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the Report of the Court of Inquiry and the correspondence relating to it. There has been a controversy between the Colonial Office and Sir W. Jervois as to the cause of the outbreak against Mr. Birch. The Colonial Office has thought it right to attribute the murder of Mr. Birch to the change of policy introduced by Sir W. Jervois. In my opinion it was unpremeditated; it arose iminediately out of the imprudent act of the interpreter striking a Malay; at the same time I do not believe that act would have had the fatal result which immediately followed if a store of hatred and ill-feeling had not accumulated in the minds of the Malays. I find a witness saying that when the affair took place the Maharajah Lelah, the chief of the village where it occurred, shouted from the steps of his house, This is not the will of the Rajah or his order, it is our will, because we cannot stand it any longer. Others houses have been burned, and where are we to go to if our houses are burned too? It is better that we should die at once! This allusion to burning is cleared up by a letter from a writer on the spot, which appeared in "The Times of 25th December, which says:— He (Mr. Birch) had
made many enemies among the small chiefs of Perak.
The chiefs are a bad lot, and on several occasions he had to resort to strong measures, such as burning the houses of refractory headmen, by way of example." So that while the Colonial Office fancied that the Resident was acting by advice, he was advising by burning. But as the noble Earl wrote to Sir W. Jervois, 8th April 1875," that he had been unable to satisfy himself that they (the Residents then in office) will possess the special qualifications which are absolutely required," and left to Sir W. Jervois an opportunity of considering the whole subject, Sir W. Jervois, and not the Secretary of State, must bear the responsibility of having left Mr. Birch in a position for which he was unfitted. I think I have now shown that there has been on the part of the Colonial Department dilatoriness, neglect in watching over the conduct of the Residents, and the selection of them, and a habit of leaving the officials to do very much as they thought fit, in short, a want of attention and due diligence at a critical time, and the consequence has been loss of life and expenditure, and that the whole Malay Peninsula has been set in a blaze, and the inhabitants, many of whom have been driven from their homes, have been made hostile to us; and we must either retrace our steps to non-intervention, or assume the responsibility and the cost of securing proper government for the people we have now deprived of their independence. I wish to make a few observations on the future policy of this country with regard to the Malay Peninsula. There are said to be three courses which might be pursued, namely letting it alone without intermeddling meddling with Residents and annexation. I adhere to the opinion which I have already expressed in favour of the first course, because our empire is overgrown, and enlarging it in the Malay Peninsula will entai! much expense on this country, only for the benefit of the Chinese and a few merchants and officials in Singapore. But as it is now perhaps useless to put forward that view except with regard to Sunghie Ujong, with respect to which the Secretary of State seems to be of the same opinion as myself, I will only consider the other two alternatives. That of Residents must, however, be divided into several shades. I am glad to find that the noble Earl states that the plan of Sir W. Jervois of governing by British officials in the name of the Sultan is only aunexa- tion under another name; in fact, it might be called bypocritical or dishonest annexation, if there was such a thing as honest annexation. Experience has shown that Sir Andrew Clarke's method ended in the same result as that of Sir W. Jervois. There remains the plan which the noble Earl intends to carry out, and which he says he originally intended. I heartily wish he may succeed, and secure to the Malays that prosperity and good treat- ment which they have a right to expect from this country, which has interfered with them only by the right of might. And here I should state that I am convinced of the rectitude of the intentions of the noble Earl; I am only complaining of his dilatoriness, or inability to carry them out. But in order to succeed it will be necessary for the noble Earl to appoint a higher class of men than those that have been hitherto employed; they must be directly responsible to himself, and be independent of the Singapore Council, and indifferent to the favour of the Singapore press and mercantile body. Not only should copies of all letters from the Government to the Residents be sent home, so that the Secretary of State may not again have to complain, as he has lately done, that Sir A. Clarke's instructions to the Residents had never come under his Colonial Office might do well to adopt the plan of the Foreign Office by instructing but the eye, the Residents to send their despatches to the Colonial Office under flying seal to the Governor of the Straits, in the same way as some of Her Majesty's Envoys send their despatches to the Foreign Secretary under flying seal to the Embassies at Paris and elsewhere. But if the Colonial Department should not make a very careful selection of
