opulated by native races who
had, under Hindu and Arab influences, made considerable advances in
civilization, in trade and in agriculture, and who, moreover, had been
accustomed to a strong Government.

The Dutch, too, were in those days able to introduce a Government of a
paternal and despotic character which the British North Borneo Company
are, by the terms of the Royal Charter, precluded from imitating.

It was Sir JAMES BROOKE'S wish to keep Sarawak for the natives, but his
successor has recognised the impolicy of so doing and admits that
"without the Chinese we can do nothing." Experience in the Straits
Settlements, the Malay Peninsula and Sarawak has shewn that the people
to cause rapid financial progress in Malayan countries are the
hard-working, money-loving Chinese, and these are the people whom the
Company should lay themselves out to attract to Borneo, as I have more
than once pointed out in the course of these remarks. It matters not
what it is that attracts them to the country, whether trade, as in
Singapore, agriculture, as in Johor and Sarawak, or mining as in Perak
and other of the Protected Native States of the Peninsula--once get them
to voluntarily immigrate, and govern them with firmness and justice, and
the financial success of the Company would, in my opinion, be assured.
The inducements for the Chinese to come to North Borneo are trade,
agriculture and possibly mining. The bulk of those already in the
country are traders, shop-keepers, artisans and the coolies employed by
them, and the numbers introduced by the European tobacco planters for
the cultivation of their estates, under the system already explained, is
yearly increasing. Very few are as yet engaged in agriculture on their
own account, and it must be confessed that the luxuriant tropical jungle
presents considerable difficulties to an agriculturist from China,
accustomed to a country devoid of forest, and it would be impossible for
Chinese peasants to open land in Borneo for themselves without monetary
assistance, in the first instance, from the Government or from
capitalists. In Sarawak Chinese pepper planters were attracted by free
passages in Government ships and by loans of money, amounting to a
considerable total, nearly all of which have since been repaid, while
the revenues of the State have been almost doubled. The British North
Borneo Company early recognised the desirability of encouraging Chinese
immigration, but set to work