TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BRITISH NORTH BORNEO COMPANY.
THE matter will, of course, be explained in Parliament ; but pending the discussion, we do not quite understand the motives which have induced Lord Kimberley to grant to the " British North Borneo Company " the extraordinary Charter recited in the London Gazette of November 8th. That he has the legal power to grant it, we do not doubt, and there are plenty of precedents—ten or twelve, at least—for such grants ; but we thought that the policy of making them had been abandoned, and that the creation of a new East India Company had become impossible. It is not so, however. It appears that a potentate, not very widely known in Europe, called the " Sultan of Brunei," and another potentate called the " Sultan of Sooloo " and yet a third, a certain Tumongong, in and about 1877 ceded to Mr. Dent, the great China merchant, and certain other persons, the absolute sovereignty of a consider- able section of the north-eastern and north-western coast of Borneo. How much they have given, we cannot, in the present state of geographical knowledge, affect to state precisely ; but judging from the best information and maps before us, we should say these gentlemen had acquired, for a payment of a few thou- sands a year, a considerable kingdom, with unsurveyed and pos- sibly elastic boundaries, embracing the great peninsula in North- East Borneo, and all islands on the coast, and so related to Sarawak and Labuan, that Englishmen now own the whole littoral of North Borneo for an indefinite, or at least ill-defined, depth to the southward. Within this territory, which we may fairly describe as " North Borneo," Mr. Dent and his friends were made absolutely sovereign, " with," as the Charter recites, " power of life and death over the inhabitants, with all the ab- solute rights of property vested in the Sultan over the soil of the country, and the right to dispose of the same, as well as the rights over the productions of the country, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal, with the rights of making laws, coining money, creating an army and navy, levying customs rates on home and foreign trade and shipping, and other dues and taxes on the inhabitants, as to him might seem good or expedient ; together with all other powers and rights usually exercised by and belonging to sovereign rulers, and which the Sultan thereby delegated to him, of his own free-will." Prerogatives could not be greater, and, indeed, there are vague rights of property included in the concessions which no European Sovereign has ever possessed, or would cede to any conqueror, and which vested the concessionaires with authority such as even the East India Company never possessed. The whole of these rights and properties were ceded to a Provisional Associa- tion, now the British North Borneo Company ; and if its managers can, as we presume they will, buy out the Rajah of Sarawak, they will be Sovereigns and owners of the whole north of the greatest, and possibly the richest, island in the world.
Lord Kimberley has granted to this Company a Royal Charter, in which all their rights are recognised in the fullest and most exhaustive manner by the British Government. Words could scarcely be more comprehensive than those employed. " The said British North Borneo Company (in this Our Charter referred to as The Company ') is hereby authorised and empowered to acquire, by purchase or other lawful means, from the British North Borneo Provisional Association, Limited, the full benefit of the several grants and commissions aforesaid [which are recited, and contain the words above], or any of them, as the same is vested in that Association, and all interests and powers of that Association thereunder, and all interests and powers vested in that Association in, over, or affecting the territories, lands, and property comprised in those several grants, or in, over, or affecting any territories, lands, or property in Borneo, or in any island lying near thereto, including Labuan, and to hold, use, enjoy, and exercise the same, for the pur- poses and on the terms of this Our Charter." The concession is unmistakable, and the Colonial Office proceed to stipulate for limitations on the Company's authority, which in reality solidify it, by constituting the Company a recognised agency of the British Government. The Com- pany, it is arranged, shall always be British in character and domicile. It shall have no power to cede any province with- out the consent of one of her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State. It shall refer all international disputes to such Secre- tary, who shall have absolute control over all the Company's foreign affairs, and who must consent to the appointment of the Company's "principal Representative," or Governor- General. The Company, moreover, must use as its dis- tinctive emblem a flag sanctioned by the Lords of the. British Admiralty, and must admit to all " its harbours ". British ships-of-war. Subject to these restrictions, and to a proviso for the abolition by degrees of slavery—a proviso- wretchedly weak in terms—the Company are authorised not only to exercise full sovereign rights, to make laws, to sell lands in perpetuity, and to grant monopolies of opium, tobacco, salt, or other commodities, but, unless we misread certain words, to conquer any other territory in " that region." This proviso is so important and so vague, than we quote the words of the Charter :—" To acquire, and take by purchase, cession, or other lawful means, other interests or powers in, over, or affecting the territories, lands, or property comprised in the several grants aforesaid, or any interests, or powers whatever in, over, or ajfecting other territories, lands, or property in the region aforesaid; and to hold, use, enjoy, and exercise the- same for the purposes and on the terms of this our Charter."' In fact, the Colonial Office has created a Sovereign Company of the old kind, with the right to levy armies, to impose taxes, and, subject to the general control of her Majesty's. Government, to make war and peace. The powers of the old East India Company were never greater, even its old and dangerous right of recalling its Governor-General without the assent of the Crown being virtually conceded, by the proviso. that the assent of Government is necessary only to the new choice.
