12S 



very serious doubts that the defence of it would 

 cost m quite as much expeuceas the defence of the 

 Queda territory. The tenure, by which we bold 

 Pulo P'mmg at present is that of a yearly tribute, 

 which would by no means be creditable to the 

 Engii^h Company, or the English nation, iftiie 

 obvious superiority of our force to that of Que- 

 da did not shew the whole world that the Ra- 

 jahofQuedu owes this to our nalitmal justice, and 

 not to lUe power of hts arms- This, however, 

 would by no means be equally obvious, if this 

 yearly sura were to be paid to Siam, and would 

 tend to depreciate our national character among 

 all the nations of the Eastern jiefis. The difficul- 

 ty of negocialitig with the Siamese Govern- 

 rnent has always been acknowledged to be great, 

 and the English iii particular have been remarka- 

 bly unfortunate in all their attempts at this pur- 

 pose.** 



Had the Treaty of Siam, dated 20th June 

 1826, been in existence at the period thnt the 

 foregoing sentence was written, it is probable 

 that Sir Stamford would have conceived that the 

 English have been even more than " remarkably 

 unfortunate" in all their negociations with Siam. 

 How clearly does thia talented individual in the 

 foregoing passages point out that the justice ami 

 the wisdom of the English lay in at once adopt- 

 ing the manly and straight forward policy of de- 

 fending Kedah, and iu the following extracts he 

 DO less judiciously exposes the fallacy of the opi- 

 nion entertained by iVbjor Farqubar on the sub- 

 ject of the Siamese being anxious to form an alli- 

 ance with the Briti^^h, having for its object the 

 mutual advantage of both nations. It is thus 



