The soil is in general extremely fertile, and can be brought to yield its produce with little labour. Many of the best spots still remain uncultivated, and several districts are almost desert and neglected, which might be the seats of a crowded and happy peasantry. In many places, the land does not require to be cleared, as in America, from the overgrown vegetation of primeval forests, but offers its services to the husbandman, almost free from every obstruction to his immediate labours. The agricultural life in which the mass of the people are engaged, is on Java, as in every other country, the most favourable to health. It not only favours the longevity of the existing race, but conduces to its more rapid renewal, by leading to early marriages and a numerous progeny. The term of life is not much shorter than in the best climates of Europe. A very considerable number of persons of both sexes attain the advanced age of seventy or eighty, and some even live to one hundred and upwards; nearly the same proportion survive forty and fifty, as in other genial climates.
While life is thus healthy and prolonged, there are no restraints upon the formation of family connexions, by the scarcity of subsistence or the labour of supporting children. Both sexes arrive at maturity very early, and the customs of the country, as well as the nature of the climate, impel them to marry young; the males at sixteen, and the females at thirteen or fourteen years of age: though frequently the women form connexions at nine or ten, and, as Montesquieu expresses it, "infancy and marriage go together." The conveniences which the married couple require are few and easily procured. The impulse of nature is seldom checked by the experience of present deficiencies, or the fear of future poverty. Subsistence is procured without difficulty, and comforts are not wanting. Children, who are for a very short period a burden to their parents, become early the means of assistance and the source of wealth. To the peasant who labours his field with his own hand, and who has more land than he can bring into cultivation, they grow up into a species of valuable property, a real treasure; while, during their infancy and the season of helplessness, they take little from the fruits of his industry but bare subsistence.
Their education costs him little or nothing; scarcely any clothing is required, his hut needs very little enlargement, and no beds are used. Many of them die in infancy from the small-pox and other distempers, but never from scanty food or criminal neglect of parents. The women of all classes suckle their children, till we ascend to the wives of the regents and of the sovereign, who employ nurses.
Though women soon arrive at maturity, and enter early into the married state, they continue to bear children to an advanced age, and it is no uncommon thing to see a grandmother still making addition to her family. Great families are however rare. Though there are some women who have borne thirteen or fourteen children, the average is rather low than otherwise. A chácha, or family, is generally less numerous than in Europe, both from the circumstance that the young men and women more early leave the houses of their parents to form establishments for themselves, and from an injudicious mode of labouring among women of the lower ranks. Miscarriages among the latter are frequently caused by over-straining themselves in carrying excessive burdens, and performing oppressive field-work, during pregnancy. The average number of persons in a family does not exceed four, or four and a half. As the labour of the women is almost equally productive with that of the men, female children become as much objects of solicitude with their parents as male: they are nursed with the same care, and viewed with the same pride and tenderness. In no class of society are children of either sex considered as an incumbrance, or the addition to a family as a misfortune; marriage is therefore almost universal. An unmarried man past twenty is seldom to be met with, and an old maid is considered a curiosity. Neither custom, law, or religion, enjoins celibacy on the priesthood, or any other order of the community, and by none of them is it practised. Although no strictness of principle, nor strong sense of moral restraint, prevails in the intercourse of the sexes, prostitution is not common, except in the capitals.
As the Javans are a quiet domestic people, little given to adventure, disinclined to foreign enterprise, not easily roused to violence or bloodshed, and little disposed to irregularities of any kind, there are but few families left destitute in consequence of hazards incurred or crimes committed by their natural protectors. The character of blood-thirsty revenge, which has been attributed to all the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago, by no means applies to the people of Java; and though, in all cases where justice is badly administered or absolutely perverted, people may be expected to enforce their rights or redress their grievances, rather by their own passions than by an appeal to the magistrate, comparatively few lives are lost on the island by personal affrays or private feuds.
Such are a few of the circumstances that would appear to have encouraged an increase of population on Java. They furnish no precise data on which to estimate its rapidity, or to calculate the period within which it would be doubled, but they allow us, if tranquillity and good government were enjoyed, to anticipate a gradual progress in the augmentation of inhabitants, and the improvements of the soil for a long course of time. Suppose the quantity of land in cultivation to be to the land still in a state of nature as one to seven, which is probably near the truth, and that, in the ordinary circumstances of the country, the population would double itself in a century, it might go on increasing for three hundred years to come. Afterwards the immense tracts of unoccupied or thinly peopled territories on Sumatra, Borneo, and the numerous islands scattered over the Archipelago, may be ready to receive colonies, arts, and civilization from the metropolis of the Indian seas. Commercial intercourse, friendly relations, or political institutions, may bind these dispersed communities in one great insular commonwealth. Its trade and navigation might connect the centre of this great empire with Japan, China, and the south-western countries of Asia. New Holland, which the adventurous Búgis already frequent, and which is not so far distant from Java as Russia is from England, might be included in the circle, and colonies of Javans settled on the north, might meet with the British spreading from the south, over that immense and now uncultivated region. If we could indulge ourselves in such reveries with propriety, we might contemplate the present semi-barbarous condition, ignorance, and poverty of these innumerable islands, exchanged for a state of refinement, prosperity, and happiness.