This is a very great step for Government to have taken, and, in spite of the numerous precedents, we cannot deem it a wise one. It is, in the first place, the annexation of North. Borneo, a new possession, sure to be extended, if history may be trusted, until we own the whole island, which is twice as large as France, and inhabited by at least three millions of people in every stage of civilisation, from the Malaya of Sarawak, who sit on juries, to savages lower than the Veddahs or Andamanese. Does the country desire such an annexation ? We say, " No ;" not because a conquest of that kind is immoral, for conquest, if we fully accept our responsibilities, may often be right ; and not because our dominion would not be beneficial to the people, for it might be their regeneration ; but because we believe the powers of Great Britain, as she is at present organised, with no conscription, and an army in which every soldier costs £120 a year, to be already strained to cracking. Our responsibilities are already frightful. They cover a fifth of the entire human race, and perhaps a tenth of the habitable territory of the globe, in possessions terribly scattered, and liable to attack from a dozen first-class European and Asiatic Powers. This Charter directly increases those responsibilities, for, in spite of the Company's powers, the new territory will be, in some- main essentials, British. The officers of the new Army must be Englishmen, the control of foreign affairs is vested in the British Government, and if the Company is defeated either in. war or by an insurrection, the British Government must inter- vene. And if there is no danger of war, the danger of insur- rection will be serious. The Mussulmans are certain, sooner or later, to resent our rule ; while it will be the in- terest of the Company to encourage a vast influx of Chinese, who are the only useful handicraftsmen and miners, and who may, if tempted, settle on the lands as cultivators. They are dangerous subjects when beyond the range of the steamers' cannon, and within ten years may require to be watched by a mixed European and Indian force, which the Indian Empire maybe in no position to spare. Rajah Brooke had to exterminate them, and our hold upon Singapore has, owing to the preten- sions of the Chinese Secret Societies, repeatedly depended on the Fleet. It may be alleged that the Fleet will be sufficient, but with China always more or less hostile, the greatest Russian fleet near Saghalien, Malaya to guard, the route to Australia to protect, the whole coast of India to watch, and ascendancy to maintain in the Red Sea, even the Fleet is in danger of being overtaxed. We do not want more work for it in Asia, any more than we want any more terri- tories to reduce into a paying civilisation. The Government may, of course, produce reasons of which we have no know- ledge, but they must be grave to justify a course which, if the late Government had pursued it, would have been angrily de- nounced by every Liberal journal in the country as a new illustration of the recklessness of the " Forward " school.
Nor, supposing it were agreed to annex Borneo, or North Borneo, can we approve the method of governing new posses- sions implied in the concession of this Charter ? The East India Company proved a just though a slow legislating body, and the
Hudson Bay Company so governed Red Indians as to be the one Government which they steadily approved ; but we cannot believe it right for a Government like the British to delegate its power of legislation, and of creating Courts, and of appoint- ing Judges to a body over whose laws it does not reserve even a complete right of veto. The Secretary of State can veto, no doubt, if he is moved to do it, but his assent is not required, nor is it provided that any law shall be submitted to him as part of the regular procedure. That this has been done repeatedly, we admit, and that the British North Borneo Company will try to do justice, we also admit ; but still, such a Company must be thinking of profits first, must be inclined to compel labour, must be disposed to invest its agents with very dangerous powers. The secret history of the East India Company as a commercial company, buying and selling in India itself, has never been written, for its powers in that respect were swept away before the days of publicity, but we know enough to feel most reluctant to entrust a Trading Com- pany a second time with those immense opportunities of mis- conduct. English landlords are the best in the world, but we should be sorry to trust them with absolute power to make rent laws, to assess estates, and to use troops for the collection of rent. All these powers are conceded to this new Com- pany, which will operate in regions far beyond European ken, among dumb populations, and through agents of whom no one will know anything. Suppose, as is exceedingly probable, magnificent copper, lead, and plumbago mines are discovered in North Borneo, and worked by the Sove- reign Company, will the labourers who work them be really free, or practically compelled to work on through life for a fixed wage ? Mr. Dent may be the most humane of men, and we all know Sir Rutherford Alcock, the second man in the Company, to be incapable of a cruelty ; but has a Government. a right to trust such vast powers to any men whatever, with no guarantee except their individual characters ? It seems to us that in so doing it is abnegating responsibility to an extent only excusable in times when the direct exercise of authority was so difficult that it produced more mischief than it relieved. If the machinery of a Company is considered useful, or if the "concessions" of the Sultans are regarded as in some sense private property, and the Government is reluctant to assume them for itself, the Charter is a voluntary grant, and its price ought to have been the right of " previous sanction " on all laws, and the right to recall, without reason assigned, the " principal representative " of the Company. With less power than that the Government ought not to be contented, for without these two prerogatives, it may stand in the position of being compelled to put down an insurrection produced by misgovernment, which it had done nothing whatever to pre- vent. It is, probably, not yet too late to make these reserva- tions by a supplementary agreement ; and we trust that this may be done before the meeting of Parliament, when, if Par- liament is allowed to act at all, we may be sure that the conduct of the Government in granting this Charter will be very fiercely criticised. We can hardly believe that the grant was ever very seriously considered, or that the India Office— to name only one department affected—has consented to the establishment of a new and independent opium monopoly, the profits of which will pass into private hands. That last concession seems, indeed, to us incredible, but there it is, in sub-clause 7 of section 15, in unmistakable words, " The Company may farm out for revenue purposes the right to sell spirits, tobacco, opium, salt, or other commodities."
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