These slaves are the property of the Europeans and Chinese alone: the native chiefs never require the services of slaves, or engage in the traffic of slavery. The Mahomedan laws, which regulate their civil condition, and permit this abomination in all its extent, are modified by the milder prejudices and more humane temper of the country. The Dutch, who, like us, valued themselves on their political liberty, are here the great promoters of civil servitude, and carried with them into their eastern empire, the Roman law regarding slavery in all its extent and rigour. But although they adopted principles that admitted of the most cruel and wanton treatment of slaves, I would not be understood to say, that they carried these principles into common practice. The contrary was almost universally the case, and the condition of slaves on Java, where they were employed principally in domestic offices, formed a complete contrast to the state of those employed in the West India plantations. It is remarked by Montesquieu, that "in despotic countries, the condition of a slave is hardly more burdensome than that of a subject," and such has been the case in Java. The grounds on which the Dutch justified the practice of making slaves, was not that they could not command the services of the natives with a sway sufficiently absolute, and that they were compelled to seek, beyond the limits of the island, for unfortunate agents to perform what the natives shewed a reluctance to undertake, but that they found the class of foreigners more adroit and docile than the Javans in the conduct of household affairs, and that having reduced them to the state of property, they remained in the family for life, and saved the trouble of a new training. Upon the conquest of the island by the British in 1811, the condition of this class of its subjects excited the attention of government; and though we could not, consistently with those rights of property which were admitted by the laws that we professed to administer, emancipate them at once from servitude, we enacted regulations, as far as we were authorized, to ameliorate their present lot, and lead to their ultimate freedom. Steps were immediately taken to check further importation, and as soon as it was known that the horrid traffic in slaves was declared a felony by the British parliament, it was not permitted for an instant to disgrace a region to which the British authority extended. The folly and perfect uselessness of slavery on Java has been often pointed out by Dutch commissioners and Dutch authors[42].