The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

XVII.] .CELEBES. 197That drunkenness and poverty would spread over tlie land ;that the i^ublic coffee plantations would not be kept u]) ;thatthe quality and quantity of the colTee would soon deterioratethat traders and merchants would get rich, but that;thepeople would relapse into poverty and barbarism. That suchis invariably the result of free trade with any savage tribes whopossess a valuable jDi-oduct, native or cultivated, is well knownto those who have visited such people ; but we might even anticipatefrom genei'al principles that evil results would hapj^en.If there is one thing rather than another to which the grandlaw of continuity or development will apply, it is to human progress.There are certain stages through which society mustpass in its onwai'd march from barbarism to ci^'ilization. Xowone of these stages has always been some form or other ofdespotism, such as feudalism or servitude, or a desjDotic paternalgovernment ; and we have every reason to believe that it is notpossible for humanity to leap over this transition epoch, andpass at once from pure savagery to free civilization. TheDutch system attemjDts to supply this missing link, and tobring the people on by gradual steps to that higher ciA-ilization,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 canpermanently succeed is but doubtful, since it may not be possibleto compress the woi'k of ten centuries into one ; but at all eventsit takes nature as a guide, and is therefoi'e more deserving ofsuccess, and more likely to succeed, than ours.^There is one point connected with this question which I thinkthe Missionaries might take up with great physical and moralre.sults. In this beautiful and healthy country, and with abundanceof food and necessaries, the population does not increaseas it ought to do. I can only impute this to one cause. Infantmortality, produced by neglect while the mothers are workingin the plantations, and by general ignorance of the conditionsof health in infants. Women all work, as they have alwaysbeen accustomed to do. It is no hardship to them, but I believeis often a pleasure and relaxation. They either take theirinfants with them, in which case they leave them in some shadyspot on the ground, going at intervals to give them nourishment,or they leave them at home in the care of other children tooyoung to work. Under neither of these circumstances caninfants be properly attended to, and great mortality is theresult, keeping down the increase of population far below therate which the genei'al prosperity of the country and theuniversality of marriage would lead us to expect. This is amatter in which the Government is directly interested, since it1 Dr. Guillemard, who visited Minahasa twenty-five years later, found the countrjinmuch the same condition as I describe—drunkenness and crime were almost unknown,and the people were contented and happy. (See The Cruise of the " Marchesa.'Vol. II., p. 181.)