luded among the list of
Borneo products in a recent geographical work. It is evident that the
system of farming out this monopoly has a tendency to limit the
consumption of the drug, as, owing to the heavy rental paid to the
Government, the retail price of the article to the consumer is very much
enhanced.

Were the monopoly abolished, it would be impossible for the Government
efficiently to check the contraband importation of so easily smuggled an
article as prepared opium, or _chandu_, and by lowering the price the
consumption would be increased.

The use of the drug is almost entirely confined to the Chinese portion
of the population. A poll-tax, customs and excise duties, mining
royalties and fines and fees make up the rest of the revenue, which in
1884 amounted to $237,752 and in 1885 to $315,264. The expenditure for
the same years is given by Vice-Consul CADELL as $234,161 and $321,264,
respectively. In the early days of Sarawak, it was a very serious
problem to find the money to pay the expenses of a most economical
Government. Sir JAMES BROOKE sunk all his own fortune--L30,000--in the
country, and took so gloomy a view of the financial prospects of his
kingdom that, on the refusal of England to annex it, he offered it first
to France and then to Holland. Fortunately these offers were never
carried into effect, and, with the assistance of the Borneo Company (not
to be confused with the British North Borneo Company), who acquired the
concession of the right to work the minerals in Sarawak, bad times were
tided over, and, by patient perseverance, the finances of the State have
been brought to their present satisfactory condition. What the amount of
the national public debt is, I am not in a position to say, but, like
all other countries aspiring to be civilized, it possesses a small one.
The improvement in the financial position was undoubtedly chiefly due to
the influx of Chinese, especially of gambier and pepper planters, who
were attracted by liberal concessions of land and monetary assistance in
the first instance from the Government. The present Raja has himself
said that "without the Chinese we can do nothing," and we have only to
turn to the British possession in the far East--the Straits Settlements,
the Malay Peninsula, and Hongkong--to see that this is the case. For
instance, the revenue of the Straits Settlements in 1887 was $3,847,475,
of which the opium farm alone--that is a tax practically speaking b