and bigotry. Their main object was the exclusive monopoly of spices, by the expulsion
of all rivals. Their successors pursued the same object in a manner still more
rigorous. They extirpated the clove trees in their native islands, and endeavoured
to limit their fgrowth to the five Amboyna islands, in which the clove is an
exotic. Periodical expeditions for the extirpation of young plants that might
spontaneously have sprung up, or been propagated by birds, formed part of this system.
The clove monopoly still exists, but in a very tottering condition. The periodical
exterminating expeditions have been merely nominal during the present century ;
and for the last thirty years, although the monopoly be persevered in in the five
Amboyna islands, where the parks, as they are called, are the property of the
government, the culture and trade are legitimate everywhere else.
The annual produce of the monopoly has been estimated at from 300,000 to
400,000 pounds weight; but this is evidently an over-estimate, for the quantity, at
present, frequently falls short of 200,000 pounds. De Cauto informs us that the
quantity produced yearly, under the native governments, was 18,000 quintals of
garbled, and 27,000 of ungarbled cloves, equal to 2,204,000, and 3,756,000 of pounds
avoirdupois. The total gross value of 400,000 pounds of cloves is reckoned by the
Dutch government at 80,0007; and the profits of the monopoly at about 70,0007,
which is less than the rents of several English estates, or than the profits of several
English merchants and manufacturers. As, however, the actual produce is not more
than one-half of this, the actual profits drop to the poor sum of 35,0007 In the
course then of about three centuries and a half, the produce of cloves in the Moluccas
has been reduced by monopoly to less than one-tenth of what it was under native
rule and free trade. No especial blame can be attached to the Portuguese and Dutch
of the 16th and 17th centuries for the policy they pursued in regard to the clove
and nutmeg, for any of the other nations of Europe would certainly have followed
the same course. The Spaniards and the English, indeed, made strenuous
endeavours to do so, and had only the good fortune to escape being involved, by
being defeated by their rivals. Our ancestors, in fact, mistook the high prices which
were the necessary result of a rude commerce and navigation for intrinsic value, and
they acted on their error. A low-priced article, like salt or tobacco, the consumption
of the many, may be made the subject of a profitable fiscal monopoly ; but that is
impossible with cloves, or any other articles, the consumption of the few. I t was pardonable
to the ignorance of the 16th, 17th, and even of the 18th centuries, to impose
a monopoly of cloves, and to persevere in i t ; but perseverance in an exploded error
is not excusable in the middle of the 19th century. Fiscal necessity is pleaded in
extenuation by the government of the Netherlands, but this is evidently a mistake.
An ample revenue can only be expected from a prosperous people; and the experience
of more than three centuries has proved, that the monopoly of the sole staple
of their countiy has impoverished and enervated the people over whom it has been
established. Thorough freedom and security in production and trade are certain,
in due time, to produce substantial wealth, the only fund from which taxes, respectable
in amount, are ever paid; and when it exists, no government is so dull as not
to understand the art of exacting a share of it for the public exigency. In the
free settlement of Singapore a revenue of 50,0007 a year is obtained without oppressive
taxation and without any custom duties, a larger sum than all the Spice Islands
ever yielded to the Dutch.
Evidence of the beneficial effects of freedom in production and trade is discoverable,
even under the rude governments of the natives themselves. When the
Moluccas were first reached by Europeans, the inhabitants were found in a far
more advanced state of civilisation than the neighbouring tribes that had no
cloves. The resources of trade gave them power. Their princes were lords of
the great island of Gilolo, on one of the coasts of which the five clove islets were
mere specks. They had colonised Amboyna, before uninhabited, and they had
even extended their dominion to parts of Celebes and New Guinea.
There seems no good reason to doubt but that the consumption of cloves might,
with equal cheapness and freedom, become co-extensive with that of pepper. The
taste for the clove is as universal as for pepper; for there is no civilised nation in
the world that does not consume more or less of it. At present, to judge by the
consumption of the United Kingdom, that of pepper is twenty-fold that of cloves.
