As mankind are by nature so prone to imitation it may seem surprising that these people have not derived a greater share of improvement in manners an arts from their long connection with Europeans, particularly with the English, who have now been settled among them for a hundred years.  Though strongly attached to their own habits they are nevertheless sensible of their inferiority, and readily admit the preference to which our attainments in science, and especially in mechanics, entitle us.  I have heard a man exclaim, after contemplating the structure and uses of a house-clock, “Is it not fitting that such as we should be slaves to people who have the ingenuity to invent, and the skill to construct, so wonderful a machine as this?” “The sun,” he added, “is a machine of this nature.”  “But who winds it up?” said his companion.  “Who but Allah,” he replied.  This admiration of our superior attainments is however not universal; for, upon an occasion similar to the above, a Sumatran observed, with a sneer, “How clever these people are in the art of getting money.”

Some probable causes of this backwardness may be suggested.  We carry on few or no species of manufacture at our settlements; everything is imported ready wrought to its highest perfection; and the natives therefore have no opportunity of examining the first process, or the progress of the work.  Abundantly supplied with every article of convenience from Europe, and prejudiced in their favour because from thence, we make but little use of the raw materials Sumatra affords.  We do not spin its cotton; we do not rear its silkworms; we do not smelt its metals; we do not even hew its stone:  neglecting these, it is in vain we exhibit to the people, for their improvement in the arts, our rich brocades, our timepieces, or display to them in drawings the elegance of our architecture.  Our manners likewise are little calculated to excite their approval and imitation.  Not to insist on the licentiousness that has at times been imputed to our communities; the pleasures of the table; emulation in wine; boisterous mirth; juvenile frolics, and puerile amusements, which do not pass without serious, perhaps contemptuous, animadversion—­setting these aside it appears to me that even our best models are but ill adapted for the imitation of a rude, incurious, and unambitious people.  Their senses, not their reason, should be acted on, to rouse them from their lethargy; their imaginations must be warmed; a spirit of enthusiasm must pervade and animate them before they will exchange the pleasures of indolence for those of industry.  The philosophical influence that prevails and characterizes the present age in the western world is unfavourable to the producing these effects.  A modern man of sense and manners despises, or endeavours to despise, ceremony, parade, attendance, superfluous and splendid ornaments in his dress or furniture:  preferring ease and convenience to cumbrous pomp, the person first in rank is no longer