LORD GRANVILLE ON NORTH BORNEO.
IT is accidentally somewhat difficult for us to discuss the conduct of the Government in regard to the North Borneo Company. The debate in the Commons began too late for the arguments to reach us, and the debate in the Lords on Monday was too amicable to add anything of importance to the con- troversy. We presume, however, that Lord Granville and Lord Kimberley explained the views of her Majesty's Govern- ment with regard to the Charter ; and if they did, we cannot admit that they have fairly answered the objections to its grant. Those objections were, in brief, three,—that the annex- ation of North Borneo was a needless addition to British respon- sibilities ; that such an addition ought not to have been made without Parliamentary consent ; and that, if it were to be made, it should have been made without the intervention of a Company. Of these objections, Lord Granville answers only one, and that, in our judgment, very imperfectly. He affirms his belief that Spain intended to seize North Borneo, and that she would, when once established there, exercise a dangerous control over "the great fair-way" of the vast British trade between Europe and China, and Europe and Australasia. The first point may be taken as proved. Spain has repeatedly advanced preten- sions to North Borneo in such a way as tb irritate both Ger- many and England, and avowedly intended to establish herself there, if she could, in full sovereignty. The Spanish Govern- ment, indeed, is proud of the intention. So far, Lord Gran- ville is clearly right, but the next step in his argument is surely a little imaginary. What could Spain in Borneo have done to our trade, that Spain in the Philippines could not do ? She was not going, we presume, to compel us to despatch fleets to Cadiz and Carthagena, and short of an act of war, what could she do ? If we needed a post of observation, we had one already in Labuan, and might have constructed there, or on one of the many islands, a naval station and arsenal for those waters, just as well as on any of the territories acquired by Mr. Dent. The position of Spain if she had seized all Brunei would not have been half as formidable as that of Holland in Sumatra, or for that matter, of Spain herself in Minorca and Ceuta in the Mediterranean. She can, if she wants war, stop our whole Asiatic trade from those points much more easily than from Borneo, and of course she does not do it. The truth is, Lord Granville rather hankered after the new kingdom offered to Great Britain in the Eastern archi- pelago, and took it rather than allow it to fall to Spain, which, by its recent conduct in the Sulu Islands, had profoundly, and
we must add, justly, irritated the English and German Foreign Offices. The extension of her Majesty's dominions, when fair opportunity offered, was, as he almost admits, his real motive, and it is the wisdom of acting on that motive that is now disputed. True, Liberals do not contend that annexation is always and under all circumstances wrong, or that England can properly shrink from bearing her share in the task of reducing the world to order, or that Great Britain alone in the world is never to acquire a new and profitable estate. We ourselves have contended most strenuously against the weakness which would allow the Valley of the Nile to pass into any other hands than our own, rather than under- take the burden of its government. But Liberals contend that the kingdom is already overweighted with dependencies, that every week brings some new call upon the national energies, and that so long, at all events, as the Army remains on its present footing, as partly Royal and partly national, we have not the men to guard such immense and scat- tered territories. To this, Lord Granville replies that her Majesty has taken no dominion over Borneo, ultimate sover- eignty resting with the Sultan of Brunei ; but he must himself smile at his own argument. The Government itself has acknowledged its own sovereignty in this very Charter, for it not only confirms the right of the North Borneo Company to pass laws, impose taxes, and inflict death, but expressly re- serves its own right to control the Company's foreign relations, and to forbid it to cede territory. It even bestows upon the Company a separate flag. Does Lord Granville really mean to say that if the Company fires upon the Dutch, the Foreign Office will give Holland no redress, or that if Spain fires upon the Company's ships, which is pretty certain to happen, he will send no representations to Madrid. He knows that this is nonsense, that her Majesty is as responsible for North Borneo as for India, and that if she were not, it would be necessary to buy the " suzerain " rights of Brunei, which technically stood in the way.
