Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/98

86 threw the Eastern possessions of the Dutch as fruits of conquest into the hands of the English.

Raffles encouraged missionary work, and in 1821 endeavored to suppress slavery in the island of Pulo Nias. The circumstances attending this traffic were no less revolting than those that marked it on the coast of Africa. But the East India Company was an association of traders, and prudently repressed whatever sentiments its members may have held on the subject of slavery. The Court of Directors disapproved of Raffles's acts, and went so far as to assert officially that his proceedings were deserving of their reprehension. He always insisted that it was folly to assume that the exposure of the evils of the slave-system in any way affected the Company. However, he came near being dismissed from the service, and in a little while after the transfer of the islands to the Dutch the slave trade was resumed with greater vigor than ever. I mention this circumstance in order to show how differently Raffles interpreted his duties from those of a mere agent of a trading company. He held science, literature, and practical benevolence as primary motives to action.

But, by the redistribution of lands agreed on at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Java ("another India!" cries a despairing critic) was returned to the Dutch; and the Raffles administration (and to a great extent the reforms he established), after a brilliant term of five years, came to an end.

After his recall from Java, he visited England. The Prince Regent showed his appreciation as opposed to that of the East India Company by knighting Raffles, and in a short time thereafter appointing him Lieutenant-Governor of Sumatra.

Any sketch of Raffles would be incomplete that did not include an account of his domestic life. He married in 1805, but lost his wife in 1815. He remarried in 1816. Lady Raffles, in 1830, wrote a life of her husband in the form of a large quarto of exactly eight hundred and twenty-three pages. Judged by the standard of the taste of to-day, such an achievement defeats in great measure its own object, though it must be said in behalf of the author that she intended the volume to be a defense of her husband's services, and the records of his private life are subordinated.