most fertile colony in the world experienced the horrors of famine. The exact number of natives who perished, victims of misery and epidemic diseases, diseases, has never been known. But the number must be large, since in the districts of Demark and Grobogan the native population was reduced two fifths. The news of this disaster discredited the culture system in Holland. An orator of great talent, a clergyman, Van Hoëvell, who had passed several years in the Indies, came to the front in parliament. He became the apostle of the Liberals, who wanted to substitute free for forced labor and fought the government system ardently. If he did not. succeed in getting his principles wholly accepted, he laid the way for their final triumph. The government entered upon a new path by entering upon a partial diminution of the cultures which were too burdensome for the people. Thus government cultivation disappeared little by little, and the abolition of the forced cultivation of sugar was the last blow given to the Van den Bosch system, for the forced cultivation of coffee, which alone still subsists at the present time, does not belong to the system introduced by this reformer. This cultivation, in fact, does not compel the natives to give up any part of their land, a fundamental principle of the Van den Bosch sys tem. So the government cultivation succeeded little by little private culti vation, with which the Van den Bosch system was incompatible, since the state, as the sole proprietor of the soil and uniting in its hands all productive forces, could not tolerate any private competition. Free industry, in order to develop itself, demanded legislative intervention. Nevertheless it was not till 1861 that the reform party obtained control. Minister Therbecke at first entered upon the new road with timid experiments. His successor, Fransen Van de Putte, in 1865, presented a draft of a law which went to the core of the colonial question, and regulated the principal points concerning the relation of gov ernmental and private cultivation, but the draft did not become a law on account of the novelty of the principle which recognized that the native owned the land he cultivated. Finally, in 1870, on the recommen dation of de Waal, the parliament adopted the celebrated "Agrarian law," which is still in force in the colony. This law allows Europeans to hire or lease, for at least sixty years, the uncultivated lands and guarantees to the natives the ownership of the land they have cleared up and cultivated. Another law of the time enacted that the government would not grant any extension to the cultivation of sugar, which was to be definitely abolished in 1890. With the exception of the cultivation of coffee, this law definitely swept away all that remained of the famous culture system of Van den Bosch, the blossoming and fall of which divide the colonial history of Java into two very distinct periods. What especially characterizes the new state of things sanctioned by the Agrarian law is that the state no longer exercises an absolute monopoly. The colonist, the plain, private individual can secure land for cultivation by conforming to certain regulations. He may contract with the natives who may agree to raise certain products for the European market, to be delivered on payment of the price. These contracts were often imposed by force upon the inhabitants of the villages by the native chiefs who were corrupted by Europeans. But the government has made this abuse disappear by prohibiting contracts with whole vil lages through the chiefs; now the arrangements must be with the natives individually. Another way opened by the Agrarian law for private enterprise is opportunity given for leasing for a long term new land belonging to the state. The long term of the lease permits the tenant to reimburse himself for the cost of breaking up the land and gives him a real title, which he can mortgage, affording security to the lender. The state not only finds indirect advantages in bringing the wild land into cultivation, which tends to increase the production and the advantages which result from it, but also direct advantages, such as the export tax on what is raised, and the rent paid by the tenant. The importance of this system of development is shown by the fact that in 1892 about 60,000 acres had been leased on a rental of $432,000 annually. The Dutch have thus entered on the humanitarian path of free labor. Aside from the corvées, which still exist in the cultivation of coffee and in publie works, no force is used, can be used towards the natives, whose services are hired by contract. To prevent any appearance of constraint, the government has abolished a law which punished the breaking of contracts by the native workman and substituted a provision according to which the breaking of the contract can be punished in certain cases. only, and the proof is often so difficult that this provision generally remains a dead letter. The economical situation of Java is thus in a period of complete transformation, and little by little the old colonial system is disappearing to give place to a liberal rule answering better to modern ideas. Happily this transformation has been brought about insensibly, without shocks, and it was begun before it became an imperative necessity. The Dutch, a prudent and thoughtful people, do not proceed by radical and violent measures. Thus they have not abolished the corvée in the cultivation of coffee, the last intrenchment in which the culture system has taken refuge. This cultivation, organized on a grand scale by the government, offers such advantages to the mother country that it would have been rash to abolish it by a stroke of the pen. The shock in breaking up the whole economy of the old system might have had the most disastrous results for the Indies as well as for the mother country. But although the hour of complete emancipation has not yet struck, we may predict that the day is near at hand when there will no longer be seen in Java any vestige of the forced employment of one people by another. The culture system has had heated panagyrists and inveterate traducers. An English author (J. Money) has proclaimed it to be the finest of the colonial systems; a Dutch author (Havelaar) in a celebrated book painted a sombre picture, which hastened its fall, just