From The Edinburgh Review. THE grant of a royal charter to a British company for the occupation of the northern portion of Borneo, the largest island in the Eastern Archipelago - in the world indeed, if Australia be ranked among the continents, as it may well be in view of its vast area - has attracted much attention, not in this country only but on the Continent and in the East. The concession of a territory, nearly as large as Great Britain, formally recognized and sanctioned by the crown, could hardly fail to be the object of much hostile criticism on political and economic grounds. The Spaniards and the Dutch were not slow to put forward rival claims, and oppose the grant of a charter as an encroachment on their sovereign rights in the Eastern seas, where they have practically been allowed during the last halfcentury to claim a monopoly of territorial possessions. The opportunity of turning this contention to account in party warfare was too inviting to be resisted. So novel an incident as the grant of a charter to a private company for the founding of a new colony under the ægis of the British flag, furnished another charge of adventure and innovation. And accordingly a debate was raised in both Houses of Parliament, and in the Commons pressed to a division. The result, in spite of all hostile comment, left the new company and its charter invested with the sanction of a large majority; while in the House of Lords there was such a concurrence of approval on both sides, that no division was taken. So far then as criticism and comments could affect the future of the colony and the company, the. opposition encountered must have proved the best advertisement, and an encouragement to the sharehold ers to prosecute with energy the objects set forth in their charter. These objects are unexceptionable in character, and such as every one would desire to see carried out to the fullest extent. Taking the preamble of the treaty of 1847 with the sultan of Borneo (Brunei) — in which the desire of the queen is recorded "to encourage commerce between her Majesty's subjects and the subjects of the independent princes of the Eastern seas, and to put an end to piracies which have - as hitherto obstructed that commerce" The natural resources of the granted territory are great.. It has splendid harbors, and a good climate for the tropics. It contains extensive forests, producing much hard-wood timber, and there are in it, as the undersigned believe, valuable mineral deposits. It will afford new outlets for British trade, new mar kets (which are much needed) for British manufacturers, and new and rich districts for the cultivation of coffee and tea, and for tropical agriculture generally. There is every pros1. Papers relating to the Affairs of Sulu and Borneo, and to the Grant of a Charter of Incorpora-pect of a good commercial return for the Brittion to the "British North Borneo Company" Part ish capital employed. Civilization and order 1. Correspondence respecting the Claims of Spain. will by degrees by introduced. And the interPart II. Correspondence respecting the Claims of Hol-ests of the British Empire will be promoted land. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by by the establishment of British occupation in command of her Majesty. 1882. a region offering, by its situation and circumstances, many strategical and other public advantages. 2. The New Ceylon. Being a Sketch of British North Borneo or Sabak, from special and other exclusive Sources of Information. Written and compiled by JOSEPH HATTON, with New and Original Mars. corrected to date. London: 1881. 3. The Head Hunters of Bornee; us the Mchakon and down the Barito, and Journeyings in Sumatra. By CARL BOCK. London: 1881. 4. The Garden of the Sun; or, a Naturalist's Journal of the Mountains, and in the Forests and Swamps of Bornco and the Sulu Archipelago. By J. W. BURBIDGE, Trinity College Botanical Gardens, and formerly of the Royal Gardens, Kev. London: 1880. There is, no doubt, a certain glamor of adventure and romance in the boldness of the first conception of a plan to obtain the peaceable and legal possession of a territory some twenty thousand square miles in extent, from two Eastern Sultans claiming a divided authority within its limits. The acquisition of Sarawak, Atlantic and along the equally unexplored shores of Africa to the Eastern seas, at last opened to the astonished gaze of Europe a new world in the West, and a new way to the old with all the fabled treasures of the East. How stupendous the changes these events caused, and how subversive of the existing relations among European nations the revolution effected, can hardly be rightly appreciated without some reference to the state of Europe when these startling discoveries first burst upon its awakened intelligence. on the western coast of Borneo, by Mr., | tors under the Portuguese and Spanish afterwards Sir James Brooke, some forty flags, feeling their way across the stormy years ago, by purchase and friendly negotiation, is the only parallel example in modern times. Such acquisitions carry us back to half-forgotten treaties in past centuries when the Dutch and English East India Companies were laying the foundations of a great colonial commerce and empire in the Eastern seas; while the Spanish and Portuguese still stretched eager hands over the richest islands of the Indian Archipelago. The voyages of the earliest navigators, following the newly found track of Vasco da Gama, and the records of such adventures abound in quaint and marvellous incidents as well as deeds only too many of a darker hue. Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome, each in their turn, established colonies as far west as Great Britain, reflecting the types and forms of the parent State. And when the modern era of colonization commenced, the same history was repeated. What Venice began in the Adriatic and Ægean in the eleventh century, the other European States continued in the wider fields of the Western and Eastern seas in the sixteenth. Such also were all the early attempts at colonization by Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch on the Malayan coast, at Goa and Calicut, and throughout the Eastern Archipelago. But in ancient times another type was not wanting where a large number of real emigrants founded agricultural colonies, such as were planted in New England and New South Wales in more recent ages. These are both types frequently reproduced by modern nations with slight modifications. In North Borneo we have the latest addition to the already overflowing tale of British colonies, and the newest manifestation of that spirit of enterprise which has spread the English race over every quarter of the globe during the last three centuries. The part which colonization has played in the world's history in all times, ancient and modern, down to the The first colonies of ancient history in present day, presents a subject of great the Mediterranean consisted mainly of interest to all students of national devel-single towns, trading-ports, or factories. opment and progress. Among the influences which have exercised a notable sway over the destiny of nations, and determined the rise or fall of States, it would be difficult to fix upon any one of these as having proved more potent and farreaching. To trace the various forms which colonization has taken since the first dispersion of the Aryan race from the great beehive and nursery of nations the plateaux of central and northern Asia and the occupation of Europe some three thousand years ago in successive waves of immigration, which was colonization in its largest development in ancient history, and terminated in a long interval of barbarism by the submergence of the Roman and Greek civilization, is in itself a separate study. But the fusion of the old with the new elements of interpenetrated the whole mind and being humanity, apparently so confusedly and blindly mixed, led to the commencement of a new era in the Middle Ages, towards the close of the fifteenth century. When modern colonization commenced, naviga In another and deeper sense, the European colonization of the Middle Ages following the discoveries of Vasco da Gama and Columbus east and west, was controlled by the past and its traditions. That great and profound religious conception which had for fifteen hundred years of the European race, both its original and the derived form of Christianity, went with the European settlers and colonizers everywhere, to leaven, though not to temper, the greed of the trader and the cru elty of the conqueror. It shaped in some | prosper in tropic regions, and their popu degree the colonizing activity of the Por-lation can hardly be held, therefore, to tuguese on the coast of Africa, and the play any unimportant part in the whole Spaniards still more decisively in Mexico field of colonization. Soon after the same and South America. The acquisition of greed and lust of dominion which precipgold and the conversion of the infidelitated the nations of Europe westward became the two objects never lost sight and eastward, led them to enslave or exof by the mail-clad adventurer and the terminate for their own immediate advanmonk, his constant companion. And look- tage the native races, the want of labor ing back through the whole history of was urgently felt. An exclusive commertheir joint operations, it is hard to say cial system established after the manner which wrought the greatest amount of of the Carthaginians, by which they wrong and suffering the grasping spirit sought to monopolize the whole benefit of and insatiable greed of the mailed hand, their possessions, was equally a mistake or the ruthless and intolerant fanaticism in the interest of those who adopted it. of the Dominican and his confraternity By neither system separately, and still wearing the cowl. less by a combination of both, could they The native races were everywhere dis- secure this object. On the contrary, it is placed, reduced to slavery, or extermi- now, however tardily, generally acknowlnated. Whether designedly or otherwise, edged that the whole policy was as radiit is certain that the natives and abori- cally wrong in regard to their own intergines have always disappeared before the ests, as it was undoubtedly vicious in advance of the European. If there be respect to others. Spain was the first to any exception, it is in Africa, where the adopt the exclusive system, and to shut immense population of the central conti- out all the nations from the trade of her nent, at the back of all the European American possessions, in the belief that settlements along the coast, and the colo- in that way the nation would make the nies of the south, seems to have success- most of what it had acquired so easily; fully withstood the decimating advance of and all other European states were only the European element. Even in tropic too ready to follow in the same lines. If America, where the African has so long England was the last, she not the less, been the slave of the white race, they do after the time of Cromwell, adopted the not perish out of the land, but, on the same false system, with slave labor to contrary, increase and multiply. It is cultivate the land, and the exclusion of estimated that at the present day there all rival trade in her colonial produce. are, in the Southern States of North But the ideas