754 Lieut-General The Eon. Sir Andrew Clarhe [May 27, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 27, 1898. 



Sir William Crookes, F.K.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Lieut.-General The Hon. Sir Andrew Clarke, R.E. G.C.M.G. 



Sir Stamford Baffles and the Malay States. 



The subject which I wish to bring before the Members of the Royal 

 Institution to-night is one that passing events now invest with a 

 special and direct interest. Sir Stamford Raffles and his work at 

 Singapore and in the Straits Settlements must always claim the 

 attention of those who have dwelt in that region, and have had trans- 

 actions connected with it; but it has been invested with general 

 national importance and a peculiarly direct significance by its 

 relationship to the progress of events in the Far East. At the 

 present moment we are able and willing to appreciate the good work 

 Raffles did for his country in founding Singapore. We can now all 

 see how fortunate it was for England that, in 1819, he realised the 

 importance of making secure the road to the Far East, and that his 

 measures with that object in view were, after many difficulties, 

 eventually crowned with success. If he had been beaten in his 

 single-handed campaign against the authorities at Penang and in 

 India, against also the Secret Committee, and even the Cabinet at 

 home, our expansion eastwards would have been fettered, our trade 

 would have been deprived of fresh avenues, and nothing short of a 

 costly and hazardous war would have placed us in that position 

 of vantage at the southern promontory of Asia, on the open high- 

 way to the marts of Siam, China and Japan, which he secured for 

 us without a blow, and by his own unaided but indomitable energy. 

 We can all of us see these results to-day; but, in paying our 

 tribute to this remarkable man, we should recollect that he achieved 

 these successes under great difficulties, that he was the object of 

 slanderous misrepresentations, that he was opposed with a bitterness 

 unknown in the present phase of society, and that charges of grave 

 and ineffaceable purport were brought against him by his unscrupulous 

 and deadly adversaries. It is only within the last few months that 

 all the clouds obscuring the fame of Sir Stamford Raffies have been 

 dispelled by the unanswerable official contemporary evidence which 

 Mr. Demetrius Boulger has brought to light in his recent biography 

 of the Founder of Singapore. 



If the subject of this picturesque and varied career, this spectacle 



