y things which hurt and
oppressed them ere it came, it injures them morally almost as much as
it benefits them materially. We, who are white men, admire our work not
a little--which is natural--and many are found willing to wear out their
souls in efforts to clothe in the stiff garments of European
conventionalities, the naked, brown limbs of Orientalism. The natives,
who, for the most part, are frank Vandals, also admire efforts of which
they are aware that they are themselves incapable, and even the
_laudator temporis acti_ has his mouth stopped by the cheap and often
tawdry luxury, which the coming of the Europeans has placed within his
reach. So effectually has the heel of the white man been ground into the
face of Perak and Selangor, that these Native States are now only
nominally what their name implies. The alien population far out-numbers
the people of the land in most of the principal districts, and it is
possible for a European to spend weeks in either of these States without
coming into contact with any Asiatics save those who wait at table, wash
his shirts, or drive his cab. It is also possible, I am told, for a
European to spend years on the West Coast of the Peninsula without
acquiring any very profound knowledge of the natives of the country, or
of the language which is their speech-medium. This being so, most of the
white men who live in the Protected Native States are somewhat apt to
disregard the effect which their actions have upon the natives, and
labour under the common European inability to view matters from the
native standpoint. Moreover, we have become accustomed to existing
conditions, and thus it is that few, perhaps, realise the precise nature
of the work which the British in the Peninsula have set themselves to
accomplish. What we are really attempting, however, is nothing less than
to crush into twenty years the revolutions in facts and in ideas which,
even in energetic Europe, six long centuries have been needed to
accomplish. No one will, of course, be found to dispute that the strides
made in our knowledge of the art of government, since the Thirteenth
Century, are prodigious and vast, nor that the general condition of the
people of Europe has been immensely improved since that day; but,
nevertheless, one cannot but sympathise with the Malays, who are
suddenly and violently translated from the point to which they had
attained in the natural development of their race, and are required to
l