THE FOUNDER OF SINGAPORE.*
SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES was a type of British administrator to which the history of our Empire scarcely affords a parallel. Born in comparatively humble circumstances, he had a self- confidence and a fearlessness of criticism, a hankering after dictatorship and a contempt of red tape, which are usually associated with men born in the purple. He was largely self- educated, and yet he became a notable scholar in many subjects, and the father of modern zoological research. He had weak health, he was very poor, and he had few powerful friends ; but the masterful spirit of the man so overrode his disadvantages that, though he died before his prime, he had to all intents laid the foundations of British power in the Far East. It is idle to explain the paradoxes of his career in the way of the pragmatic historian by minimising the results of his work. We can only be thankful that in our absent- minded making of empire now and again a man appears with a clear policy and a prescience of the future. Such was Raffles; such, to name two in a long roll, were Raleigh and Wakefield.
"I was always a strange wild fellow," he once wrote of him- self, "insatiable in ambition, though meek as a maiden." He was born in 1781 off the harbour of Morant in Jamaica, the son of a ship's-captain. In his fourteenth year be was admitted as an extra clerk in the India House, and in 1805 he was sent out to Penang as Assistant-Secretary. The Governor (at a salary of £9,000) was a Mr. Philip Dundas, a name which suggests much as to the influence then at work on the India Board. At first he found his work thankless and his position unimportant. "A Secretary," he wrote, "is in general the organ, but in some places the very soul. I am neither the one nor the other." But John Leyden, the poet, who had come out as a surgeon in the Company's service, soon arrived at Singapore, and with him Raffles formed a close friend- ship. So when an Elliot of Teviotdale came out as Governor- General, Leyden was able to secure a bearing for his friend's views, and Lord Minto, to his honour, saw the merits of the Assistant-Secretary. He gave much good advice on the subject of the abandonment of Malacca, and afterwards on the question of Java he attempted to "create such an interest as should lead to its annexation to our Eastern Empire." Minto appointed him Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States, "as an avant courier and to prepare the way for the expedi- tion." Lord Minto himself accompanied the expedition, which was abundantly successful, and Raffles was appointed Governor of Java. There he found a wide field for his energies. The Dutch East India Company had habitually evaded responsibilities, and made no efforts to improve the condition of the country or its inhabitants. He devoted special attention to legal and financial reforms, so that some called his rule "that of a warehouse-keeper." He reformed the system of land tenure and he did much for the welfare of the natives. His rule did not please the directors in Leadenhall Street, who asked for immediate financial gains, which was the last thing Raffles proposed to give them, He made many enemies, some among his own subordinates, who did not acquiesce in his policy of "Thorough." His accusers • Sir Stamfoill Raffles: England in the Far East. By Hugh 'Edward Egerton. 315.. London : T. Fisher Unvrtn. Os.] found in . Lord Moira, the new Governor-General, a• -ready. listener, and Barnes'was accused of misgovernment, curtly dismissed, and, the danger from France being now over, java was restored to the Dutch. He was finally cleared on all the charges, but the opinion was expressed that his rule had been injudicious, and he returned to England in 1816, sore and dispirited.
His reception at home consoled him, for he was received kindly at Court and knighted, and he formed some friendships, particularly one with the Duchess of Somerset, which lasted to the close of his life. His friends seem to have thought that if be had lived, he would have been Governor-General of India, which, as Mr. Egerton very properly points out, would have been impossible under the system of government which then prevailed. In 1818 he returned to Bencoolen in Sumatra, where in the midst of an up-hill fight for financial and administrative reform he first conceived the idea of the occupation of Singapore. He saw the enormous commercial and strategic value of the port, and he saw at the same time that it was to be a close race between Dutch and English for the commercial supremacy in the Far East. The • Governor- G-eneral, Lord Hastings, in a Minute of October 25th, 1818, agreed with him, and Raffles, after his fashion, proceeded at once to put his designs into execution. The Treaty with the Sultan was signed on February 6th, 1819, to the indignation of the Dutch and the chagrin of the Penang Government. Happily, Raffles was supported both in India and at home, and his work was not interfered with. Its value was at once apparent. As early as July, 1819, Mr. Charles Grant, a director of the East India Company, could write of "the importance in a moral, political, and commercial view of a British establishment at Singapore." To the Dutch historians it still remains "an outrageous injustice."
The few remaining years of Raffles's life were filled with unremitting labour. He laboured continually for the sup- pression of the slave trade, and, as far as it was possible, of slavery. In his Report on the -Administration of Justice he lays down rules for colonial government which were curiously in advance of his time. "Some degree of legislative power," he wrote, "must necessarily exist in every distant dependency. The laws of the Mother-country cannot be commensurate with the wants of the dependency ; she has wants of which a remote legislature can very imperfectly judge, and which are sometimes too urgent to admit the delay of reference." He suffered terribly from headaches, and was compelled to return to England, where he spent two happy years, though they were somewhat disturbed by money troubles. He became a friend of William Wilberforce, and among his many activi- ties founded the Zoological Society in 1825. His death took place in July, 1826, on the eve of his forty-sixth birthday.
Mr. Egerton has written a clear and orderly narrative of the life of the great adyninistrator, and has given us much sober and judicious criticism. Of the purity and courage of his character there can be no doubt, and his work remains for the wayfaring man to see. He made many enemies, but they were generally the red-tape creatures who at the time crawled about on our Eastern possessions. He had much self-confidence, as when he described his policy as "looking a century or two beforehand," and the figure of Napoleon, whom he once met, seems • to. have fascinated him, for he continually finds parallels in his own career. Bencoolen is "the second Elba in which I am placed," and his arrival at Batavia is as if "Bonaparte. had anchored in the Downs." On the other hand, he was ardently loved, both by his friends and his native subjects. According to his Malay servant, "he spoke in smiles." Of his work there can be but one opinion, though, as Mr. Egerton well points out, his reputation must suffer from the very completeness of his. success. The Dutch have so utterly fallen out of the race that it is hard to believe that in 1815 they were serious commercial rivals. Not only did he found Singa- pore, but he "saw in the future the need which created Hong-kong," for he wrote of the former that it "afforded facilities for hereafter establishing another factory still further East whenever it may be decreed expedient to do so." If we consider the shortness of his life, the magnitude of its results, and the disadvantages of health and position which he had to face, we must rank him very high among the builders .of Greater Britain. "Insatiable in ambition, though meek as
a maiden,"—it is a description - which he shares- Neitb.-.-m9re than One maker of empire.
Previous page
