CHAPTER XXII.

DESPOTIC OFFICIALISM.

STRANGE ride this morning; the tales in Mill's History of British India were having practical elucidation, the surmises of the simple country folks at home were being realized, when they surveyed the ill-gotten wealth of the yellow, sleepless, snappish nabobs that from time to time sat down in old haunted rural mansions to linger and die. I felt I was now actually poaching on forbidden preserves, for these regions were forbidden to Englishmen till the year 1833, and I had stumbled unawares on the very heart of a monstrous, loathsome despotism.

This was a wholesale way of getting rich,—first the valuable sea frontage is pounced upon; second the sea highway between one British settlement and another, containing 40,000 and 60,000 inhabitants, is monopolised for the private benefit of an East India Company's official; third, the river dividing the province is closed to the public and monopolized in the same manner; and, lastly, the

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crowning information of this morning's ride, the inhabitants are driven wholesale from their patrimonies! I now write down what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. It is just possible the Malays might have been the victims of legal quibbles, but the hard, stubborn facts. remained the same,-they were ousted from their houses and lands. A government court of inquiry would have settled these points; or a court of justice would have rejected or vindicated the claims of the Malays. As far as I am aware, no investigation ever took place! The Malays, at my suggestion, did go over to lay their complaints before Sir George Bonham; but I fear they never obtained redress. The belted peons around his office would never have allowed a number of ragged Malays to approach his august presence. They also proceeded to the Court of Judicature, but failed here also; they could not pay for an advocate, and were not allowed to plead in formâ pauperis.

Such doings would be impossible in Great Britain, here they were more than probable. Nay, the native rajahs of Malayan states daily and hourly commit such acts on their people. Then, here was an East India Company's official in the position of a Malayan rajah unchecked and uncontrolled,—how could he, a European gentleman, be capable of such transactions? Simply in this way. He no doubt had the feelings of a white man forty years previously;

but he was weak-minded, and had, for thirty years, been held under native influences. Having succumbed to such trammels, he had become an Anglo-Hindoo rajah, and had so conformed to the ideas of that class, that he imbibed their prejudices, and indulged in their oppressiveness and venality.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHE KOTA.

CHE KOTA signifies "him of the fort," and whether Che Kota's had been that same fort that is to be seen marked in Lieutenant Woare's chart of Penang, I do not know. At all events a fort or stockade is shown to have crowned the summit of Bukit Palandah in the year 1832. By referring to Moor's Notices of the Indian Archipelago-—a work that I have not seen for many yearsthere will be found a map of Province Wellesley by Fletcher, a government surveyor. In that map the boundary of Province Wellesley is clearly depicted. That boundary shows the extent of land bought from the Rajah of Keddah, but which scarcely takes in Permatang Pau. Both Bukit Palandah and Bukit Merah, were, at that time, in Malayan territory. It was not till the 6th of April, 1832, that the boundary was extended so as to include those two hills. This was done after the insurrection of Tuanku Kudin, by which time the East India Company had ac

knowledged the supremacy of Siam over Keddah, so that it was by Siam's consent that the boundary was extended. So much is necessary to be related before dealing with Che Kota's claim, and that of others similarly situated.

Colonel Law's History of the British Colonies in the Straits has a short sentence connected with this subject. It is to this effect: A large portion of the central district (of Province Wellesley), viz., Prye, was excited to rebellion, and a party of police proceeding on general duty under a small escort, were treacherously waylaid, and a constable, three sepoys, and some peons were murdered. This circumstance happened in August 1830, while the land was Malayan, and two years prior to its being ceded to the East India Company by Siam, the conqueror of Keddah. Then what were these native servants of the East India Company doing over the border, for we were neither at war with Keddah nor with Siam. Che Kota and my Malay informants said "that they were executing warrants for refusal to pay taxes to the East India Company's official." They owed no allegiance to the British crown, they did not reside in British territory, therefore they refused to pay taxes, and resisted when the military were sent out to coerce. Che Kota himself was absent from the fray, but his brother was in it-so that was enough. The Company's native servants had been resisted and shot, so all must fly from vengeance that would too surely overtake the villagers indiscriminately.