Polygamy, though in all cases it must be injurious to population and happiness, so far as it goes, is permitted on Java, as in other Mahomedan countries, by religion and law, but not practiced to any great extent. Perhaps the ease of obtaining matrimonial separations, by admitting of successive changes of wives, diminishes the desire of possessing more than one at a time.
It is plain, likewise, that whatever be the law, the great body of the people must have only one wife; and that, where there is nearly an equality of number between the sexes, inequality of wealth or power alone can create an unequal distribution of women. On Java, accordingly, only the chiefs and the sovereign marry more than one wife. All the chiefs, from the regents downwards, can only, by the custom of the country, have two; the sovereign alone has four. The regents, however, have generally three or four concubines, and the sovereign eight or ten. Some of the chiefs have an extraordinary number of children; the late Regent of _Túban_ is reputed to have been the father of no fewer than sixty-eight. Such appropriations of numerous women as wives or concubines, were owing to the political power of native authorities over the inferior classes; and as, by the new system, that power is destroyed, the evil may to a certain extent be checked. If we were to depend upon the statement of a writer whom Montesquieu refers to, that in Bantam there were ten women to one man, we should be led to conclude with him, that here was a case particularly favourable to polygamy, and that such an institution was here an appointment of nature, intended for the multiplication of the species, rather than an abuse contributing to check it. There is not the least foundation, however, for the report. The proportion of males and females born in Bantam, and over the whole of Java, is nearly the same as in Europe, and as we find generally to exist, wherever accurate statements can be obtained. From the information collected in a very careful surrey of one part of the very province in question, the preponderance seemed to be on the side of male children to an extraordinary degree; the male children being about forty-two thousand, and the females only thirty-five thousand five hundred. There were formerly, it is true, great drains on the male population, to which I have before alluded, and which, in the advanced stages of life, might turn the balance on the other side; but as they were never so destructive as to render polygamy a political institution, so that institution was not carried to such an extent, as to render it a peculiar obstacle to the progress of population. Upon the whole, we may conclude that in Java, under a mild government, there is a great tendency to an increase in the number of inhabitants, and to the consequent improvement and importance of the island.