Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof192018871889roya).pdf/334

conviction of doing right which nothing can shake. I see the benefits I am conferring. The oppressed, the wretched, the outlawed have found in me their only protector. They now hope and trust; and they shall not be disappointed while I have life to uphold them. God has so far used me as a humble instrument of his hidden Providence; and whatever be the result, whatever my fate, I know the example will not be thrown away. I know it tends to a good end in His own time. He can open a path for me through all difficulties, raise me up friends who will share with me in the task, awaken the energies of the great and powerful, so that they may protect this unhappy people. I trust it may be so: but if God wills otherwise; if the time be not yet arrived; if it be the Almighty's will that the flickering taper shall be extinguished ere it be replaced by a steady beacon, I submit, in the firm and humble assurance that His ways are better than my ways, and that the term of my life is better in His hands than in my own." On the 1st August, 1842, this cession of Sarawak to Mr. Brooke was confirmed by His Highness Sultan Omar Ali Saifudin, under the Great Seal. Muda Hassim was the uncle of the Sultan, who was a sovereign of weak, vacillating disposition, at one time guided by the advice of his uncle, who was the leader of the "English party," and expressing his desire for the Queen's assistance to put down piracy and disorder and offering, in return, to cede to the British the island of Labuan; at another following his own natural inclinations and siding altogether with the party of disorder, who were resolved to maintain affairs as they were in the "good old times," knowing that when the reign of law and order should be established their day and their power and ability to aggrandize and enrich themselves at the expense of the aborigines and the common people would come to an end. There is no doubt that Mr. Brooke himself considered it would be for the good of the country that Muda Hassim should be raised to the throne and the Sultan certainly entertained a not altogether ill-founded dread that it was intended to depose him in the latter's favour, the more so as a large majority of the Brunai people were known to be in his