possible for a European to spend weeks in either of these States without coming
into contact with any Asiatics save those who wait at table, wash his shirts, or
drive his cab. It is also possible, I am told, for a European to spend years on the
West Coast of the Peninsula without acquiring any very profound knowledge of
the natives of the country, or of the language which is their speech-medium. This
being so, most of the white men who live in the Protected Native States are
somewhat apt to disregard the effect which their actions have upon the natives,
and labour under the common European inability to view matters from the native
standpoint. Moreover, we have become accustomed to existing conditions, and
thus it is that few, perhaps, realise the precise nature of the work which the
British in the Peninsula have set themselves to accomplish. What we are really
attempting, however, is nothing less than to crush into twenty years the
revolutions in facts and in ideas which, even in energetic Europe, six long
centuries have been needed to accomplish. No one will, of course, be found to
dispute that the strides made in our knowledge of the art of government, since
the Thirteenth Century, are prodigious and vast, nor that the general condition of
the people of Europe has been immensely improved since that day; but,
nevertheless, one cannot but sympathise with the Malays, who are suddenly and
violently translated from the point to which they had attained in the natural
development of their race, and are required to live up to the standards of a people
who are six centuries in advance of them in national progress. If a plant is made
to blossom or bear fruit three months before its time, it is regarded as a triumph
of the gardener's art; but what, then, are we to say of this huge moral-forcing
system which we call 'Protection'? Forced plants, we know, suffer in the process;
and the Malay, whose proper place is amidst the conditions of the Thirteenth
Century, is apt to become morally week and seedy, and to lose something of his
robust self-respect, when he is forced to bear Nineteenth-Century fruit.
Until the British Government interfered in the administration of the Malay States
in 1874, the people of the Peninsula were, to all intents and purposes, living in
the Middle Ages. Each State was ruled by its own Sultân or Râja under a
complete Feudal System, which presents a curiously close parallel to that which
was in force in Mediæval Europe. The Râja was, of course, the paramount
authority, and all power emanated from him. Technically, the whole country was
his property, and all its inhabitants his slaves; but each State was divided into
districts which were held in fief by the Ôrang Bĕsar, or Great Chiefs. The
conditions on which these fiefs were held, were homage, and military and other
service. The Officers were hereditary, but succession was subject to the sanction
of the Râja, who personally invested and ennobled each Chief, and gave him, as