite reasons in favor of our course of scrupulously keeping separate the Indian revenue, and spending Indian profits upon India and Cinghalese in Ceylon, except such reasons as would logically lead to our quitting India altogether. That the Dutch should make a profit out of Java is perhaps not more immoral than that they should be there. At the same time, the character of the Dutch system lowers the tone of the whole Dutch nation, and especially of those who have any connection with the Indies, and effectually prevents future amendment. With our system, there is some chance of right being done, so small is our self-interest in the wrong. From the fact that no surplus is sent home from Ceylon, she is at least free from that bane of Java,—the desire of the local authorities to increase as much as possible the valuable productions of their districts, even at the risk of famine, provided only that they may hope to put off the famine until after their time—a desire that produces the result that subaltern Dutch officers who observe in their integrity the admirable rules which have been made for the protection of the native population are heartily abused for their ridiculous scrupulosity, as it is styled.
Not to be carried away by the material success of the Dutch system, it is as well to bear in mind its secret history. A private company—the Dutch Trading Society—was founded at Amsterdam in 1824, the then King being the largest shareholder. The company was in difficulties in 1830, when the King, finding he was losing money fast, sent out as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies his personal friend Van den Bosch. The next year, the culture-system, with all its attendant horrors, was introduced into Java by Van den Bosch, the Dutch Trading Society being made agents for the government. The result was the extraordinary prosperity of the company, and the leaving by the merchant-king of a private fortune of fabulous amount.
The Dutch system has been defended by every conceivable kind of blind misrepresentation; it has even been declared, by writers who ought certainly to know better, that the four millions of surplus that Holland draws from Java, being profits on trade, are not taxation! Even the blindest admirers of the system are forced, however, to admit that it involves the absolute prohibition of missionary enterprise, and total exclusion from knowledge of the Java people.
The Ceylon planters have at present political as well as financial difficulties on their hands. They have petitioned the Queen for “self-government for Ceylon,” and for control of the revenue by “representatives of the public”—excellent principles, if “public” meant public, and “Ceylon,” Ceylon; but, when we inquire of the planters what they really mean, we find that by “Ceylon” they understand Galle and Columbo Fort, and by “the public” they mean themselves. There are at present six unofficial members of the Council: of these, the whites have three members, the Dutch burghers one, and the natives two; and the planters expect the same proportions to be kept in a Council to which supreme power shall be intrusted in the disposition of the revenues. They are, indeed, careful to explain that they in no way desire the extension of representative institutions to Ceylon.
The first thing that strikes the English traveler in Ceylon is the apparent slightness of our hold upon the country. In my journey from Galle to Columbo, by early morning and mid-day, I met no white man; from Columbo to Kandy, I traveled with one, but met none; at Kandy, I saw no whites; at Nuwara Ellia, not half a dozen. On my return, I saw no whites between Nuwara Ellia and Ambe Pusse, where there was a white man in the railway-station; and on my return by evening from Columbo to Galle, in all the thronging crowds along the roads there was not a single European. There are hundreds of Cinghalese in the interior who live and die and never see a white man. Out of the two and a quarter millions of people who dwell in what the planters call the “colony of Ceylon,” there are but 3000 Europeans, of whom 1500 are our soldiers, and 250 our civilians. Of the European non-official class, there are but 1300 persons, or about 500 grown-up men. The proposition of the Planters’ Association is that we should confide the despotic government over two and a quarter millions of Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Hindoo laborers to these 500 English Christian employers. It is not the Ceylon planters who have a grievance against us, but we who have a serious complaint against them; so flourishing a dependency should certainly provide for all the costs of her defense.
Some of the mountain views between Kandy and Nuwara Ellia are full of grandeur, though they lack the New Zealand snows; but none can match, for variety and color, that which I saw on may return from the ascent to the Kaduganava Pass, where you look over a foreground of giant-leaved talipot and slender areca palms and tall bamboos, lit with the scarlet blooms of the cotton-tree, on to a plain dotted with banyan-tree groves and broken by wooded hills. On either side, the deep valley-bottoms are carpeted with bright green—the wet rice-lands, or terraced paddy-fields, from which the natives gather crop after crop throughout the year.
In the union of rich foliage with deep color and grand forms, no scenery save that of New Zealand can bear comparison with that of the hill country of Ceylon, unless, indeed, it be the scenery of Java and the far Eastern Isles.
CHAPTER III.
MADRAS TO CALCUTTA.
Spending but a single day in Madras—an inferior Columbo—I passed on to Calcutta with a pleasant remembrance of the air of prosperity that hangs about the chief city of what is still called by Bengal civilians “The Benighted Presidency.” Small as are the houses, poor as are the shops, every one looks well-to-do, and everybody happy, from the not undeservedly famed cooks at the club to the catamaran men on the shore. Coffee and good government have of late done much for Madras.
The surf consists of two lines of rollers, and is altogether inferior to the fine-weather swell on the west coast of New Zealand, and only to be dignified and promoted into surfship by men of that fine imagination which will lead them to sniff the spices a day before they reach Ceylon, or the pork and molasses when off Nantucket light-ship. The row through the first roller in the lumbering Massullah boat, manned by a dozen sinewy blacks, the waiting for a chance between the first and second lines of spray, and then the dash for shore, the crew singing their measured “Ah! lah! lálala!—ah! lah! lálala!” the stroke coming with the accented syllable, and the helmsman shrieking with excitement, is a more pretentious ceremony than that which accompanies the crossing of Hokitika bar, but the passage is a far less dangerous one. The Massullah boats are like empty hay-barges on the Thames, but built without nails, so that they “give” instead of breaking up when battered by the sand on one side and the seas upon the other. This is a very wise precaution in the case of boats which are always made to take the shore broadside on. The first sea that strikes the boat either shoots the passenger on to the dry sand, or puts him where he can easily be caught by the natives on the beach, but the Massullah boat herself gets a terrible banging before the crew can haul her out of reach of the seas.