Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra23241891roya).pdf/203

 AN OLD MINUTE BY SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES.

HE following interesting record was recently found amongst some old documents in the Singapore Treasury. It is signed by Sir STAMFORD RAFFLES, and the concluding portion of the minute as well as the final signature are in the handwriting of that officer. The date is June, 1823, still legible as when it was written, but the day of the date has been eaten out of the paper.

The Proclamation and the Minute which follows it may accordingly be accepted as one of the first official utterances of the founder of Singapore, after the transfer of the island from the Government of Bencoolen to that of Bengal some three years before its amalgamation with Penang and Malacca.

Apart from its intrinsic value as a state paper, this document is interesting when we compare and contrast the present state of our laws with the provisions there indicated and foreshadowed nearly seventy years ago.

As the Minute is reprinted in extenso, I need only draw the reader's special attention to the author's views upon gambling, prostitution, registration of deeds, adulteration, the sanctity of oaths, and municipal regulation, amongst many other points touched upon. The doctrine of the liability of publicans may raise a smile, but it is a theory which still finds support amongst the apostles of temperance in England, where the legal sanction of the publican's errors lies only in the hands of the exponents of the licensing laws.