tages of alliance, yet not sacrificing their nationality. Several causes have retarded their spread hitherto: the regions enumerated have mostly been too insecure for an industrial people to flourish in, until the British or the Dutch established order; the government of China has hitherto discouraged emigration; English administrations have been obliged to be rather wary in their dealings with a people who showed at Sarawak and Penang that they were capable of combining for purposes of massacre;[1] and the Chinese superstition about burial in the sacred soil of the Celestial Empire made the great majority of the emigrants birds of passage. All these causes are disappearing. Malay piracy is becoming a thing of the past; the policy of China is being modified; and it can hardly be supposed that the regard for a family burial-place will long continue to keep millions of not very imaginative men from making their homes in the countries in which their labour will be most valuable. Lastly, it is more than conceivable that some of these countries will pass under Chinese rule. The alternatives are that they should be left under foreign protectorates, as at present, till Malays and Dyaks have increased in the same proportion as the Javanese, or that they should be peopled by emigrants from Europe.
Now, the former of these is the only imaginable alternative to Chinese settlement. Europeans cannot flourish under the Tropics, and will not work with the hand where an inferior race works. What we have to consider, therefore, is the probability that the natives
- ↑ Mr. Thompson points out that the Chinese guilds are not only a menace to political administration, but are apt to make war with one another.—Malacca, Indo-China, and China, p. 15.
parvenus a confectionner des femmes parfaitement semblables à celles de Fokien, et de Kuan Tong."—Yvan: De France en Chine, p. 237.
