onopoly"
and "oppression." He forgets, how ever, that the coffee plantations were
established by the Government at great outlay of capital and skill; that
it gives free education to the people, and that the monopoly is in lieu
of taxation. He forgets that the product he wants to purchase and make
a profit by, is the creation of the Government, without whom the people
would still be savages. He knows very well that free trade would, as its
first result, lead to the importation of whole cargoes of arrack,
which would be carried over the country and exchanged for coffee. That
drunkenness and poverty would spread over the land; that the public
coffee plantations would not be kept up; that the quality and quantity
of the coffee would soon deteriorate; that traders and merchants would
get rich, but that the people would relapse into poverty and barbarism.
That such is invariably is the result of free trade with any savage
tribes who possess a valuable product, native or cultivated, is
well known to those who have visited such people; but we might even
anticipate from general principles that evil results would happen.

If there is one thing rather than another to which the grand law of
continuity or development will apply, it is to human progress. There are
certain stages through which society must pass in its onward march from
barbarism to civilization. Now one of these stages has always been
some form or other of despotism, such as feudalism or servitude, or a
despotic paternal government; and we have every reason to believe that
it is not possible for humanity to leap over this transition epoch, and
pass at once from pure savagery to free civilization. The Dutch system
attempts to supply this missing link, and to bring the people on by
gradual steps to that higher civilization, which we (the English) try to
force upon them at once. Our system has always failed. We demoralize and
we extirpate, but we never really civilize. Whether the Dutch system
can permanently succeed is but doubtful, since it may not be possible to
compress the work of ten centuries into one; but at all events it takes
nature as a guide, and is therefore, more deserving of success, and more
likely to succeed, than ours.

There is one point connected with this question which I think the
Missionaries might take up with great physical and moral results. In
this beautiful and healthy country, and with abundance of food and
necessaries, the population does n