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Isabella L. Bird - The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither
instrument in unscrupulous hands - how to free the debtors from their bondage, the women from lives of
forced prostitution, the unoffending population from the robberies and murderous freaks of Rajahs and
their bondsmen.*
[*Some of these remarks apply specially to Selangor, in which State slavery is now abolished. I. L. B.]
In Perak it is different; the debtor-bondage is one of the chief customs - one of the "pillars of the State" -
an abuse jealously guarded by the Perak Rajahs and Chiefs, and especially by those who make the worst
uses of it.
I have often discussed this question of debt-slavery with the Malays themselves, but they say they see no
way under the rule of their Rajahs to put down this curse of their country, with all the evils that follow in
its train. I have, etc.
(Signed) Frank A. Swettenham, (Now Asst. Colonial Secretary at Singapore.)
The Honorable the Secretary for Native States, Singapore, Straits Settlements.
APPENDIX C
No. I
From H.B.M.'s Resident, Perak, to Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements Residency, Kwala Kansa,
December 14, 1878.
Sir - In reference to your letter of the 28th June last, directing, by command of His Excellency the
Governor, my particular attention to the plan adopted in Selangor for the extinction of the claims against
slave-debtors, by a valuation of their services to their creditors according to a fixed scale, and directing
me to consider to His Excellency with a view to its being afterward submitted for the consideration of the
Council of State:
1. I have the honor to state in reply that a copy of that letter and its inclosure was supplied to the
Assistant Resident of Perak, and its contents communicated to the other magistrates, with instructions on
all occasions in which such cases should be brought before them, to endeavor, with the consent of the
creditors, to come to a settlement on such a basis.
2. The Toh Puan Halimah, daughter of the exiled Laxamana of Perak, and chief wife of the banished
Mentri of the State, had invested most of her private money in advances of this description, which, up to
the time of British interference, was the favorite form of security, and she is now the largest claimant in
the country for the repayment of her money. Another, Wan Teh Sapiah, has also claims of a like nature
on several families, and both these ladies willingly undertook to accept of liquidation by such an
arrangement.
3. In the former case it has, I am sorry to say, fallen through, from the impossibility of inducing the
debtors to work regularly, and from very many of them, who are living in entire freedom in different
parts of the country, declining to come into the arrangement, though acknowledging their debts.
4. In many other cases the creditors from the first put forward the certainty of the failure of such a system
from the above-mentioned cause; others have objected that they had no regular employment in which to
place their debtors; others, that they are utterly ruined by the events of recent years, and that they would
accede to the proposal if fairly carried out on the other part, provided the Government would advance
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