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high and important station of Lieutenant Governor of Java, as an acknowledgment of those services, and in consideration of his peculiar fitness for that office."

Mr. Raffles took charge of this Government on the 11th Sept. 1811, and held it till the 15th March 1816.

As the limits of the present memoir will not admit of a minute examination or detail of all the measures of his administration on this island, it must suffice to notice some of its more prominent features, by which it will be apparent that few men have evinced greater energy of character, or have displayed a larger share of benevolence in the performance of the duties of so elevated a station, or have better deserved that popularity which was the reward of his public life.

Having formed some considerable acquaintance with the people who were entrusted to his care, he commenced a revision of the judicial system of the colony. This undertaking afforded much scope for the exercise of his active and enlightened genius, and was pursued with considerable success. So early as the year 1814, he had matured, and he then made public, a clear and simple code of Laws or Regulations for the general administration of justice among the Javanese, whereby he effected several essential reforms, as well in the European courts of justice, as in the magistracy established at Batavia, Samarang, and Sourabaya. He fully succeeded in revising and modifying the practice of the former courts on the mild and just principles of the British constitution; and finally introduced into the colony that palladium of English liberty, the trial by jury.

Among the several laws and regulations which were established during the government of Mr. Raffles in Java, the act of the British Parliament, declaring the

slave trade to be a felony, was made a colonial law.

A general registry of slaves was also introduced, and other measures adopted, with the concurrence of the principal inhabitants, which contemplated the final extinction of slavery on the island: and when called upon to resign the government, foreseeing that this object would be for a time defeated, by the restoration of the colony to the King of the Netherlands, and in the hope of interesting his successors in its final accomplishment, he established a voluntary society of persons friendly to the measure, which he designated the "Java Benevolent Society."

With a view to the revenue and commercial administration of Java, he first explored, with almost unequalled diligence and sagacity, the natural resources of the island, and then encouraged the greatest freedom of commercial intercourse between that colony and all foreign states. He formed three dependant residencies; one on each of the islands of Borneo and Banca, and one in Japan. This was done with a view to promote a traffic in the valuable minerals which are the staple articles of those settlements; the great importance of which he first ascertained by employing able mineralogists to examine and report upon them, and then encouraged the resort of Chinese labourers to work the mines.

The Literary and Scientific Society of Java, also owes its existence to Mr. Raffles, who presided over it from its institution till he quitted the colony.

It ought not to occasion much surprise, that in some of his measures this distinguished individual was opposed during their progress by his immediate contemporaries, and that a few of them should have been considered as of doubtful palicy by his superiors. Those who will be at the pains to reflect upou the deranged state of the affairs of

the colony, when he was appointed to the government of it, its geographical expanse, and the extent of the powers and the large discretion with which it was found necessary to invest him, as well as the depraved character of the native governments in his vicinity, will rather feel surprized that his measures should have been in general so unexceptionable and successful. In addition to the ordinary obstacles in the way of a prosperous colonial administration, his youth exposed him to an unusual share of jealous competition, and he had the mortification to find some of those to whom he looked for approbation and support, but too accessible to hostile influence. In these trying circumstances he appears, during the remainder of the life of Lord Minto, to have reposed, with unshaken confidence, on the friendship and patronage of that nobleman, who, on quitting Bengal in October 1813, gave him the strongest assurances of undiminished confidence, a confidence, his Lordship declared, which had been greatly enhanced by the eminent success of his administration, and by the display which it had afforded of such qualifications as could alone command success.

In his official communications, Mr. Raffles appears to have been frank and undisguised. While he held the situation of Lieutenant Governor of Java, he avowed that his object in all his measures was, in connection with commercial advantage to his country, to effect a change in the habits of life, and to improve the moral character and condition of the piratical inhabitants of the Eastern Islands. The candid avowal of these views, obtained for him the approval and commendation even of those who questioned the policy of his proceedings. It was acknowleged that to extend the blessings of civilization and regular government to a people whose moral and political

condition was so little advanced as that of the inhabitants of the Eastern Islands, was an object worthy of the contemplation of the most enlightened statesman.

During his residence in Java, Mr. R. lost his first wife, and his health having materially suffered from domestic affliction and public duties, he was induced to visit England, and having therefore resigned, in March 1816, the government to Mr. Findall, he embarked with Ráden Ráná Dipúra, a Javanese prince, and his suite, on board a ship freighted with a splendid and extensive collection of the natural productions and works of art, found in the Eastern Archipelago.

Touching at St. Helena, he visted Longwood, and was much interested with the amiable manners of Madame Bertrand. He was affected by a survey of the miserable hovel in which she then resided, and still more, as looking round the wretched apartment, she shrugged up her shoulders, and said, "Ah! Monsieur, voici les Thuileries!" On his arrival in England, he gave his earliest attention to the arrangement of the materials, which he had collected with much labour and scientific zeal, for the history of Java, which he soon published in two volumes quarto, and which is a fair and imperishable monument of his literary fame.

He was gratified by seeing that his services were generally appreciated by all classes of Society, and when he presented to his present Majesty a copy of his History, that noble patron of literature and art conferred on him the honour of knighthood.

