The Worst Features Of The System Are Seen Where A
Rajah Is The Creditor, For He Is The Last Man
To be willing to receive
payment of a debt and free the debtor, for the number of his followers,
even
If they are but women and girls, increases his consequence, and
debtors when once taken into a Rajah's household are looked upon as
being as much a part of his property as his cattle or elephants. Mr.
Swettenham, the Assistant Colonial Secretary of the Straits
Settlements, writes that "in Perak the cruelties exercised toward
debtors are even exclaimed at by Malays in the other States."* In
Selangor, where it is said that slavery has been quietly abolished,
only five years ago the second son of that quiet-looking Abdul Samat
killed three slave debtors for no other reason than that he willed it;
and when two girls and a boy, slave debtors of the Sultan's, ran away,
this same bloodthirsty son caught them, took the boy into a field, and
had him krissed. His wife, saying she was going to bathe in the Langat
river, told the two girls to follow her to a log which lay in the water
a few yards from her house, where they were seized, and a boy follower
of her husband took them successively by the hair and held their heads
under the water with his foot till they were dead, when their corpses
were left upon the slimy bank. The Sultan, to do him justice, was very
angry when his son went to him and said, "I have thrown away those
children who ran away."
[*For Mr. Swettenham's _Report on Slavery in the Native States_, see
Appendix B.]
In Perak it has been the custom to hunt and capture the Jakun women and
make them and their children slaves.
Instances of cruelty have greatly diminished since British influence
has entered Perak, and I should think that Mr. Low will ere long
mature a scheme for the emancipation of all persons held in bondage.* I
heard of a curious case this morning. The aunt of a Malay policeman in
Larut, passing near a village, met an acquaintance, and taking a stone
from the roadside sat down upon it while she stopped to talk, and on
getting up forgot to remove it. An hour later a village child tripped
over the stone and slightly cut its forehead. The placing the stone in
the pathway was traced to the woman, who was arrested and sentenced to
pay a fine of $25, and being unable to pay it she and her children
became slave-debtors to the father of the child which had been hurt. In
this case, though Captain Speedy lent the policeman money wherewith to
pay his aunt's fine, the creditor repeatedly refused to receive it,
preferring to exercise his prerogative of holding the family as his
rightful slaves.
[*Such a scheme is now under consideration. See Appendix C.]
Slavery and polygamy, the usual accompaniments of Islamism, go far to
account for the decay of these States.
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