J
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
mimuilm TPTNC.O. 882
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
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to the writ, and the issues are fixed for trial on the *- 21st of this month.
The principal legal grounds of this proceeding, so far as alleged by Sir James Brooke in documents accessible here, seem to be:
1. The alleged fraud in the constitution of the Company, mentioned in the beginning of this paper.
2. That all the capital required was not paid up. His memorial to the then Attorney-General, on which the writ issued, states the more public, reasons as follows:
To the Right Honourable Sir Alexander Cockburn, Her Majesty's Attorney-General.
The Memorial of Sir James Brooke, Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Bath,
Respectfully Showeth,
That the grounds on which the Charter of Incorpora- tion of the Eastern Archipelago Company is sought to be repealed are: that the representations made to Her Majesty's Government on the faith of which the said Charter was granted, were false representations; and also that the subsequent conditions, on the due performance whereof the efficiency, stability, and success of the Com- pany depended, have never been performed.
That the draft writ of actre facias left at the office of Her Majesty's Attorney-General discloses the fatal legal objections to the existence of the Charter in detail.
That the correspondence between Mr. Shaw-Lefevre and the Chamber of Commerce, in March, one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, conclusively shows that the granting of the Charter was considered at the time as an injury to every private merchant trading to those parts; that no individual trader could enter into the field in opposition to the monopoly granted to the Company.
And your memorialist further shows, that Messrs. Henderson and Company, the large and influential mer- chants of Mincing Lane, London, declare that they are damnified, by being prevented at present from working the coal-mines in Labuan and the mainland of Borneo, by reason of the position and the exclusive rights and privileges which are held by the Eastern Archipelago Company.
And your memorialist hereby further declares, from his own personal knowledge of the locality, that from the insufficiency of the Company, an important branch of trade continues undeveloped, to the detriment of British commerce, and to the injury of the native inhabitants of the country.
That had the Eastern Archipelago Company complied with the conditions of the Charter, the great public objects
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thereby expressed might have been carried out, but that the management of the Company has virtually and prac- tically excluded competent persons from carrying out the views of Her Majesty's Government, and has closed the field to private enterprise.
That as the influence of your memorialist in the Archi- pelago mainly led to the charter being granted, he feels himself called upon to take the legal measures to vanate the charter, and to do away with a Company which occupies the ground it cannot work; and thus to lead the way either to a fresh charter being granted to parties who are able and willing to carry out the public objects for which the charter of the Eastern Archipelago Company was granted, or to throw the field open to the private exertions of individual enterprise.
J. BROOKE.
Colonial Office,
June 14, 1852,