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 and often their parents as well, were carried off as slaves. Brooke substituted for the forced trade a simple system of taxation in kind, and did what he could to abolish interference with the personal liberty of the people. He administered justice himself, with the aid of some of the chief persons of the country; his court, which was a long room in his own house, being essentially an open one, while he was accessible to any one who wished to see him at nearly all hours of the day. By the Dayáks he was speedily regarded with sentiments of reverence and affection. Their favourite saying was: 'The son of Europe is the friend of the Dayák.' In the earlier years of his residence at Saráwak Brooke was almost alone. His followers were a coloured interpreter from Malacca, useful, but not very trustworthy; a servant who could neither read nor write; a shipwrecked Irishman, brave, but not otherwise useful; and a doctor who never learnt the language of the country.

The suppression of piracy in the Malayan Archipelago does not appear to have been among Brooke's first objects, but it formed one of the main achievements of his useful life. In Borneo piracy had been the common pursuit of the tribes along the coast from time immemorial. It was resorted to in Borneo, not only for purposes of plunder, but for the possession of human heads, for which there was a passion among the Dayáks and among many of the tribes in the archipelago. Brooke had become aware of the practice at an early period of his residence in Saráwak, and had done what he could to impress the chief people of the country with its enormity; but it was not until 1843 that he was in a position to take an active part in its suppression. Early in that year he made the acquaintance, at Singapore, of Captain the Hon. Henry Keppel (now (1886) Admiral the Hon. Sir Henry Keppel, G.C.B.), then commanding H.M.S. Dido, with whom he speedily contracted a mutual and lasting friendship. Returning to Saráwak in the Dido, in company with Keppel, he joined in an expedition against the most formidable of the piratical hordes, the Malays and Dayáks of the Seribas river, taking with him as a contingent a number of war-boats manned by natives of Saráwak. The expedition was extremely successful. The pirates were attacked in their strongholds on the banks of the river by the boats of the Dido and the Saráwak war-boats, and compelled to undertake to abandon piracy. In the following year he was again associated with Keppel in an attack upon the pirates of the Sakarran river, which, though inflicting heavy loss upon the pirates, was attended with severe fighting and some loss to the assailants. Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Captain Rodney Mundy, Captain Grey, and Captain Farquhar were all at different times employed in conjunction with Brooke in operations against the pirates. The last of these operations, which took place in 1849, and dealt a crushing blow to piracy in that part of the Bornean seas, was made the ground of a series of charges of cruel and illegal conduct, preferred against Brooke in the House of Commons by Mr. Hume, and supported by Mr. Cobden, and in some degree by Mr. Gladstone, who, while eulogising Brooke's character, voted for an inquiry into the charges, on the ground that the work of destruction had been promiscuous, and to some extent illegal. The motion for inquiry was discountenanced by the government of the day, that of Lord John Russell, and was rejected by a large majority of the house, Lord Palmerston declaring that Brooke 'retired from the investigation with untarnished character and unblemished honour.' The attacks, however, being continued, the government of Lord Aberdeen subsequently granted a commission of inquiry, which sat at Singapore, but failed to establish any of the charges of inhumanity or illegality which had been made against Brooke.

In 1847 Brooke revisited England, where he met with a most gratifying reception. He was invited by the queen to Windsor, and was treated with great consideration by the leading statesmen of the day, as well as by various public bodies. London conferred upon him the freedom of the city, and Oxford the honorary degree of D.C.L. In connection with his visit to Windsor, it is related that the queen, having inquired how he found it so easy to manage so many thousands of wild Borneans, Brooke replied: 'I find it easier to govern thirty thousand Malays and Dayáks than to manage a dozen of your majesty's subjects.' On his return to Borneo he was appointed British commissioner and consul-general in that island, as well as governor of Labuan, which the sultan of Brunei had ceded to the British crown. He was also created a K.C.B.

The commission of inquiry not only caused Brooke very great annoyance, but for a time introduced some embarrassment into his relations with the natives under his rule, who not unnaturally conceived the impression that he had forfeited the favour of his own government. The incident is also generally regarded as having, in combination with other circumstances, had some connection with a very serious outbreak on the part of the Chinese immigrants into Saráwak, in which