For This Purpose They Adopted The Wise Principle Of Concentrating The Culture Of These Valuable Products In Those Spots Only Of Which They Could Have Complete Control.

To do this effectually it was necessary to abolish the culture and trade in all other places, which they succeeded in doing by treaty with the native rulers.

These agreed to have all the spice trees in their possessions destroyed. They gave up large though fluctuating revenues, but they gained in return a fixed subsidy, freedom from the constant attacks and harsh oppressions of the Portuguese, and a continuance of their regal power and exclusive authority over their own subjects, which is maintained in all the islands except Ternate to this day.

It is no doubt supposed by most Englishmen, who have been accustomed to look upon this act of the Dutch with vague horror, as something utterly unprincipled and barbarous, that the native population suffered grievously by this destruction of such valuable property. But it is certain that this was not the case. The Sultans kept this lucrative trade entirely in their own hands as a rigid monopoly, and they would take care not to give, their subjects more than would amount to their usual wages, while: they would surely exact as large a quantity of spice as they could possibly obtain. Drake and other early voyagers always seem to have purchased their spice-cargoes from the Sultans and Rajahs, and not from the cultivators. Now the absorption of so much labour in the cultivation of this one product must necessarily have raised the price of food and other necessaries; and when it was abolished, more rice would be grown, more sago made, more fish caught, and more tortoise-shell, rattan, gum-dammer, and other valuable products of the seas and the forests would be obtained.

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