Get, and on whom they sometimes visit those cruelties which
they have themselves already experienced.
This system of debtor bondage influences, then, the whole population,
not slightly but deeply, in ways it is hardly possible to credit except
when seen in a constant intercourse with all classes of Malay society.
The question at issue seems to be; how to deprive the Rajah of this
great power - an unscrupulous instrument in unscrupulous hands - how to
free the debtors from their bondage, the women from lives of forced
prostitution, the unoffending population from the robberies and
murderous freaks of Rajahs and their bondsmen.*
[*Some of these remarks apply specially to Selangor, in which State
slavery is now abolished. I. L. B.]
In Perak it is different; the debtor-bondage is one of the chief
customs - one of the "pillars of the State" - an abuse jealously guarded
by the Perak Rajahs and Chiefs, and especially by those who make the
worst uses of it.
I have often discussed this question of debt-slavery with the Malays
themselves, but they say they see no way under the rule of their Rajahs
to put down this curse of their country, with all the evils that follow
in its train. I have, etc.
(Signed) Frank A. Swettenham, (Now Asst.
