25 MARCH 1876, Page 2

Ismail Sultan, the Malayan pretender, has surrendered, and the war

in that peninsula may be considered over. The problem now is, how to reorganise Perak, if not the whole of Malaya. The wretched puppet Sultan Abdoollah cannot govern, but the choice seems to lie between him and the direct government of a country, for which as yet we have neither officers, nor soldiers, nor revenue. Ceylon can gradually supply the first, and the mines would ultimately yield the third, but the second remains a con- siderable difficulty. Malay troops are dangerous, and the Govern- ment, for some unknown reason, seems to shrink from the im- portant experiment of organising Chinese irregulars. They would. hold the province strongly enough, at all events.