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officials for the Malay Peninsula, and exercise a severe control over them, further troubles, bloodshed, and expenditure may be expected. And if the choice lay between annexation and administration of Malay States by dictatorial Residents, I should certainly prefer annexation, since in that case the Malays would at least obtain the protection of British law. Sir W. Jervois very candidly wrote, on 16th October 1875, By ruling in the name of the Sultan, the form of Government will be more adapted to the conditions of the case, and will enable us to do deal easily with matters that might be difficult of solution under English law." I will ask leave to read an extract from a letter from a gentleman well acquainted with Singapore, written in March last:-" You will be rather astonished to find that the Singapore people (British) are opposed to annexation, and in favour of a protectorate. This is, however, easily explained. In the former case the Malays and their land will be subject to British laws. In the latter the will of the Governor or Commissioner will be the law, and grants of land and other advantages can be easily made over to Europeans, "the ultimate end being that all the good land will be in their hands before long. For this reason, as also because I believe the Malays will have a much fairer chance under British law, I am decidedly in favour of annexation. There is nothing between this and leaving them alone. In any case you had better inquire into this land question, as I hear that some large grants have already been given. Britishers seem to think "that if enough rice land is left for feeding Malays that is all that is required." I hope the noble Earl will make inquiry as to those grants of land. The Blue Books contain no reference whatever to the burning of houses and plunder and sale by auction of the plough cattle in the country adjoining Sunghie Ujong. The noble Earl spoke of the reports of these proceedings as
scraps of
newspapers," but I find from the Barbadoes news- papers that he does not attach an invidious sense to that word, since he spoke of “ of official despatches " to a deputation of planters; but from the doubts expressed by scraps the Secretary of State in his despatch of June 1st as to a foreign element in the force to be employed for the Residents he would appear to have some misgivings as to Sikh, Arab, or other levies, for he could not mean Her Majesty's European regiments. And as it is essential that proceedings such as those of the Arab force under M. Fontaine should not recur again, I will ask your Lordships indulgence for a few moments longer to prove by Christian law and theology that these men were brigands, and as far as concerns the men themselves, Mussulman law is identical with Christian law, only that is rather more precisely declared. Let us suppose that this expedition was French, and had invaded Siam from Cochin China, and that instead of this Arab force there was one composed of Germans. We should all say that they were mercenary cut-throats. If they had been Englishmen we should say in addition, that they had violated the Foreign Enlistment Act. Now the Foreign Enlistment Acts were not passed merely to retain Englishmen for the King's service, but in obedience to the law of nations. Two Acts were passed in the reign of George II., but the Act of 1819 is the earliest of which there is any Parliamentary history, and I find in it that the Earl of Harrowby used arguments in favour of the Bill founded on Grotius, Vattel, and Puffendorf, and that the Earl of Carnarvon said that he (Lord Harrowby) "had marshalled all the Dutch and German jurists in his ranks, and had turned all the scraps and quotations which could be taken from them to the very best use to which ingenuity could turn them." Now I have not selected this extract from that debate in order to show the hereditary origin of the use of the word scraps by my noble friend but in order to bar his making light of Grotius and other jurists, because he will not now willingly plagiarise his ancestor. Well, Grotius
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did not invent or originate the law that he lays down; he only follows the teaching of the old Catholic Catechisms respecting the Sixth Commandment, and he quotes St. Augustine as saying that it is not a sin to bear arms, but a sin to serve for plunder., But if Catholic Catechisms are not considered as carrying weight, what was the doctrine and practice of the early Christians ? In the year 286 the Roman Emperor brought the Theban legiou, which was composed of Christians, into Switzerland, where they were ordered to attack and exterminate the Bagaude, a Swiss tribe, an expedition similar to that of Sunghie Ujong. This they refused to do, as it was an unlawful order; the legion was decimated, but as it persisted in its refusal, the whole of it was massacred, without resistance on its part, with its commander St. Maurice, who left his name to the town near the Lake of Geneva, where this massacre happened. Mr. Fontaine's Arabs were not British subjects, and by their own law were strictly prohibited from taking part in such an expedition, and became brigands, and if they killed any one, murderers. And if those who offer bribes are as guilty of bribery as those who take bribes, what is to be inferred of those who enrol brigands or sanction such enrolment ? I have now the honour to move the Resolution of which I have given notice. I do not know whether
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