The officer who presides here has the title of Governor General of the Indies, and the Dutch governors of all the other settlements are subordinate to him, and obliged to repair to Batavia that he may pass their accounts.  If they appear to have been criminal, or even negligent, he punishes them by delay, and detains them during pleasure, sometimes one year, sometimes two years, and sometimes three; for they cannot quit the place till he gives them a dismission.  Next to the governor are the members of the council, called here Edele Heeren, and by the corruption of the English, Idoleers.  These Idoleers take upon them so much state, that whoever meets them in a carriage is expected to rise up and bow, then to drive on one side of the road, and there stop till they are past:  The same homage is required also to their wives, and even their children; and it is commonly paid them by the inhabitants.  But some of our captains have thought so slavish a mark of respect beneath the dignity which they derive from the service of his Britannic majesty, and have refused to pay it; yet, if they were in a hired carriage, nothing could deter the coachman from honouring the Dutch grandee at their expence, but the most peremptory menace of immediate death.[161]

[Footnote 161:  The reader will remember what Captain Carteret says on this subject, in the account given of his voyage.—­E.]

Justice is administered here by a body of lawyers, who have ranks of distinction among themselves.  Concerning their proceedings in questions of property, I know nothing; but their decisions in criminal cases seem to be severe with respect to the natives, and lenient with respect to their own people, in a criminal degree.  A Christian always is indulged with an opportunity of escaping before he is brought to a trial, whatever may have been his offence; and if he is brought to a trial and convicted, he is seldom punished with death; while the poor Indians, on the contrary, are hanged, and broken upon the wheel, and even impaled alive without mercy.[162]

[Footnote 162:  Impalement, as practised at Batavia, is one of the most shocking punishments ever invented.  An iron spike, about six feet long, is forcibly passed between the back-bone and the skin from the lower part of the body, where a cross cut is made for its insertion, till it come out betwixt the shoulders and neck, the executioner guiding the point of it so that none of the vitals or large blood vessels may be wounded.  The under end of the spike is afterwards made fast to a wooden post, which is then stuck into the ground, so that the miserable wretch is raised aloft, where he is supported partly by the iron spike in his skin, and partly by a little bench, projecting about ten feet from the ground.  He may remain alive in this most cruel situation for several days, during which period he is tortured besides with hunger and thirst, for no victuals, of any kind, are allowed