It is difficult to say what was the recompense received by the cultivator previous to the year 1808. The complicated system of accounts which then prevailed, seemed only calculated to blind the government, and to allow the European commissary to derive an income of from eighty to one hundred thousand dollars (25,000_l._ per annum), at the expence of the authorities by whom he was employed, and the natives whom he oppressed. This, in common with most of the establishments on the island, underwent a revision in the time of Marshal Daendels; and it was then directed, that the cultivators should receive on delivery at the storehouses, three rix-dollars copper for each mountain _píkul_ of two hundred and twenty-five pounds Dutch, being little more than one dollar per hundred weight, or one half-penny per pound. This same coffee was sometimes sold at Batavia, within fifty miles of the spot where it was raised, at twenty Spanish dollars the hundred weight, and has seldom been known to bring in the European market less than eleven pence the pound. This, however, was deemed a liberal payment by the Dutch, though in some cases it had been transported over sixty miles of an almost impassable country, where two men are required to carry a hundred-weight of coffee, on their shoulders, at an expence of labour which one would suppose at least equal to this remuneration.
Under the administration of the British government, the free cultivation of coffee, in common with that of all other articles, was permitted to the inhabitants of Bantam, _Chéribon_, and all the eastern districts; and at the time when the island was again ceded to the Dutch, arrangements were in progress for extending the same provision throughout the _Súnda_ districts, under a conviction, that the quantity produced would not be less under a system of free cultivation and free trade, than under a system in which it was found necessary, as one of the first acts of European authority, to compel the native princes to direct "the total annihilation of the coffee culture within their dominions," and to secure by treaty with them the destruction and confiscation of all coffee found in the hands of the natives[46]. A considerable portion of the peasantry, as already observed, have long been accustomed to the cultivation, and it is owing to their skill and experience, as much as to any direct superintendence or interference of the European officers (who generally derive their information from the native chiefs, and have little more to do, than occasionally to ride through the garden with a pompous suite, keep the accounts, and examine the coffee as it is received), that the coffee has so long been furnished for the European market; the experience obtained in the eastern districts, during the last three years, proves at least that coercive measures are unnecessary. There are many parts of Java, particularly the _Príang'en_ regencies, where the soil is peculiarly and eminently adapted to the cultivation; and although it is difficult yet awhile to fix the exact rate at which the coffee might be produced under a free system, it may be calculated to be raised for exportation at about forty shillings per hundred weight.