bore into slavery. At the close of eighteen
hundred and forty-one, the Rajah wrote,
"Whether I get aid or riot, I am going to
put down piracy next year." In March,
eighteen hundred and forty-three, Mr. Brooke
was still holding his ground by help of the
antimony trade, and hoping to be set free
of much care by Government recognition,
and by the raising of a company with capital
enough to make the country. But he soon
afterwards had to cry hold, on finding that
the speculators at home were disposed not only
to raise exaggerated hopes as to the facility
of getting wealth out of Saráwak, but to
appropriate to themselves those resources of
the country which were being spent on its
right government. The Government of
England was then making inquiry into Bornean
affairs, and the people of England were attentive
to the Rajah Brooke's career. In this
year eighteen hundred and forty-three, Sir
H. Keppel, in the Dido, visited the Indian
Archipelago, and assisted Mr. Brooke in his
war against piracy.

It was after conflicts arising out of an
engagement entered into between the Sultan,
Muda Hassim, and the English for suppression
of pirates that the Pangeran Usop met with a
violent death. Soon afterwards, early in
eighteen hundred and forty-six, the Sultan
having changed his policy—murdered, in
Bruné, his Uncle Muda Hassim, and eleven
or twelve of Muda Hassim's brothers and
sons. The Rajah Brooke then refused any
longer to acknowledge the Sultan as his
suzerain, or to hold Saráwak under his gift.
Sir Thomas Cochrane, in the Phlegethon, a
few months afterwards, went up the Bruné
river, with Mr. Brooke on board, was fired
upon by the Sultan, who, of course, then lost
his forts and town, and fled into the
interior. He was pursued, and, under compulsion
in the jungle, did all that was asked of
him; among other things, re-gave Saráwak,
free of tribute, to the English Rajah.

Upon these incidents, Mr. Hume founded
the strong case which he made out against Mr.
Brooke, and which he thus stated: " Saráwak
was obtained under the guns of the Royalist,
for a yearly tribute of two thousand dollars,
that was never paid, and that was got rid of
under the guns of Sir Thomas Cochrane,
when a new grant was obtained from the
Sultan after he had been hunted into the
jungle. Is this," Mr. Hume asked,
"international law?" And when Mr. Brooke was
appointed, in eighteen hundred and forty-
seven, commissioner and consul-general for
Great Britain to the Sultan of Borneo, it was
asked, could he stand fairly in such relations
towards the man whom he had injured, and
whom he characterised as having the head of
an idiot and the heart of a pirate? Facts,
put into the form of such questions, looked
ugly enough, though any reader who has
followed the history of Saráwak fairly through
its successive stages will not precisely accept
all the inferences that such questions would
suggest. At Saráwak there had been formed
a prosperous and united native population,
altogether friendly to the English. The trade
of the place, which was conveyed, when Mr.
Brooke first settled there, by a few native
prahus, after ten years of his fostering,
employed twenty-five thousand tons of shipping.

Early in eighteen hundred and forty-seven
possession was taken of the uninhabited island
of Labuan, at the entrance of the Borneo
River, as a British settlement. It is an
island eleven or twelve miles long, and six in
its greatest breadth; contains a most
important coal seam; and now yields coal for
the steamers in that quarter of the globe,
besides exporting some to countries bordering
the eastern seas. As a place of settlement
for Europeans, it has proved unhealthy. In
the same year, Mr. Brooke visited England,
where he was in great request as a new sort
of room ornament. An English Rajah
became the lion of the day, suffered great
damage by over-praise, and, after a four
months' stay, was taken out again in a
Queen's ship, knight of the Bath, governor of
Labuan, with two thousand a-year, and
commissioner and consul-general to the native
states of Borneo.

In the same year (eighteen hundred and
forty-seven) the Eastern Archipelago
Company was formed to develop Labuan, and to
take advantage of Sir James Brooke's
relations with Saráwak for the establishment of
new branches of British commerce with
Borneo. Of this company, his former friend
and partner or agent in trade, Mr. Wise, was
the promoter; and for Mr. Wise's interest in
it, there was secured to him by the charter an
amount of payment that Sir James regarded as
excessive and extravagant. Being in England
again in November, eighteen hundred and
fifty-one, he complained of the misconduct of
directors, and intrigues of their servants, in
Borneo. The company worked ill, and,
acting on a false certificate of paid-up capital,
was proceeded against by Sir James, successfully,
in the Court of Queen's Bench. This
contest arrayed against Sir James Brooke
the hostility of the Company, and established
enmity between himself and Mr. Wise. In
the Archipelago itself, less creditable quarrels
were established. The Rajah's self-
confidence, strengthened by flattery, begot some
tendency to tyrannise. Mr. Napier, a son
of Professor Macvey Napier, who had gone
out as Lieutenant-Governor of Labuan,
and upon whom, as the only resident
authority, the work of the settlement devolved,
claimed too much independence, was
quarrelled with, and, when occasion rose,
suppressed.

Then there was the great quarrel over a
trading agent, Mr. Burns, in which Sir
James's part seems to have been misrepresented
by the enemies whom he was raising
about his ears, sometimes by just and wise,