But, replies Lord Granville, this is a rich territory you are talking about, a territory covering 30,000 square miles, full of minerals, and forests, and fine land, and such an estate is worth all the trouble it may entail. We might reply that England is loaded with such estates, that we have just obtained Fiji, that Papua must fall to us, and that Borneo will bring with it the curse of the only population we can never manage,—a few millions of Chinese immigrants. The Company, we may rest assured, cannot manage them ; and we do not want to suppress an insurrection every twenty years. We prefer, however, the broader argument, that the value of the estate, however great, was matter for Parliament to con- sider. The people ought not to be loaded with heavy obliga- tions such as are involved in the annexation, direct or indirect, of new tropical kingdoms, without their own consent. Lord Granville says the Government had the " Constitu- tional right" to grant the Charter, and no doubt that is technically true. They have the constitutional right to accept Scandinavia as a colony, if the Scandinavian Powers propose a Treaty with that result. But Lord Granville would hardly sign such a Treaty, without a previous vote of the House of Commons ; yet under the form of granting a Charter, the Government has done that very thing. He will tell us, as Talleyrand told the poet who claimed the fraternity of Moliere, " There are degrees," and this annexation is un- important ; but that will only be an illustration of the official want of imagination. If history teaches anything, it teaches that the British have acquired Borneo, the largest island in the world, a tropical continent out of which empires might be carved. Mr. Dent's kingdom has no southern boundaries, the British will wander, and explore, and cut roads,
just as far as they find the advance pay, and any Power, native or European, which resists will speedily find resistance very dangerous. It may be quite right to take charge of Borneo, but it is for the British people to decide that, and to argue that it is an unimportant addition to their labour is almost foolish. The " weary Titan " is already carrying tone.
Besides, Lord Granville forgets the kind of precedent he is set- ting. The right which he affirms as regards Borneo may
hereafter be affirmed by Lord Salisbury as regards half the provinces of the Turkish Empire, or territories which we could only hold at the price of a conscription. Surely it is not for Liberals to deny that a use of the prerogative which may land the country in ruinous liabilities has become an anachronism.
And lastly, we maintain that if North Borneo was worth having, it should have been annexed, with compensation, if needful, to Mr. Dent, and have been governed either through the Colonial Office, or through a Company distinctly controlled on all points by a Minister of the Crown. The day for.Sovereign Companies has gone by. It is fifty years since Parliament refused to tolerate the quasi-independence of the East India Company any longer, and it has just swept away that of the Com- pany which owned the North Pole, and which, secluded as it was in the desert, never had a fair chance of doing harm. The Company will not govern better than the Crown, while, being established for commercial reasons, it will have a hundred temptations to make money from which the Crown would have been exempt. We know no harm of Mr. Dent, who must have extraordinary enterprise, and a good deal of ad- ministrative ability, and we know much good of Sir Rutherford Alcock ; but we would trust no one, not Lord Granville himself, with the powers those gentlemen and their colleagues now possess. We will say nothing about opium, because, if the Company taxes that, it will restrict its sale, nor about tobacco, for the human race -can survive the taxation of that weed ; but it seems to us per- fectly monstrous to grant to private persons, not responsible ,upon this point even to the Crown, the right of taxing salt to any extent they please. They may kill out a population by torture, without knowing what they are doing. Lord Granville seems inclined to say the Company had the right before the Government granted the Charter, but let him think over that a little. Could Mr. Dent, as Deputy for the Sultan of Brunei, have imprisoned Europeans for desiccating brine, without the instant interference of the British Government, not to 'mention the risk, removed by the Charter, that the Europeans would shoot Mr. Dent ? It is the Charter which gives the Company its strength, and under the Charter it has Tights which no Government with a conscience ought to allow to pass out of its own hands,—rights of taxation, of seizing lands, and of monopolising minerals, through which it may inflict an indefinite amount of injustice. Lord Granville says he has guarded the rights of natives ; but we remember the history of the East India Company, and we venture to predict with confideliee that the debate which, say ten years hence, will overthrow the North Borneo Company, will be raised on account of the wrongs of independent Europeans, whose rights as her Majesty's subjects will come into conflict at some point or other with Mr. Dent's " Charter right " to earn a magnifi- cent dividend.
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