as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" contribituted to the abolition of slavery. The culture system deserves neither this excessive honor nor this indignity. It can be said in praise of Van den Bosch that he extricated the native from his natural indolence, inculcated in him habits of industry, and taught him other arts than the cultivation of rice, which had previously satisfied his limited wants. It is less the system than the abuses, of which it was the occasion, that deserves the blame. And, then, who would believe it? It is to the culture system that Java owes the increase of population, exceeding everything that could have been imagined by General Van den Bosch, who had probably never foreseen this unexpected result. The population, which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was estimated at 3,500,000, has now reached the chimerical number of 25,067,461 inhabitants for a territory of 2,388 geographical square miles, or 10,496 inhabitants to a geographical square mile. tween the culture system and the In the double relation of density and increase of population, the island of Java surpasses all the other countries of the globe. Now it is interesting to note that it is especially since the introduction of the culture system that the population has increased with exceptional rapidity. At the time of the innovation Java contained 7,000,000 inhabitants; in 1850, 9,500,000; in 1867, Nevertheless the culture system 15,000,000. Since 1830 the popula- was a factitious and artificial instition has doubled every thirty-five tution, which might for a certain years; while in those European number of years be favorable to the countries, where the increase is development of the population by most rapid, as in England, sixty- making the conditions of existence three years have been required to easy for it, but which could not produce the same result. continue to produce the same results. The proofs of the relation be- The system. was admirably con C 0 P ceived in view of the development For a long time Holland was opposed to the establishment of railroads in Java. Mr. de Beauvoir, who visited the island at the commencement of the building of the roads, was greatly surprised at the vigorous oppositon made by the greater part of the Europeans. Men of importance assured him. that railroads would be useless for Java, on account of the shape of the island, it being very long and narrowed by the mountains in the centre; they thought the system of roads inaugurated by Dandaels sufficient. But this opposition was of industry among a half-civilized people who had been curbed for a thousand years under their ancient masters. At the present time this people could not be forced to submit to the despotism under which it lived so long. But the forced labor, by increasing the population, must inevitably, by such a multiplication of the number of mouths, reach a day when an incredible misery would suddenly succeed to the prosperity, without the natives having been prepared to contend against the horrible necessity by the thousand resources of free labor. To the old system, founded on the ownership by the state and the subjection of the natives, a regime of preliminary steps towards individual ownership and liberty has been substituted. Formerly Java was an estate to be farmed rather than a colony, for it had neither colonists nor private proprietors of the soil. The Van den Bosch system was incompatible with European colonization, since the state was not willing to sell the land, which it was causing to be cultivated by the corvées. The few private plantations dated from the English rule, as they wished to establish individual ownership. Since the new regime, established by the Agrarian law, European colonization has become possible, the monopoly of the state. is giving way little by little to private enterprise, and Java, which was hardly more than a farm, where the persons liable to be taken for the corvée were attached to the soil, is transformed into a country of colonization open to all trials. founded on their first and dominating idea of the fear of free labor. They explained, in fact, that with a regulation which forbid the inhabitants of one village from going to another without permission, railroads seemed to be a dangerous innovation to the partisans of the economical ideas of another age. So Holland retarded as much as possible the introduction of railroads into its colony, but it has been obliged to adopt them on account of the poverty of its means of transport, a poverty which made the price of rice vary considerably at short distances, and which, in the most fertile island of the world, allowed the inhabitants of one district to die of famine, while those of a neighboring district lived in abundance. The inauguration of the railroad, which from that time united the eastern and western provinces, is an ecomical fact of incalculable importance. This event, which occured November 1, 1894, makes the beginning of a new era for the queen of the Indian isles. In the TWO CENTENARIANS-MRS. LYDIA C. TENNEY, MRS. ROENA SHELLEY. Two New Hampshire centenarians died during December, 1898. Mrs. Lydia C. Tenney, who died at West Concord, December 18, was one of ten children born to Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Crane of Bradford, Vt., her natal day being December 8, 1795. She was the last survivor of the family; the next a brother, dying in 1893, at the age of 94. Mrs. Tenney joined the Congregational church in 1813 and in 1816 was united in marriage with Jonathan Tenney of Corinth, Vt. Mrs. Roena Shelley died in Keene, December 14, aged 102 years, eight months, and 25 days. She was a native of Springfield, Vt., being one of nine children of Rufus and Annie Ranstead. Her childhood was spent in Springfield, Weathersfield, and other Vermont towns, until about 15 years of age, when she moved to Westmoreland, N. H., to live with her grandparents. There she was married at the age of 24 to Oren Shelley. She had resided in Keene since 1846. CAPT. GEORGE H. EMERSON. Capt. George H. Emerson of Lancaster, died in the hospital at Berlin, December 29. He was born at Lancaster, June 25, 1844. When a lad of 18 he enlisted in the Seventeenth New Hampshire regiment and soon after the mustering out of that body he secured a position at Washington, in the treas |