72 BRITISH BORNEO. 
‘conviction of doing right which nothing can shake. I see 
‘the benefits | am conferring. The oppressed, the wretched, 
“the outlawed have found in me their only protector. They 
now hope and trust; and they shall not be disappointed while 
I have life to uphold them. God has so far used me as a 
humble instrument of his hidden Providence ; and whatever 
‘be the result, whatever my fate, I know the example will 
not be thrown away. I know it tends to a good end in His 
‘owntime. He can opena path for me through all difficulties, 
raise me up friends who will share with me in the task, 
awaken the energies of the great and powerful, so that 
they may protect this unhappy people. I trust it may be so: 
but 1f God wills otherwise; if the time be not yet arrived; if it 
be the Almighty’s will that the flickering taper shali be 
xtinguished ere it be replaced by a steady beacon, I submit, 
in the firm and humble assurance that His ways are better 
than my ways, and that the term of my life is better in His 
hands than in my own.” On the 1st August, 1842, tkis 
cession of Sarawak to Mr. BROOKE was confirmed by His 
Highness Sultan OMAR ALI SAIFUDIN, under the Great Seal. 
MUDA HASSIM was the uncle of the Sultan, who was a sover- 
eign of weak, vacillating disposition, at one time guided by 
the advice of his uncle, who was the leader of the ‘ English 
party,” and expressing his desire for the Queen’s assistance 
to put down piracy and disorder and offering, in return, to 
cede to the British the island of Labuan; at another following 
his own natural inclinations and siding altogether with the 
party of disorder, who were resolved to maintain affairs as 
they were in the “good old times,’ knowing that when the 
reign of law and order should be established their day and 
their power and ability to aggrandize and enrich themselves at 
the expense of the aborigines and the common people would 
come toanend. There is no doubt that Mr. BROOKE him- 
self considered it would be for the good of the country that 
MupDA HAssIM should be raised to the throne and the Sultan 
certainly entertaineda not altogetherill-founded dreadthatit was 
intended to depose him in the latter’s favour, the more so as 
a large majority of the Brunai people were known to be in his 