I formerly alluded to the oppressions of government, as the principal checks to the increase of population on Java. There are many others, such as the small-pox, and other diseases, which are common to that country with the rest of the world. From the scattered state of the population, any contagious distemper, such as the small-pox, was formerly less destructive on Java, than in countries where the inhabitants are more crowded into large towns, and it is hoped that, from the establishment for vaccine inoculation which the British government erected, and endeavoured to render permanent, its ravages may, in time, be entirely arrested. The diseases most peculiar to the country, and most dangerous at all ages, are fevers and dysenteries: epidemics are rare. There are two moral causes which, on their first mention, will strike every one as powerfully calculated to counteract the principle of population: I mean the facility of obtaining divorces, and the practice of polygamy. A greater weight should not, however, be given them than they deserve after a consideration of all the circumstances. It is true, that separations often take place on the slightest grounds, and new connexions are formed with equal frivolity and caprice; but in whatever light morality would view this practice, and however detrimental it would be to population in a different state of society, by leaving the children of the marriage so dissolved to neglect and want, it has no such consequences on Java. Considering the age at which marriages are usually contracted, the choice of the parties cannot be always expected to be considerate or judicious. It may be observed also that the women, although they do not appear old at twenty, as Montesquieu remarks, certainly sooner lose that influence over their husbands, which depends upon their beauty and personal attractions, than they do in colder climates. In addition to this, there is little moral restraint among many classes of the community, and the religious maxims and indulgences acted upon by the priesthood, in regulating matrimonial sanctions, have no tendency to produce constancy, or to repress inclination. Dissolutions of marriage are, therefore, very frequent, and obtained upon the slightest pretences; but, as children are always valuable, and as there is very little trouble in rearing or providing for them, no change of mate, in either party, leads to their abandonment or neglect. Indeed, the ease of supporting children, which renders the practice less detrimental to the increase of population, may be one of the principal causes why it is generally followed and so little checked. No professed prostitution or promiscuous intercourse is the consequence of this weakness of the nuptial tie. It is rather brittle than loose; it is easily dissolved, but while it remains it generally insures fidelity.
Polygamy, though in all cases it must be injurious to population and happiness, so far as it goes, is permitted on Java, as in other Mahomedan countries, by religion and law, but not practiced to any great extent. Perhaps the ease of obtaining matrimonial separations, by admitting of successive changes of wives, diminishes the desire of possessing more than one at a time.
It is plain, likewise, that whatever be the law, the great body of the people must have only one wife; and that, where there is nearly an equality of number between the sexes, inequality of wealth or power alone can create an unequal distribution of women. On Java, accordingly, only the chiefs and the sovereign marry more than one wife. All the chiefs, from the regents downwards, can only, by the custom of the country, have two; the sovereign alone has four. The regents, however, have generally three or four concubines, and the sovereign eight or ten. Some of the chiefs have an extraordinary number of children; the late Regent of Túban is reputed to have been the father of no fewer than sixty-eight. Such appropriations of numerous women as wives or concubines, were owing to the political power of native authorities over the inferior classes; and as, by the new system, that power is destroyed, the evil may to a certain extent be checked. If we were to depend upon the statement of a writer whom Montesquieu refers to, that in Bantam there were ten women to one man, we should be led to conclude with him, that here was a case particularly favourable to polygamy, and that such an institution was here an appointment of nature, intended for the multiplication of the species, rather than an abuse contributing to check it. There is not the least foundation, however, for the report. The proportion of males and females born in Bantam, and over the whole of Java, is nearly the same as in Europe, and as we find generally to exist, wherever accurate statements can be obtained. From the information collected in a very careful surrey of one part of the very province in question, the preponderance seemed to be on the side of male children to an extraordinary degree; the male children being about forty-two thousand, and the females only thirty-five thousand five hundred. There were formerly, it is true, great drains on the male population, to which I have before alluded, and which, in the advanced stages of life, might turn the balance on the other side; but as they were never so destructive as to render polygamy a political institution, so that institution was not carried to such an extent, as to render it a peculiar obstacle to the progress of population. Upon the whole, we may conclude that in Java, under a mild government, there is a great tendency to an increase in the number of inhabitants, and to the consequent improvement and importance of the island.
Besides the natives, whose numbers, circumstances, and character I have slightly mentioned, there is on Java a rapidly increasing race of foreigners, who have emigrated from the different surrounding countries. The most numerous and important class of these is the Chinese, who already do not fall far short of a hundred thousand; and who, with a system of free trade and free cultivation, would soon accumulate tenfold, by natural increase within the island, and gradual accessions of new settlers from home. They reside principally in the three capitals of Batavia, Samárang, and Surabáya, but they are to be found in all the smaller capitals, and scattered over most parts of the country. A great proportion of them are descended from families who have been many generations on the island. Additions are gradually making to their numbers. They arrive at Batavia from China, to the amount of a thousand and more annually, in Chinese junks, carrying three, four, and five hundred each, without money or resources; but, by dint of their industry, soon acquire comparative opulence. There are no women on Java who come directly from China; but as the Chinese often marry the daughters of their countrymen by Javan women, there results a numerous mixed race, which is often scarcely distinguishable from the native Chinese. The Chinese on their arrival generally marry a Javan woman, or purchase a slave from the other islands. The progeny from this connexion, or what may be termed the cross breed between the Chinese and Javans, are called in the Dutch accounts pernákans. Many return to China annually in the junks, but by no means in the same numbers as they arrive.