which every European swarm America alone, five millions of Africans from the native hive carried with it, were who until quite recently were slaves. It strictly those of their native land, and, at is probable that in the end, if not now, that time, of medieval Europe. So it Europeans of all nationalities will learn was undoubtedly in regard to the trade in that to utilize the vast possessions appro- gold and slaves begun under the Portupriated by the strong hand in past ages, guese on the Guinea coast. The traffic and reap from them the riches and har- with Africa, and subsequently on the vest they are capable of yielding, the aid Eastern seas, was, like that of the Moors of the native and his labor are essential. in the Mediterranean, half piracy and half Europeans, in effect, can contribute noth-commerce; and ships and commerce were ing but capital, enterprise, and intellect; but the motive power of labor, to render these fruitful, cannot come from Europe, and must be supplied either by the natives or by the vigorous African and Chinese Africa and Asia must thus supply a very material part of the means by which European colonization can alone races. often farmed out by the kings of Portugal to needy adventurers. It is recorded that the king conferred on Fernan Gomez, who acquired great wealth south of Sierra Leone by traffic in gold dust and negroes, the appropriate coat of arms, "Argent, three negroes' heads collared or, and with rings in their noses and ears." Nevertheless, these tidal waves of colonization West and East, and more especially perhaps over the vast continents of North and South America, were destined to work great changes upon European ideas. The social balance of power in old kingdoms was displaced by colonial wealth. The feudal system was undermined, and revolutions in national finance speedily followed. In the words of Mr. Payne: * We see a mediæval military order turning West Indian planters; religious bodies founding American states; the European world leaving off fighting for religion and fighting for sugar hogsheads instead; the outcasts of the Batavian marshes suddenly becoming the first nation in Europe, and the Hague the centre of the world's diplomacy; the humble trade guild grown into the rich and powerful commercial company, speedily transformed into a sovereign power holding in its hands the welfare of millions. It is even suggested that we may yet see "a revolution of races - the despised negro expelling his master from the fairest regions of the earth, which he has been forced thither to cultivate like a beast of labor, and asserting for himself a place among civilized nations; and even the American Indian rising up at last to shake off the tyranny of the priest and the government official." This, however, is not of the past, but of the future, and we must hope that if retributive justice should ever take this form it may at least be very remote in its advent. the most coveted of earth's gifts. All these were apparently brought within measurable distance by the direct sea route open to Europe. Merchants, navigators, and adventurers of many nations eagerly followed on the track of the Portuguese. Although the English were the first to follow the Spaniards to the New World, John Cabot having sailed from England in command of two of Henry VII.'s ships in 1496, and discovered the islands of St. John and Newfoundland and all the coast from Labrador to Virginia, we were not so prompt in this second race in the world's sweepstakes. Sir Francis Drake was the first Englishman to sail to the Indian Archipelago (in 1577-1580), and the success of the voyage should have turned the attention of his countrymen strongly to the East, where Portuguese and Dutch and French had already made great progress. Spain, possessed of the only existing ports on the Pacific coast, sought somewhat tardily also to get a footing in the real Indies they had been in search of under Columbus. But it was not until 519 that they took into their service Magalhaens, an able and intrepid navi gator, who discovered the straits at the south of the new continent now known by his name, and on his way eastward discovered the Philippine Islands, where be was hospitably received; but being strongly tinctured with the indiscreet religious zeal, the vice of his age and country, he planted a cross, and sprinkling a little water on the king and his family, he thought to establish the Christian religion, and this led to a fight in which he lost his life. This discovery gave rise to a conflict of claims between Portugal and Spain, in reference to the pope's bull of 1493.* In parcelling out a new world to the west, the pope had apparently overlooked the geographical fact that on the other side of the circular earth a boundary might equally need defining between rival Ultimately Spain was firmed in possession, while the Portuguese retained the Moluccas. From this vantage-ground the Spanish might have Whatever lures the discovery of the New World, and two vast continents in the West, may have held out to European enterprise, it was still to the East, with its fame of inexhaustible riches, that all eyes were turned at the end of the fifteenth century, after Vasco's successful voyage to India. "The wealth of India" had been from the earliest periods of the world's history a popular tradition and a dream of the future. Long anterior to the time when Solomon drew his gold and ivory and merchandise from Ophir, with its uncertain localization, and all the fabled treasures which dazzled the eyes of a queen of Sheba, the popular imagina tion revelled in dreams of Eastern lands "Alexander VI. having divided the conquests of the New World between the