will make the Dyak ashamed of his
comparatively idle life, while his weaker partner labours like a beast
of burthen. As his wants become increased and his tastes refined, the
women will have more household duties to attend to, and will then cease
to labour in the field--a change which has already to a great extent
taken place in the allied Malay, Javanese, and Bugis tribes. Population
will then certainly increase more rapidly, improved systems of
agriculture and some division of labour will become necessary in order
to provide the means of existence, and a more complicated social state
will take the place of the simple conditions of society which now occur
among them. But, with the sharper struggle for existence that will
then arise, will the happiness of the people as a whole be increased
or diminished? Will not evil passions be aroused by the spirit of
competition, and crimes and vices, now unknown or dormant, be called
into active existence? These are problems that time alone can solve; but
it is to be hoped that education and a high-class European example may
obviate much of the evil that too often arises in analogous cases, and
that we may at length be able to point to one instance of an uncivilized
people who have not become demoralized, and finally exterminated, by
contact with European civilization.

A few words in conclusion, about the government of Sarawak. Sir James
Brooke found the Dyaks oppressed and ground down by the most cruel
tyranny. They were cheated by the Malay traders and robbed by the Malay
chiefs. Their wives and children were often captured and sold into
slavery, and hostile tribes purchased permission from their cruel rulers
to plunder, enslave, and murder them. Anything like justice or redress
for these injuries was utterly unattainable. From the time Sir James
obtained possession of the country, all this was stopped. Equal justice
was awarded to Malay, Chinaman, and Dyak. The remorseless pirates from
the rivers farther east were punished, and finally shut up within their
own territories, and the Dyak, for the first time, could sleep in peace.
His wife and children were now safe from slavery; his house was no
longer burned over his head; his crops and his fruits were now his own
to sell or consume as he pleased. And the unknown stranger who had done
all this for them, and asked for nothing in return, what could he be?
How was it possible for them to realize his motives? Was it not natural
that