MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN LIGHT. y 



In 1790, Light began to find that the duties of Superin- 

 tendent of the growing Settlement were incompatible with 

 his position as a merchant,"^ while the small salary (Rs. i^ooo 

 per month) which he received from Government was insuffi- 

 cient to warrant his giving up trade. So strongly did he feel 

 this that we find him proposing to the authorities in Calcutta 

 that he should be precluded from engaging in trade, receiv- 

 ing " such increase of salary as will support the office with 

 " decency and enable me to make a small provision for ap- 

 " proaching old age." Few of his acts reveal an honourable 

 and upright character more clearly than this. His combined 

 position of Superintendent and principal merchant in Penang 

 gave him abundant opportunity of enriching himself; and in 

 those lax days, with examples like Vansittart and Mac- 

 PHERSON before him, such scruples must have seemed to many 

 almost Quixotic. In the following year there was trouble with 

 Kedah. The Raja of that country, grown jealous of the pros- 

 perous Settlement that had sprung up in his neighbourhood, 

 collected a force, and in 1791 instigated a fleet of twenty La- 

 noon boats to enter Pry River. These were joined by the Kedah 

 Bandahara. A land force also came down to the banks of 

 the river and threw up entrenchments. Light's force num- 

 bered 400 men, all well armed and disciplined. He took the 

 initiative and attacked by land and sea the force at Kuala Pry, 

 which had swelled to the number of over 8,000 Malays. After 

 a few hours fighting the enemy were dispersed, notwithstand- 

 ing their great preponderance of numbers. Since that day 

 Penang has remained free from the attack of any enemy, 

 native or foreign, even when the Siamese troops of the Phya 

 Ligor were over-running Kedah in 1821. Light was justly 

 proud of his victory and called his next son FranciS Lanoon 

 Light in honour of it. 



In a despatch dated 24th August, 1792, Captain LiGHT 

 continues to sound the trumpet of his little Colony and to pre- 

 dict for it that success which it has since attained. One 

 admires the earnest way in which its earliest ruler stood 



t He was partner with James Scott in Scott & Co., afterwards Brown & Co, 



