[39] Colquhoun's Statistical Account of Great Britain. [40] Valentyn. [41] The grandfather of the present Prince _Prang Wedóno_. [42] It is remarked in the text, that the condition of the slaves on Java is very different from that of the same class in the West Indies. The former are employed rather as administering to the luxuries than the necessities of their proprietors; and, with few exceptions, exclusively for domestic purposes. There are some who having taught their slaves when young to embroider, or exercise some useful handicraft or trade, obtain a livelihood by means of their services, and some few employ their slaves on their estates, or let them out to hire; but the general condition of the slaves is that of domestic servants. The regulations and colonial statutes respecting slavery seem to have been framed on the principles of humanity, and with attention to the genius of the Christian religion; yet, in consequence of the supplementary force of the Roman law in the Dutch system of legislature, there appeared to be one capital defect in the code, _viz._ that a slave was considered as a real property, incapable of personal rights, from which consideration the ill-treatment of a master towards his slave was not so much estimated on the principle of personal injury, as that of a proprietor abusing his own property; and although a slave, under such a system, might obtain a portion of property for himself with the consent of his master, his possession was always precarious, and depended on the discretion of his proprietor (in the same manner as a _peculium adventitium_ with the Romans), becoming only the unlimited property of the slave, if the master allowed him to keep it after his emancipation.