By a steady adherence to a system which, even in its origin, was productive of such fruits, by continuing to the peasant the protection of laws made for his benefit, by allowing full scope to his industry, and encouraging his natural propensity to accumulate, agriculture on Java would soon acquire a different character: it would soon become active and enterprising; there would soon be created a difference in farms and in the circumstances of individuals; capital would be fixed and augmented in the hands of the skilful and the industrious among the cultivators; the idle and the indifferent would relinquish their possessions in their favour; roads, intercourse, and markets would be increased, the organization of society would be changed, and an improved race would shew themselves, in some measure, worthy of the most fertile region of the globe. What Egypt and Sicily were in different ages to the south of Europe, Java might become to the south of Asia and the Indian Archipelago. From the exertion with which the British government endeavoured to lay the foundation of such improvements, at first amid the embarrassments of a recent conquest, and latterly with the prospect of only an intermediate possession; from the attachment it cherished for a people whose gratitude it deserved and acquired, and from the interest that every friend of humanity must feel in the anticipation of seeing this highly favoured island, the metropolis, the granary, and the centre of civilization to the vast regions between the coast of China and the Bay of Bengal, it might have been expected, that those who were instrumental in introducing the late arrangements, should watch with peculiar anxiety the first movements of the power to which the colony was transferred, and should look into the regulations for its Indian empire for the support, or the death-blow, of the most animating hopes. It must therefore be with peculiar satisfaction that we see, with regard to the freedom of cultivation, the Dutch government sanctions what we had done, and gives our regulations permanency by embodying them in its colonial policy. In articles seventy-eight and seventy-nine of the fundamental laws for the civil, judicial, and mercantile administration of India[49], we find the following enactments. "The free cultivation of all articles of produce which may be raised in the possessions of the state in India, is granted to the inhabitants of these possessions; with the exception of cloves, nutmegs, and opium, and without prejudice to the regulations which might be adopted concerning the contingents and forced deliveries, which on a resumption of these possessions out of the hands of the English, will be found to be continued in force. All the fruits of cultivation raised within the possessions of the states beyond the forced deliveries, and every kind of produce not comprehended under the exceptions mentioned above, are to be the lawful property of the cultivator.