98 
VOYA.GE OF THE POTOMAC [DecemBery 
In one respect, we are not without our sympathy for the Ma- 
lays. We know the wrongs they have suffered, in common with 
the other natives of India, and we may speak of these wrongs in 
another place ; but whatever injustice they may have received, it 
has not been from our hands. We have made no conquests, de- 
throned no sultans, oppressed and enslaved no inhabitants of the 
eastern world. We have to do with the Malays as we find 
them, without stopping to inquire how they became so ; or what, 
under more favourable circumstances, they might have been. 
The information already obtained seemed to leave no doubt, 
that neither the character of the people on the coast of Sumatra, 
particularly at Quallah-Battoo, nor the government under which 
they nominally lived, and under whose sanction piracies had fre- 
quently been committed on commerce, promised the least hopes 
of success from a mere formal demand for restitution, unless that 
demand was accompanied, at the same time, by a force sufficient 
to carry it into effect. If a mawkish sensibility, a timid and 
shrinking fear of responsibility, should say that this was a depar- 
ture from the usages of nations, in seeking indemnification from 
each other, let it be remembered, that the question at issue was 
not one of a mere commercial character, where a treaty had 
been violated, or a seizure made on illegal grounds, by a govern- 
ment possessing the requisites of sovereignty ; but a rapacious, a 
piratical attack, on the lives as well as the property of our citizens, 
under the most aggravated circumstances, and that, too, by the 
chiefs of a people who have openly trampled justice under foot ; 
despised and violated the rights of others whenever they found 
an opportunity; acknowledging no superior ; at least, for whose acts 
no other, or superior chiefs, would hold themselves responsible. 
Under these circumstances, feeling the full weight of responsi- 
bility, and justly fearing the ruinous consequences which would 
inevitably follow an unsuccessful demonstration of our force in a 
part of the world where it had never been displayed, and among a 
people who hitherto had treated the very idea of our strength with 
derision, the commodore felt compelled to prepare for efficient 
measures ; and, under any circumstances, to bring the guilty to 
punishment, and to leave an impression of our sense of justice, 
power, and readiness to punish aggressors, that should extend and 
pervade every inhabitant of the whole pepper coast. 
