sometimes by just but impolitic, sometimes
by harsh and vindictive denunciation. The
long and useless letters of dissatisfaction
written to the authorities after Doctor Miller,
surgeon of the Nemesis, had been acquitted
by the court martial which Sir James
procured to be held over him, for suspicion of
having written to the Singapore Free Press
an unfriendly account of the massacre of
pirates up the Kaluka in March, eighteen
hundred and forty-nine, show simply an
intolerance of temper. The long and
intemperate letter written to the Governor of the
Straits Settlement for the purpose of
procuring the discharge of Mr. Woods, the
editor of that paper, from his public situations,
could also tend only to the prejudice of
its writer's credit. We do not say that Sir
James was on the wrong side in all these
quarrels, but it was at any rate an indiscreet
perilling of his credit as a public man so to
act as to beget a series of parliamentary
papers simply on the subject of his bickerings.
We have gone through the distasteful
work of reading the whole of these papers,
and extract from them nothing at all to stain
Sir James's honour. We remember, too, that
he had placed himself in the position of a
baited lion. But the public does not look
into details, and does not make minute
allowances. The world says it is a man's own
fault if he is always in dispute. Then, too,
Sir James had unfortunately published a
great deal of off-hand writing, and all manner
of innocent but unconsidered phrases could be
picked out of his journals.

Upon other cries got up against him, there
came, as a climax, terrible tales of the
massacre of feeble pirates in March and in July
eighteen hundred and forty-nine. The
details were terrible enough. We shrink from
their repetition; but to make matters worse
it was so stoutly argued that a great number
of the victims were no pirates at all, that a
Commission of Inquiry was obtained, and it
was only by its decision that Sir James
Brooke's character was finally and fairly
cleared. It was truly among pirates that
the havoc had been made. One of the earliest
determinations that had been expressed by
the English Rajah of Saráwak, was, that he
would put an end to the piracy that was the
ruin of the Eastern seas. The government,
by its active assent in the form of ships of
war, supported him in this effort, and the
evil is not to be laid to his charge if he was
supported also by a British regulation for
the suppression of piracy all over the globe,
which made the wholesale destruction
of Malay pirate crews a gold mine to the sailor,
and stimulated in him an unholy thirst for
blood. There was a prize of twenty pounds
on every pirate killed or taken, five pounds
on every one attacked without being captured
or destroyed. At what rate English seamen
suddenly betook themselves to the working
of the pirate mine in the seas round about
Borneo may be seen from this return made
to the House of Commons. The average
yearly payment for pirates' head money from
the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five
to the year eighteen hundred and forty-
eight—that is, for fourteen years—had been
sixteen hundred and twenty-seven pounds.
But in the single session of eighteen hundred
and fifty the vote on this account was for no
less than one hundred and six thousand four
hundred and forty pounds, chiefly for killing
Dyaks. For the single night affair of the
thirty-first of July, the head-money came to
twenty thousand seven hundred pounds.
Head-money was at once abolished, and we
have since heard little more about suppressing
pirates in the Eastern seas.

Thus Saráwak ceased to be a favourite
among the topics of the day, though still the
settlement has prospered. Measures taken
to prevent opium smuggling, caused in the
February and March of last year determined
attacks by the Chinese on the Government,
people, and property, at Saráwak. Sir James
himself narrowly escaped with his life, and
much damage was done before the necessary
measures could be taken for the quelling of
the enemy. The Chinese were defeated, and
driven into the jungle, their loss being
estimated at two thousand lives; the loss on
the other side was only twelve Malays and
Dyaks.

The English Government has disclaimed
any intention of extending British territory
on the north-west coast of Borneo. It averts
its countenance even from Saráwak, which it
once regarded with so much indulgence. Sir
James Brooke is now again in England,
telling us, most truly, that the time has
arrived when we must finally decide what
fruit his life's labour shall bear. We are at
this moment engaged with other nations in
an effort (which must soon succeed) to open
China fairly to the enterprise of Europe.
Between our Indian empire and the ports of
China, it requires but little foresight to know
that we shall ere long need a port of our
own that commands the route; such a port,
and the most convenient place for a telegraph
station, is Saráwak. The position is made;
the English Government has only to accept
it, and support it. In its creation, Mr.
Brooke has spent his energies freely, and
spent his fortune. He has never charged on the
revenues of Saráwak, interest on his money,
poured out for the development of its
resources; he asks now for no interest, but he
desires that the English Government may
take his place as the public creditor of the
settlement, and employ for its further
advancement the power and resources of Great
Britain.

The powers of an individual have been
strained to the utmost; but the work of the
pioneer will have been done if his countrymen
press in to occupy the ground he has
begun to clear. Or, is the work to end when