THE PRINCIPALITY OF SARAWAK. E NGLISHMEN find it easier to make
history than to watch it in the making. They have almost forgotten Sarawak, yet Sarawak is, perhaps, in some ways the most interesting of the forty or fifty States or separate communities which English- men have founded. It is, to begin with, the only one in which the rule of the English administrator has never been supported by British troops. From first to last, since the first Rajah, James Brooke, proclaimed himself Sovereign, to the present day, when his nephew writes to the Pall Mall Gazette stating that his regular army consists of 250 drilled Dyaks, supported by all able-bodied males, the Brooke dynasty has raised its own troops, sailed its own vessels, waged its own wars, and crushed its own insurgents, without serious help from the forces of any civilised Power. It has succeeded, by its own force of character and ability, in so disciplining and conciliat- ing the majority of its subjects, that when, in 1857, the formidable Chinese colony revolted and compelled the Rajah to swim for his life, his appeal to his people, unarmed and defeated as he stood, was answered by a rising ea masse of the Dyaks and the extirpation of the rebels. Even now, when civilised order has to be maintained, and taxes to be levied, and savage neighbours to be restrained, the second English Rajah maintains only a native army, though his territory is as large as Scotland and his people number 250,000, and relies for great emergencies upon the devotion of an armed people. He has no European soldier but his Commandant. The Rajah maintains himself, in fact, as the Kings and ruling nobles of Europe used to do, through the body of the people, all accustomed to weapons, and all led and guided by a small personal guard. The system, by the Rajah's own account, works excellently well, and is, indeed, the only system which, in a State so thinly populated and with so small a revenue, would work at all. It works, how- ever, and that so strongly, that the present Rajah ventures at once to admit the Chinese—who are dangerous subjects when the force above is not irresistible—and to carry out the terrible law making entrance into a Hoey or Secret Society a crime punishable with death. Without this law, the State could not be governed,—and as the Hoeys enforce their rules by assassin- ation, it is no more immoral than the Thnggee law,—bat the fact that it can be executed without a White army shows con- clusively how strong is the social system which the Rajah has established,—a system, be it remembered,under which the city of Sarawak, a city of 20,000 people, is as free from crimes of violence as any English seaport. So also does the abolition of slavery— now nearly completed, and to be final in 1888—the destruction of piracy, once the sole trade of the people, and the creation of a commerce of £1,000,000 sterling a year. This is a remark- able result to have been attained without conquest, and solely by using the English force of character and love of order as the supreme governing power. It wakes a hope that hereafter, even in the colonies inhabited by darker races, the costly English garrisons may be dispensed with, and the people them- selves furnish all necessary physical power. The time for such a change seems distant, but political intelligence is spreading, and the moment England is recognised by her dark subjects as irresistible, indigenous garrisons may be safely trusted. Even in India we do not despair of seeing some one people accept English rule with cordiality, and then the Englishmen may be reduced once more, as they were in 1856, to a mere guard.
The second special interest attaching to Sarawak is its form of Government, which is of the Asiatic, not the European type. The Rajah is, we believe, the single Englishman in the world who is absolute in the old and true sense of the word, who holds, that is, the power of decreeing laws and of issuing sentences of death by fiat. The Viceroy of India can, under extreme circumstances which have never occurred, pass proprio motu an Act as valid as an Act of Parliament for six months ; but he is a subordinate, liable to recall, and even to impeachment, for misuse of his powers. The Rajah of Sara- wak knows in Sarawak no superior. The Governors of Crown Colonies can, if supported by their subordinates in Council, pass very despotic laws, and in some instances have done so ; but they must submit to the regular formality of securing a majority, and if they overstepped a well-understood line, might be resisted. Rajah Brooke declares that he is really absolute, and as we see no reason either to doubt him or to question that he would like relief both from work and responsibility, we are driven to the conclusion that two English rulers, who have founded a State in Asia, governed it for forty years, and made it compara- tively prosperous, have for those forty years found it necessary either to be or to appear as absolute as Sultans. That is a very curious, though it may be a very useless lesson. We question if a community like the British either could or would release a delegate authority from all laws, and make him truly absolute—though we do something very like it as regards a Commander-in-Chief in an "occupied" territory—but still it is a fact to ponder over, that the only Englishman who is compelled by circumstances to rely solely upon the loyalty of a dark population, finds it expedient or im- perative to retain absolute power in a visible and avowed form. As a colonial Governor he would not need it, .but as a self- depending ruler he cannot do without it. Why is that? Is it that Asiatics really like the speed, force, and dramatic effect of personal power ; or that a ruler without a separate and effective will in him, a quasi-impersonal ruler, fails entirely to rouse the sentiment of loyalty which, even in Europe, it is so difficult to evoke towards an institution, but which in Asia, as in Europe, has for individuals, as well as for dynasties, shown itself a passion? Is it the reason or the imagination of Asiatics which is so touched by personal power, that during ages upon ages a series of successful revolutions have failed to create anything but autocracy, or to restrict it by anything save a revealed law, which, in practice, hardly limits it at all ? The Emperor of China, like Rajah Brooke, has a tiny standing Army, and could not hold down his people for a day, yet he also is an autocrat. Our System is doubtless the best, while the object is to produce prosperity and secure justice ; but if ever in the chances of time we desired to evoke loyalty, we might learn something from the
history of the only Principality in Asia ruled independently by an Englishman.
The third lesson to be learned from Sarawak is the one we all just now sorely need,—to be a little more hopeful and patient about the future of the darker races. There never were barbarians more savage than the Dyaks. When Rajah Brooke first assumed power, their occupation was murder, and their recreation hunts after human beings' heads. They were supposed to be utterly treacherous, and were utterly given up to bloodthirstiness. They had no order, no commerce, no agriculture, no laws. Two Englishmen—one no doubt a hero, but a hero of the rough, Elizabethan type, and the other an ordinary Englishman, with the faculties of a good magistrate—take these people in hand, reduce them through themselves to order, and within little more than a generation tame them till they are as civilised as the working population of India. The work, be it repeated, was not done by men of genius. The reigning Prince does not pretend to be one, and his uncle, though there was the making of a con- queror in him, was not one, unless the insight which enabled him to suppress murder in Sarawak is a proof of it. He was convinced that Dyaks were human beings, and that human beings will no more continue any practice which is surely and suddenly punished, than they will put their fingers into the fire after it has burned them. He, therefore, when trying men for murder, ordered that if the jury returned a verdict of guilty, execution should follow then and there. "As
dropped my hand on the desk," he said, in telling the story, "the murderer fell dead." The juries made few mistakes, the witnesses believed in the Judge, and the Dyaks, appalled by a retribution which looked so certain and sudden, gave up the crime of generations. Still, though that success was startling, there are hundreds of men in England who could, if oppor- tunity offered, play the part of Rajah Brooke ; and it is because the dynasty is ordinary that its success contains such a lesson for men who, in the last resort, govern probably more than a clear half of all dark-skinned mankind.
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