СНАР. 2. 1622. under letters of marque from the Admiral, but under BOOK I. their own charter, to those of the Duke of Buckingham. The question was referred to the Judge of the Admiralty court; witnesses were examined, to ascertain the amount of the prize-money, which was estimated at 100,000l. and 240,000 reals of eight.' The Company urged the expense of their equipments, the losses they had sustained, the detriment to their mercantile concerns, by withdrawing their ships from commerce to war. All possible modes of solicitation to the King and the Admiral were employed; but the desire for their money was stronger than their interest. Buckingham, who knew they must lose their voyage, if the season for sailing was passed, made their ships be detained; and the Company, to escape this calamity, were glad of an accommodation. The Duke agreed to accept of 10,000l., which he received. A like sum was demanded for the King, but there is no direct evidence that it ever was paid. The animosities between the English and Dutch were now approaching to a crisis in the islands. The English complained of oppression, and were so weak as to find themselves at the mercy of their rivals. They represented that, in the execution of the joint articles of the treaty, they were charged with every item of expense, though their voice was entirely disregarded in the disposal of the money, in the employment of the naval and military force, and even in the management of the trade; that, instead of being admitted to their stipulated share of the spice com East India Papers in the State Paper Office. Bruce, i. 241. BOOK I. CHAP. 2. 1623. merce, they were almost entirely extruded from it; and that, under the pretext of a conspiracy, the Dutch had executed great numbers of the natives at Banda, and reduced Polaroon to a desert.1 At last arrived that event, which made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of Englishmen. In February, 1623, Captain Towerson and nine Englishmen, nine Japanese, and one Portuguese sailor, were seized at Amboyna, under the accusation of a conspiracy to surprise the garrison, and to expel the Dutch; and, being tried, were pronounced guilty, and executed. The accusation was treated by the English as a mere pretext, to cover a plan for their extermination. But the facts of an event, which roused extreme indignation in England, have never been exactly ascertained. The nation, whose passions were kindled, was more disposed to paint to itself a scene of atrocity, and to believe whatever could inflame its resentment, than to enter upon a rigid investigation of the case. If it be improbable, however, on the one hand, that the English, whose numbers were small, and by whom ultimately so little advantage could be gained, were really guilty of any such design as the Dutch imputed to them; it is on the other hand equally improbable that the Dutch, without believing them to be guilty, would have proceeded against them by the evidence of a judicial trial. Had simple extermination been their object, a more quiet and safe expedient pre The Dutch, in their vindication, stated that the English intrigued with the Portuguese, and underhand assisted the natives in receiving the Portuguese into the islands. See Anderson's History of Commerce, in Macpherson's Annals, ii 305. СНАР. 2. 1623. sented itself; they had it in their power at any time BOOK I. to make the English disappear, and to lay the blame upon the natives. The probability is, that, from certain circumstances, which roused their suspicion and jealousy, the Dutch really believed in the conspiracy, and were hurried on, by their resentments and interests, to bring the helpless objects of their fury to a trial; that the judges before whom the trial was conducted, were in too heated a state of mind to see the innocence, or believe in any thing but the guilt, of the accused; and that in this manner the sufferers perished. Enough, assuredly, of what is hateful may be found in this transaction, without supposing the spirit of demons in beings of the same nature with ourselves, men reared in a similar state of society, under a similar system of education, and a similar religion. To bring men rashly to a trial whom a violent opposition of interests has led us to detest, rashly to believe them criminal, to decide against them with minds too much blinded by passion to discern the truth, and to put them to death without remorse, are acts of which our own nation, or any other, was then, and would still be, too ready to be guilty. Happy would it be, how trite soever the reflection, if nations, from the scenes which excite their indignation against others, would learn temper and forbearance in cases where they become the actors themselves! 3 One of the circumstances, the thought of which most strongly incited the passions of the English, was the application of the torture. This, however, under the Civil Law, was an established and regular part of a judicial inquiry. In all the kingdoms of CHAP. 2. BOOK I. continental Europe, and in Holland itself, the torture was a common method of extorting evidence from 1623. supposed criminals, and would have been applied by the Dutch judges to their own countrymen. As both the Japanese, who were accused of being accessaries to the imputed crime, and the Englishmen themselves, made confession of guilt under the torture, this, however absurd and inhuman the law, constituted legal evidence in the code of the Dutch, as well as in the codes of all the other continental nations of Europe. By this, added to other articles of evidence which would have been insufficient without it, proof was held to be completed; and death, in all capital cases, authorized and required. This was an ancient and established law; and as there are scarcely any courses of oppression to which Englishmen cannot submit, and which they will not justify and applaud, provided only it has ancient and established law for its support, they ought, of all nations, to have been the most ready to find an excuse and apology for the Dutch. From the first 'The English had not been so long strangers to the torture themselves, that it needed to excite in their breasts any emotions of astonishment. "The rack itself," says Hume in his History of Elizabeth, v. 457, "though not admitted in the ordinary execution of justice, was frequently used upon any suspicion, by authority of a warrant from a secretary or the Privy Council. Even the Council in the Marches of Wales were empowered, by their very commission, to make use of torture whenever they thought proper. There cannot be a stronger proof how lightly the rack was employed, than the following story; told by Lord Bacon. We shall give it in his own words: The Queen was mightily incensed against Haywarde on account of a book he dedicated to Lord Essex, thinking it a seditious prelude to put into the people's head boldness and faction: [to our apprehension, says Hume, Haywarde's book seems rather to have a contrary tendency; but Queen Elizabeth was very difficult to please on that head.] She said, she had an opinion that there was treason in it, and asked me if I could not find any places in it that might be drawn CHAP. 2. moment of acting upon the treaty, the Dutch had BOOK I. laid it down, as a principle, that at all the places where they had erected fortifications, the English 1623. should be subject to the Dutch laws; and though the English had remonstrated, they had yet complied. within the case of treason?...... Another time when the Queen could not Hume, "had it not been for Bacon's humanity, or rather his wit, this It is not impossible that there was on foot amongst the English on Amboyna some wild scheme for the seizure of the island. The Japanese were soldiers of the garrison, and their position rendered their co-operation of an importance more than equivalent to the smallness of their numbers. At the same time, the conspirators were punished with a severity wholly unjustifiable. It is no extenuation of the cruelty of the Dutch, to argue that the English in India, in those days, were guilty of similar atrocities; the fact is not proved, and the probability may be questioned: no instance of such savage barbarity can be quoted against any of the English factories or governments, and particular acts of severity towards deserters and pirates are not to be confounded with the deliberate cruelties of a public |