Sir
Benson Maxwell In "Our Malay Conquests," Presents A Formidable
Arraignment Against The Colonial Authorities, And Major M'Nair, In His
Book On Perak, Justifies All Their Proceedings.
If I may venture to
give an opinion upon so controverted a subject, it is, that all
Colonial authorities
In their dealings with native races, all Residents
and their subordinates, and all transactions between ourselves and the
weak peoples of the Far East, would be better for having something of
"the fierce light which beats upon a throne" turned upon them. The good
have nothing to fear, the bad would be revealed in their badness, and
hasty counsels and ambitious designs would be held in check. Public
opinion never reaches these equatorial jungles; we are grossly ignorant
of their inhabitants and their rights, of the manner in which our
interference originated, and how it has been exercised; and unless some
fresh disturbance and another "little war" should concentrate our
attention for a moment on these distant States, we are likely to remain
so, to their great detriment, and not a little, in one respect of the
case at least, to our own.
When the changes in Perak were completed, Mr. Hugh Low, formerly
administrator of the Government of Labuan, was appointed Resident, and
Mr. W. E. Maxwell, who had had considerable experience in Malay
affairs, Assistant Resident. Both these gentlemen speak the Malay
tongue readily and idiomatically, and Mr. Maxwell is an accomplished
Malay scholar. Of both the superior and subordinate it may truly be
said that, by tact, firmness, patience, and a uniformly just regard for
both Malay and Chinese interests, they have not only pacified the
State, but have conciliated the Rajahs, and in the main have reconciled
the people to the new order of things.
LETTER XVIII
Province Wellesley - Water Buffaloes - A Glorious Night - Perak
Officials - A "Dismal Swamp" - Elephants at Home - An Epigrammatic
Description - The British Residency at Taipeng - Sultan Abdulla's Boys - A
Chinese Mining Town - The "Armed Police" - An Alligator's Victim - Major
Swinburne - A Larut Dinner Party - A Morning Hymn
BRITISH RESIDENCY, LARUT, February 11.
I left Mr. Justice Wood's yesterday, and his servant dispatched me from
the jetty in a large boat with an attap awning and six Kling rowers,
whose oars worked in nooses of rope. The narrow Strait was very calm,
and the hot, fiery light of the tropic evening resting upon it, made it
look like oil rather than water. In half an hour I landed on the other
side in the prosperous Province Wellesley, under a row of magnificent
casuarina trees, with gray, feathery foliage drooping over a beach of
corals and, behind which are the solemn glades of cocoa-nut groves. On
the little jetty a Sikh policeman waited for me; and presently Mrs.
Isemonger, wife of the police magistrate of the Province, met me on the
bright, green lawn studded with clumps of alamanda, which surrounds
their lovely, palm-shaded bungalow.
Though the shadows were falling, Mr. Isemonger took me to see something
of the back country in a trap with a fiery Sumatra pony.
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