that they would
go out of their way to teach the degenerate Brunai aristocracy how to
govern in accordance with modern ideas; indeed, the Treaty we made with
them, by prohibiting, for instance, their levying customs duties, or
royalties, on the export of such jungle products as gutta percha and
India rubber, in the collection of which the trees yielding them are
entirely destroyed, and by practically suggesting to them the policy, or
rather the impolicy, of imposing the heavy due of $1 per registered ton
on all European Shipping entering their ports, whether in cargo or in
ballast, scarcely tended to stave off their collapse, and the Borneans
must have formed their own conclusions from the fact that when they gave
up portions of their territory to the BROOKES and to the British North
Borneo Company, the British Government no longer called for the
observance of these provisions of the Treaty in the ceded districts. The
English have got all they wanted from Brunai, but I think it can
scarcely be said that they have done very much for it in return. I
remember that the late Sultan thought it an inexplicable thing that we
could not assist him to recover a debt due to him by one of the British
Coal Companies which tried their luck in Borneo. Moreover, even the
cession to their good and noble friend Sir JAMES BROOKE of the Brunai
Province of Sarawak has been itself also, to a certain extent, a factor
in their Government's decay, that State, under the rule of the
Raja--CHARLES BROOKE--having attained its present prosperous condition
at the expense of Brunai and by gradually absorbing its territory.

Between British North Borneo, on the one side, and Sarawak, on the
other, the sea-board of Brunai, which, when we first appeared on the
scene, extended from Cape Datu to Marudu Bay--some 700 miles--is now
reduced to 125 or 130 miles, and, besides the river on which it is
built, Brunai retains but two others of any importance, both of which
are in rebellion of a more or less vigorous character, and the whole
State of Brunai is so sick that its case is now under the consideration
of Her Majesty's Government.

Thus ends in collapse the history of the last independent Malay
Government. Excepting only Johor (which is prosperous owing to its being
under the wing of Singapore, which fact gives confidence to European and
Chinese capitalists and Chinese labourers, and to its good fortune in
having a wise and just ruler in its Sultan, who ow