A few years of repose to these islands, and of safe uninterrupted commerce, with its attendant blessings, would repay with gain incalculable, what they now claim from the benevolence and philanthropy, if not from the justice of Europeans, who have so essentially contributed to their degradation. If left neglected, without capital, without a safe navigation, almost without laws, the government disunited, the people groaning under vassalage and slavery, these races must descend still further in the scale of degradation, until scarcely a vestige will remain to vindicate the records of their history; and their political existence will only be testified by acts of piracy perpetrated on defenceless vessels, which from accident or ignorance may visit their inhospitable shores. In all their Eastern settlements, the favourite policy of the Dutch seems to have been to depress the native inhabitants, and give every encouragement to the Chinese, who, generally speaking, are only itinerants and not children of the soil, and who follow the almost universal practice of remitting the fruits of their industry to China, instead of spending them where they were acquired. The Chinese, in all ages equally supple, venal, and crafty, failed not, at a very early period, to recommend themselves to the speculating Hollanders. They have, almost from the first, been their agents; and in the island of Java, in particular, they acquired from them the entire monopoly of the revenue farms and government contracts. Many of the most respectable Dutch families were intimately connected with the Chinese in their contracts and speculations, and whole provinces had been sold in perpetuity to some of them, the extensive population of which were thus assigned over to their unfeeling oppression, for the purpose of raising temporary supplies of money.