10 FEBRUARY 1872, Page 3

We thought Dutchmen understood Colonies, but it seems that knowledge

is confined to the Dutch Government. In the early clays, when we liked foreign possessions, the British Government coerced that of Holland into a Treaty limiting Dutch possessions in the Indian Archipelago, and especially in Sumatra, apparently with some view to an ultimate reversion. The Treaty, which did us no good, did the Dutch much harm, for they might but for it have turned Sumatra into a more splendid Java ; but last year, wishing to terminate interminable disputes on the Gold Coast and to suppress the Slave Trade, the Foreign Office agreed to give up the Treaty of 1824 in exchange for the Dutch forts and right of Protectorate in Guinea. The Dutch statesmen thankfully accepted the proposition, and have ever since been howled at by the people, who cannot see that they get a continent in exchange for a marsh. Nothing now stops them from conquering all the Archipelago by .degrees except Papua, which, we suppose, our Australian cousins will want for a tropical garden.