[44] Exposé Statistique du Tonquin, &c. vol. i. p. 126.
_Importance of Agriculture to Java--Soil--State of the Peasantry--Price of Rice--Subsistence of the Peasantry--Dwelling--Agricultural Stock--Implements of Farming--Seasons--Different Kinds of Land--Rice Cultivation--Maize, &c.--Sugar--Coffee--Pepper--Indigo--Cotton--Tobacco--Tenure of Landed Property._
The island of Java is a great agricultural country; its soil is the grand source of its wealth. In its cultivation the inhabitants exert their chief industry, and upon its produce they rely, not only for their subsistence, but the few articles of foreign luxury or convenience which they purchase. The Javans are a nation of husbandmen, and exhibit that simple structure of society incident to such a stage of its progress. To the crop the mechanic looks immediately for his wages, the soldier for his pay, the magistrate for his salary, the priest for his stipend (or _jákat_), and the government for its tribute. The wealth of a province or village is measured by the extent and fertility of its land, its facilities for rice irrigation, and the number of its buffaloes.
When government wishes to raise supplies from particular districts, it does not enquire how many rupees or dollars it can yield in taxes, but what contribution of rice or maize it can furnish, and the impost is assessed accordingly: the officer of revenue becomes a surveyor of land or a measurer of produce, and the fruits of the harvest are brought immediately into the ways and means of the treasury. When a chief gives his assistance in the police or the magistracy, he is paid by so much village land, or the rent of so much land realized in produce; and a native prince has no other means of pensioning a favourite or rewarding a useful servant. "Be it known to the high officers of my palace, to my _Bopátis_ (regents), and to my _Mántris (petite noblesse)_," says a Javan patent of nobility granted by Sultan _Hamángku Búana_, "that I have given this letter to my servant to raise him from the earth, bestowing upon him, for his subsistence, lands to the amount of eleven hundred _cháchas_, the labour of eleven hundred men." By the population returns, and by the number of leases granted under the late settlement, it appears, that sometimes there is not more than a tenth part of the inhabitants employed in any other branch of industry. Out of a population of 243,268 in the _Priáng'en_ regencies, 209,125 are stated as employed in agriculture. In _Surabáya_, the proportion of householders who are cultivators, is to the rest of the inhabitants as 32,618 to 634; in _Semárang_, as 58,206 to 21,404; in _Rembang_ it is as 103,230 to 55,300; and in other districts there are considerable variations: but it rarely happens, that the people employed in trade, in manufactures, in handicrafts, or other avocations, amount to a half of those engaged in agriculture, or a third of the whole population. The proportion, on an average, may be stated as three and a half or four to one. In England, it is well known, the ratio is reversed, its agricultural population being to its general population as one to three or two and a half. By the surveys lately made under the orders of the British government, we are enabled to describe the processes of Javan agriculture, and to state its results with more accuracy and in greater detail, than can be attained on many subjects of superior public interest. If we avail ourselves of these means pretty largely, it is not so much in the hope of increasing the stock of agricultural knowledge, as of assisting the reader to form an estimate of the character, habits, wants, and resources of the Javan.