66 



account 6d for by the hopefesR feeling: tWyiinlef - 

 tained'of resisting a Ration, .livrucb had subdued 

 those conquerors whose yoke they had vaiuly at- 

 tempted to break during nearly a century • and a 



Wheu the weaker party has? no ehancfe of suc- 

 cess in an open struggle, the innate hutred of op- 

 pression, uacontroiled by higher principJeB, dic- 

 tates a reso.rt to less honorable means; thuiion 

 the 7th August 1044 a plot laid by Jive Malays, 

 X. D. 1044, Heg. inhabituiiis of Naniiing, to s^et the 

 town of Malacca on fire, arid murder 

 the Members of Council was seasonably revealed 

 by one of the party, a slave ofthe name of Patch- 

 iur. A somewhat i^irailar project, conceived by 

 MiJtiiTS, has been landed in every age as an act 

 of heroistn because he was a Roman, :b. name with 

 which habit has accustomed us to associate every 

 thing that h noble. Had he lived later and been 

 termed an Italian, or had the action been record- 

 ed of a the same force of prejudice would 

 have linked the epithet of treachery with the 

 deed.- „ 



The Dutch, to whose bosoms generosity appears 

 to have been a stranger, resorted to their usual ' 

 A, 1044. Heg, practlcc of savagc intimidation. Tlie ■ 



page, in which the plot is recorded, 

 rises up in judgement against them, fur the pen has 

 there traced that the principal conspirator was tor- 

 tured to (kath, and his body gibbetted ; two others 

 were beheaded and quartered, and theparts expos- 

 ed in coiispicuous places, whilst the fourth had in 

 addition his head exposed on a gibbet ; the tifih, 

 the slave, was pardoned on account cvf his having 



