THEIR GOVERNMENT.

The inhabitants live in villages, called dusun, each under the government of a headman or magistrate, styled dupati, whose dependants are termed his ana-buah, and in number seldom exceed one hundred.  The dupatis belonging to each river (for here, the villages being almost always situated by the waterside, the names we are used to apply to countries or districts are properly those of the rivers) meet in a judicial capacity at the kwalo, where the European factory is established, and are then distinguished by the name of proattin.

PANGERAN.

The pangeran (a Javanese title), or feudal chief of the country, presides over the whole.  It is not an easy matter to describe in what consists the fealty of a dupati to his pangeran, or of his ana-buah to himself, so very little in either case is practically observed.  Almost without arts, and with but little industry, the state of property is nearly equal among all the inhabitants, and the chiefs scarcely differ but in title from the bulk of the people.

HIS AUTHORITY.

Their authority is no more than nominal, being without that coercive power necessary to make themselves feared and implicitly obeyed.  This is the natural result of poverty among nations habituated to peace; where the two great political engines of interest and military force are wanting.  Their government is founded in opinion, and the submission of the people is voluntary.  The domestic rule of a private family beyond a doubt suggested first the idea of government in society, and, this people having made but small advances in civil policy, theirs continues to retain a strong resemblance of its original.  It is connected also with the principle of the feudal system, into which it would probably settle should it attain to a greater degree of refinement.  All the other governments throughout the island are likewise a mixture of the patriarchal and feudal; and it may be observed that, where a spirit of conquest has reduced the inhabitants under the subjection of another power, or has added foreign districts to their dominion, there the feudal maxims prevail:  where the natives, from situation or disposition, have long remained undisturbed by revolutions, there the simplicity of patriarchal rule obtains; which is not only the first and natural form of government of all rude nations rising from imperceptible beginnings, but is perhaps also the highest state of perfection at which they can ultimately arrive.  It is not in this art alone that we perceive the next step from consummate refinement, leading to simplicity.

MUCH LIMITED.