g along.
Then there are the troops, who, under the Dutch uniform, exhibit all
_castes_ and colours, from the European to the Negro--a force
amounting to about two thousand infantry, besides artillery and
cavalry; and all this goes on amid a perpetual clamour of voices,
cries of every trade, tongues of every barbarism, and that wild haste
and restless eagerness in every movement which belongs to seaport life
in every portion of the globe.

The present discussions with the Dutch government on the subject of
labour make it of importance to know something on the subject of their
colonies in the East. It is a curious circumstance in the history of a
people priding themselves on the liberty of commerce and their
openness of dealing with mankind, that they seem to have always hidden
their Indian policy under the most jealous reserve. They adopted this
reserve from the first hour of their Indian navigation. But then
Holland was a republic, and a republic is always tyrannical in
proportion to its clamour for liberty, always oppressive in proportion
to its promise of equal rights, and always rapacious in proportion to
its professed respect for the principle of letting every man keep his
own.

But though the cap is now exchanged for a crown, and the stadtholder
is a monarch, the policy seems to flourish on the old footing of their
close-handed fathers.

The Eastern dominions of Holland are under the authority of a
governor-general and a council, composed of four members, and a
vice-president; the governor-general being president. This sounds well
at least for the liberty of discussion. But the sound is all. The
power of the council consists simply in giving its opinion, to which
the governor may refuse to listen. The governor receives his orders
directly from the colonial minister at home, and the colonial
minister, though apparently responsible to the sentiment of the
Chambers, yet echoes those of the King.

But there is another authority which is supposed to rule the
government itself. This invisible prime mover is a joint commercial
company, the Maatschappy, established in 1824, with a charter giving
it a strict monopoly of all commerce to the Indies for twenty-five
years, which has been recently renewed for ten years more. The late
King was a large shareholder, the present King is presumed to inherit
his father's shares; most of the members of the Chambers are
shareholders; and the Maatschappy, besides the supply of the