On Java, the Chinese have been generally left to their own laws and the regulations of their own chiefs; and being, for the most part, merely temporary residents in the country, they devote themselves to the accumulation of wealth, without being very scrupulous about the means of obtaining it: when, therefore, they acquire grants of land, they generally contrive to reduce the peasants speedily to the condition of slaves. The improvement of the people, which was never much attended to by the Dutch, was still less so by the Chinese, and the oppression which they exercised in the vicinity of Batavia had opened the eyes of the Dutch themselves. A report of the Council of Batavia, a short time prior to the landing of the English, accordingly states, that "although the Chinese, as being the most industrious settlers, should be the most useful, they on the contrary have become a very dangerous people, and are to be considered as a pest to the country; for which evil," they add, "there appears to be no radical cure but their expulsion from the interior." Wherever the Chinese formed extensive settlements in Java, the native inhabitants had no alternative but that of abandoning the district or becoming slaves of the soil. The monopolising spirit of the Chinese was often very pernicious to the produce of the soil, as may be seen even at this day in the immediate vicinity of Batavia, where all the public markets are farmed by them, and the degeneracy and poverty of the lower orders are proverbial. The Chinese of Batavia are a very numerous body, and possess considerable wealth. They are active and industrious, enterprising and speculative in the highest degree in the smallest or most extensive concerns, and equally well adapted for trade or agriculture; but, at the same time, they are cunning, deceitful, covetous, and restless, and exceedingly unwarlike in their habits and dispositions. This is the character given of them by Mr. Hogendorp, who, in considering the injurious consequences of their extensive influence on Java, has drawn a very just and able representation of it[67]. In all the Malayan states, the Chinese have made the greatest efforts to get into their hands the farming of the port duties, and this has generally proved the ruin of the trade. In addition to these circumstances it should be recollected, that the Chinese, from their peculiar language and manners, form a kind of separate society in every place where they settle, which gives them a great advantage over every competitor in arranging monopolies of trade. The ascendancy of the Chinese requires to be cautiously guarded against and restrained; and this, perhaps, cannot be better done, than by bringing forward the native population, and encouraging them in useful and industrious habits.