merely that portion of the produce of the earth paid
to the proprietor for the use of the original and indestructible
powers of the soil, or that which is a remuneration
for the expenditure of capital in its improvement,
but also the whole of the legitimate profits
of the farmer and cultivator. The amount thus
exacted is expended in revenue, and falls into unproductive
hands,—is spent, in short, upon the court, its
officers, or agents, and not a farthing returns to be
added to agricultural capital and to the improvement
of the land. What but the extraordinary productiveness
of the soil, and benignity of the climate, with
the peculiar relation of the land to the population,
could, for a moment, render so enormous an
impost tolerable, and present to us, notwithstanding
such disadvantages, the extraordinary spectacle
of a rich husbandry under such privations as those
of the Javanese cultivator. Should such a system
be persevered in when the wages of labour fall,
the land becomes scarce, and the population begins
to press against the means of subsistence, a period,
according to the present rapid increase of population,
not extremely remote, the peasantry of Java
will be driven to wretchedness and poverty, and to
crimes and immorality, to which, even in their present
state of degradation, they are strangers. The
very best that could be predicted of any system of
revenue arrangements, founded on the extravagant
and iniquitous principles of the native institutions,
would be the perpetuation of the present abjectness
and indigence of the cultivator, and, consequently,
the poverty and debasement of the whole society.
If, according to Adam Smith, the opulence or poverty
of a nation “ depends very much, in every
country, upon the proportion between that part of
the annual produce which, as soon as it comes
either from the ground or from the hands of the
productive labourers, is destined for replacing a
capital, and that which is destined for constituting
a revenue either as rent or as profit,” Java, and
every other country of the Archipelago, are really
poor countries, and must, in spite of a soil the most
eminently gifted, always continue so while a land-
tax, founded on the native principle, or almost any
modification of it, is persevered in.
It is only in reference to countries in the occupation
of Europeans, that it can be necessary to
propose any scheme of amelioration. In doing so,
the interests of a very heterogeneous population
must be considered. We have to legislate for Europeans,
for Chinese, and for a mixed mass of native
inhabitants. The law should make no distinction
between them. Java is the country which thave
chiefly in view in throwing out these suggestions.
The first point is to establish a right of private property
in the land. In the present abject state of
society, there is no class of the native inhabitants to
whom it belongs, or that has a better claim to it