During the summer of 1817, he found leisure to visit Paris, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, in company with a party, of which his affectionate cousin, the Rev. Dr. Raffles, was a member, who has given to the public

the details of their agreeable tour in a volume of letters of no ordinary interest.

Amongst other marks of attention which Sir Stamford received while on the Continent, was the audience he had with the King of the Netherlands, with whom afterwards he was honoured to dine.

The appointment of Sir T. S. Raffles to the Residency of Fort Marlbro' or Bencoolen, the seat of the English Government on the Island of Sumatra, was confirmed in October, 1817, and he therefore returned to India in the following month, with the designation of Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlboro', a title conferred on him by the Court of Directors as a special mark of their favour.

On the 22d March, 1818, he arrived at Bencoolen, and took charge of his Government.

It is well known that this Residency was one of the East India Company's earliest possessions, and having been formed on the bad principles which prevailed at the time when the Company first took possession of it, was for more than a century cursed with all the abominations which attend the system of colonial slavery. Its population during that period consisted of a few demoralized Europeans, a small number of half-domesticated Malays, and a considerable body of native African slaves, called Caffres, whose wasting numbers were from time to time recruited by the importation of fresh victims, obtained at an enormous expense. Of the latter description of persons the Company possessed a considerable establishment, and all the Europeans resident in the settlement were of course accustomed to the anomalous luxury of slaveservice and property in human flesh.

The whole history of this settlement, if correctly written, would give an instructive view of the misery, folly, and commercial dis

appointment which are the concomitants of this system. It is beyond all question that for many years Bencoolen afforded to its possessors no commercial advantage; on the contrary, by a reference to the annual Parliamentary statements of the East India Company's affairs, it will appear that for the forty years last past, it entailed upon them an annual loss, amounting frequently to more than one hundred thousand pounds.

Yet it must be acknowledged that the spirit of enterprise was not backward to suggest plans, nor that of speculation to essay means, by which it was presumed the colony might eventually be rendered productive to its owners; but as the execution of all these plans rested on compulsory unre munerated labour, and property in the persons of men, the uniform result was disappointment, failure, and loss of capital.

When Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles first took charge of this government, he found the settlement in the utmost poverty and wretchedness; for religious worship, or for the administration of justice, scarcely any provision existed, and education almost to-. tally disregarded on the other hand, gaming and cock-fighting, not only permitted, but publicly patronised by the Government. There was, in fact, neither security for person or property to be found. Murders were daily committed, and robberies perpetrated, which were never traced, nor indeed attempted to be traced; and profligacy and and immorality obtruded themselves every where. In addition to these disgusting features, the oppression and debauchery which naturally spring from the system of slavery, and are peculiar to it, filled up the frightful picture of misrule, which this new connection presented to its Lieutenant-Governor on his arrival. Not only were his prospects cheer

less and discouraging in the respects already mentioned, but he had to associate with, and seek co-operation from, men who had long acted under this system, so diametrically opposed to his own views, and who might therefore be reasonably supposed disinclined, through habit, to acquiesce in the changes which it would be his wish to introduce.

Entering on his career of public duty at Bencoolen under such inauspicious circumstances, he nevertheless formed with coolness, and pursued with steadiness and perseverance, his plans of reform. He appears to have given his earliest attention to the subject of forced service and slavery. Of the former, he traced the history with great accuracy: the Malay law stipulated, it appeared, that after the decease of a debtor, his children, in the first instance, and, after their death, the village to which he belonged, should be still liable for the debt. Thus not only the original contractors were rendered slave-debtors, as they are termed, but their offspring, and eventually the people in general, were reduced to the same hapless state. Under the plea of recovering debts, and considering the people as debtors, they were pelled to work; and as the colony,

in

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fact, contained no equitable court for the impartial adjudication of all the numberless questions which would constantly arise between debtor and creditor, the system in its operation became one of lawless violence and oppression on the one hand, and of constantly recurring, though but too frequently hopeless, resistance on the

the East India Company: that mode of keeping up or augmenting their number having of course been discontinued, in obedience to the act of the British legislature which abolished the slave trade. The Caffres had been considered as indispensable for the duties of the place; they were employed in loading and unloading the Company's ships, and other hard work, for which free labourers might have been engaged with great advantage to the employer. No care was taken of the morals of the Caffres; in consequence of which most of them were dissolute and depraved, the women living in promiscuous intercourse with the public convicts. This, it was stated, was permitted for the purpose of population; but the children, in the few cases where children were produced, were left to a state of nature, vice, and wretchedness; and the whole establishment had for many years been on the decline, both as it respects numbers and efficiency.

Yet there were not wanting persons in Bencoolen, as in England, who eulogized this system as the perfection of human policy, and asserted that the Company's Caffres were happier than free men. Such were not the views of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who, fully convinced of the contrary, caused the whole of the Company's slaves to be brought before the first assembly of the native chiefs of Sumatra that took place after his arrival; and after explaining to them the principles and views of the British Government with regard to the abolition of slavery generally, he gave to each of the slaves a certificate of freedom. To the old and infirm, small stipends were also allotted for subsistence during the remainder of their lives. This measure made a considerable impression at the time, and promised to be followed by the most favourable results. Indeed, Sir