This result seems to be entirely a matter of price. The cost of Amboyna cloves is
four times that of the best pepper, and yet there is no good ground for supposing
that the one ought, with free production, to be more costly than the other, each being
grown in the soil and climate best adapted to it. Pepper is so grown, but the
majority of the cloves brought to market is the forced produce of unsuitable soils and
climates, and the rest an object of monopoly. Rent affects neither cloves nor pepper, for
in the lands in which they are grown, from their abundance, none exists. I t might,
then, as reasonably be expected that wheat should be raised with as little labour on the
poorest as on the richest lands of America, as that cloves should be as cheaply produced
in uncongenial as in congenial soils and climates. According to Barbosa, the
price of cloves in the Moluccas, before the existence of the monopoly, was even lower
than that of pepper in Calieut or Malacca. Even in Calicut, the price of cloves
brought by two different voyages, in a rude and therefore costly navigation extending
over ten degrees of latitude and fifty of longitude, was little more than double that of
pepper grown near the spot. The experience of our own consumption proves that the
consumption of cloves is capable of increase with reduction of cost. In 1820 the
custom duty was between three and four shillings a pound, and it is now one shilling,
or double only what it is on pepper, and the result has been that the consumption has
increased by 118 per cent., while the increase in our population has been only 22 per
cent. The Dutch government has only to pursue a course exactly the reverse of
that which it has followed for two centuries and a half, and it will be right. If the
five Molucca islets, which at present produce no cloves at all, should be found in
time not to yield a sufficient supply, there are other volcanic islands in their immediate
neighbourhood, of far greater extent, which may be resorted to, and even
the great island of Gilolo itself, which once produced some cloves, may be had
recourse to.
COAL (FOSSIL), in Malay, Arâng-tanah, literally, “ earth-charcoal,” has been
found in the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and Luzon, but as yet nowhere but
in Borneo of good quality and suited to economical uses. A seam of the Bornean coal
was first discovered in one of the islands in the river of Brunai, where it crops out
I t was afterwards found in the mainland, near the banks of the same river and subsequently
in the island of Labuan, about 12 miles from its embouchure. In these places
it is at present mined by European skill and capital, and been found, on ample trial
superior to any Asiatic coal hitherto tried. The coal on the left hnnTr of the Borneo
river has been traced for several miles into the interior. On the southern coast of
the island coal has been found in the territory of Banjarmasin, and mined by the
Dutch. This, from all accounts, is of the same quality as the coal of the northern
side, and may be a continuation of the same fields, which would make the Bornean
coal-fields the largest iu the world, after those of North America. Steam navigation
has given a value to the coals of Borneo, which, without it, in a country inhabited bv
rude people and covered with forest, might have lain for ages as useless as the lime
ana sand-stones m which it is imbedded.
COCHIN-CHINA. This is a name given by the Portuguese, and is probably
taken from Kudu, the name by which the Malays designate the countiy, and
by the latter most probably from the Anam name of the capital city of Tonquin
Kechao or Kachao. The Malays however, give the same name of Kuchi, which thé
? i ? Ü i ® the Hindu principality so called, on the Coromandel
coast, and, to distinguish the eastern from the western country, they added to the
first the epithet China or Chmese. Such seems to be the origin of the lumberintr
name by which European geographers designate the kingdom which at present com
prehends Tonquin, Cochm-Chma, and a considerable portion of Kamboja, or in our
old orthography, Cambodia. .
kinSdom of Cochin-China extends from the promontory of Kamboja, in latitude
mLp north to about latitude 23°,—that is, over a length of 875 geographical miles
The sea bounds it everywhere to the east; but its western limits we unknown to
uropeans. The widest part of the kingdom is Tonquin, and this is supposed to
have from east to west a breadth of about 180 miles. Cochin-China proper is but a
arrow strip of land, said, on an average, not to exceed 24 miles in breadth while
2 S S Ü s s r f s r i S