ned your
position in the service. Your zeal considerably out-stepped your
prudence, and the first operations of it became known at an
unfavourable juncture. It was thought that the state of affairs
in Europe required that they should be discountenanced.

"The acquisition of Singapore has grown in importance. The stir
made here lately for the further enlargement of the Eastern
trade fortified that impression. It is now accredited in the
India House."[32]

[Footnote 32: "Memoir of Sir Stamford Raffles."]

Undoubtedly the Dutch were making strong endeavours at this time to
procure the removal from the East of a man who had shown himself so
resolute and capable an opponent of their commercial system. Raffles
himself writes from Bencoolen in July, 1820, "After all, it is not
impossible the ministry may be weak enough to abandon Singapore, and to
sacrifice me, honour, and the Eastern Archipelago to the outrageous
pretensions of the Dutch." Fortunately he had powerful friends, and he
was not immediately recalled. Meanwhile he continued to hold the
settlement on his personal responsibility against the efforts of both
the British and Dutch East India Governments. In eighteen months it had
grown from an insignificant fishing village to a port with a population
of 10,000 inhabitants. During the first two and a half years of its
existence Singapore was visited by as many as 2889 vessels, with an
aggregate burden of 161,515 tons. The total value of its exports and
imports for the year 1822 amounted to no less than 8,568,172
dollars.[33]

[Footnote 33: The Mexican dollar, which varies in value, but is
worth about four shillings.]

Raffles returned to Singapore on the 10th of October, 1822, on his way
to England. He remained in the settlement for nine months, and during
this time employed himself in laying-out the city, and in drawing up
rules and regulations for the government of its people. In one of his
letters he expresses a hope "that, though Singapore may be the first
capital established in the nineteenth century, it will not disgrace the
brightest period of it."

The position of Raffles in respect to Singapore was indeed remarkable.
Though a servant of the company for five years, he was personally
responsible for the administration of the settlement, and neither the
Bengal Government nor the Court of Directors in London would relieve
him. In the report which he sent to the Ben