Kings of Castile and Porteeming with gold and precious stones for tugal, they agreed to make the division by means of a those who could gain access to the far-line which the cosmographers drew across the world, in distant shores. The pearls and the rubies, the spices and incense, were only typical of all this inexhaustible mine of & Co. claimants. con order that the one towards the West and the other towards the East might follow out their discoveries and settle peacefully whatever each might win within his demarcation. This was a line drawn from the North to the South at a distance of 100 leagues west of the Acores and Cape Verde islands." See volume issued European Colonies, by E. J. Payne. Macmillan by the Hakluyt Society, "The Philippine Islands," translated from Antonio de Morga. seriously injured the trade of Portugal with eastern Asia; but Spain, pursuing its narrow policy of commercial restriction, confined the trade of the Philippines to Mexico, and so lost her chance and the Portuguese were not seriously molested by this first rival. They had rapidly become lords of the chief ports along the whole coast of Africa east and west as high as Zanzibar, and of the principal ports of India, even pushing their way under Albuquerque into the Persian Gulf, while they contemplated making themselves masters of the Red Sea also. They had settlements in Ceylon, Malacca, Macao, in China, and other parts of the Eastern Archipelago. The whole trade of the East for nearly a century went through the Portuguese from Goa, one of the best harbors in the world, to Lisbon. But colonization in the modern sense was not thought of or desired. of the East paid toll and tribute to her. Nor was Venice alone affected. Egypt lost a large share of its revenues, and a great loss fell upon the Italian republics and the free cities of Germany, which had also grown rich by their share in the distribution through central Europe of the rich merchandise trom the East. Augsburg and Nuremberg rapidly decayed, and became half deserted. The doge of Venice and the sultan of Egypt were too great sufferers to accept this sudden ebb of the tide of commerce with resignation; and they combined to raise a fleet and attack the Portuguese in the Indian seas; when the conquest of Egypt by the Turks put a stop to all operations in this direction. Not, however, before Albuquerque, foreseeing a great danger, had conceived the idea of destroying the port of Suez; and, failing in that, by their The emi-African vassals and other allies of Portugal, or turning the Nile into the Red Sea, and laying Egypt desert. Where the Portuguese would have turned the course of the Nile, and made its fertile valley a waste, another European combination has since made the Suez Canal, to unite the two seas, and to roll back the great tide of commerce in tenfold volume by the most direct route between India and Europe through Egypt once more, but under very different conditions of tribute and extortion. Such are some of the great and enduring transmutations of power and displacements of the commerce of the world, which supplies not only the material resources of wealth to States, but the life-blood of nations in the activ grants from Portugal to the Brazils had half depopulated their native land, tempted there by a tropic country of unlimited extent, where wealth could be gained in a few years by enforced labor in raising tropic produce for which there was a ready market. Nothing would have been less attractive to the mailed hidalgos of Portugal or their vassals, as an occupation, than to drive the plough even in a temperate climate. So, following the natural bent of their habits and disposition, they made no effort to plant colonies on the coast of Africa and India, or the Eastern Archipelago, but only to secure ports and an existing trade in the East, the richest in the world. They took this, and were content. Territory to them was not an ob-ity, industry, and enterprise which only ject of desire, and only an incumbrance to any extent beyond the vantage-ground required for a military or a trading station. In such a territory as Brazil alone, where the valuable produce could only be obtained by culture and plantations, and in the Spice Islands of the East, did they extend their operations into the interior. In the mean time, the greatest revolution which perhaps the world has seen had taken place in the sudden transfer of a vast commerce, the growth of many centuries, from one route to another, and the consequent ruin of States and populations on the old line of traffic. Venice had grown rich and powerful during four centuries by its lion's share of the richest and most important trade at that time in existence. Through her colonies of Cy prus, Crete, Euboea, and possessions in the Morea, and her relations with Egypt, Aleppo, and Asia Minor, all the produce commerce seems able constantly to stim ulate and maintain in vigor. Wherever commerce fails or decays, the vitality and strength of the nation seem to suffer a corresponding depression. And as it was in ancient times in the Mediterranean and on all its shores, so now in these modern days colonization and commerce have kept each other company with mutual advantage. How far, under abler statesmen at home and such energetic and bold administra tors as Vasco, Albuquerque, and Almeida, Portugal, the smallest of European States, might have succeeded in preserving the command of the vast and rich heritage of trade and colonial possessions bequeathed by Vasco and his first successors, it is vain to surmise. The probability is that under any circumstances she must, within another century, have been compelled to share her possessions and abandon a |