30 
Chapter, is scarcely permitted at all among the Malayan 
States. 
A few words regarding the Malay race, its history and its 
language, will be in place here, this Southern Division being 
essentially the Malay Peninsula. 
It is difficult to understand how it happened that a 
great race like the Malays— colonisers by instinct, and whose 
history and traditions show no little aptitude for organisation — 
should, in the last century, have degenerated into the pirates 
and general enemies of commerce, with which the Malay 
name is, or was till late years, almost synonymous, 
Sir Home Popham, who was acquainted with the people 
in the early days of Pen an g when we first settled in the Straits, 
throws some light on their disorganised state. He says (1798) 
that " previous to the establishment of Dutch power, and the 
prevalence of Dutch avarice, the Malayans were as indus- 
trious and ingenious as the other inhabitants of the country ; 
" with that superiority of activity and enterprise over more 
" inland inhabitants, which a maritime situation invites and. 
** produces. While the English continued to possess a con- 
" siderable share of the trade of those countries, the Malayan 
" character remained unimpaired ; but after the declension of 
" our interest in that part of India, when the Dutch became 
" paramount, their tyranny first repressed the exertion of 
'* Malayan ability, and, afterwards, according to the usual 
" progressive effects of slavery, reduced them to ignorance. 
" Still, however, they retain some vestiges of their original 
" character, and show that a different treatment and example 
*' may work a complete change ; as some of them, from their 
"intercourse with the English, are fast improving in activity 
