THE HISTORY AND PRESENT CONDITION OP MALACCA. 733 
taming 1 possession in strengthening their position to such a degree as 
to render utterly hopeless all native attacks on it, and truly the re¬ 
mains of their fortifications, now to be seen here, evince the deter¬ 
mination to render Malacca perfectly impregnable to any native at¬ 
tack. At the same time the Dutch appear to have exerted the in¬ 
fluence of their position and power to obtain an ascendency over the 
neighbouring states, with the view of establishing in them a mono¬ 
poly of produce, especially of Tin, then almost the sole known arti- 
of produce. Judging however from the account given by Dr. Go- 
melli Careri, it would appear that during the first 20 or 30 years 
of the Dutch rule, Malacca must have been neglected and misma¬ 
naged, otherwise it is difficult to imagine a place that had been so re¬ 
nowned, having dwindled to a population of 5,000 souls, shut up 
within tlielr fortifications and surrounded by half savage people. But 
towards the end of the 17 th century, if it had thus fallen off, it revived 
very considerably, and continued to prove a most valuable settlement 
to the Dutch, till about the period of our establishment in Pinang, 
when of course a large portion of the trade that had thitherto re¬ 
sorted to Malacca was attracted to the new English settlement. The 
establishment of Singapore soon drew off what little trade remained, 
since which, Malacca has gradually fallen into the lowest depths of 
neglect and insignificance, so much so, that soon after it came into 
our possession it was seriously proposed to abandon it, and remove 
the inhabitants to Pinang, and, in our own time, it has been said 
that a similar measure has been advocated in favor of Singapore, 
but leaving aside the wanton cruelty of such an act, those who may 
have advocated it evinced their own great ignorance of the advantages 
of such a position as Malacca. 
In 1825, after several shifts between Dutch and English, Malac¬ 
ca was finally incorporated by treaty with the British dominions in 
the east, since which, her decline has been uninterrupted, and her 
history a mere record of that decline, with the episode of what was 
called the Naning war, of which no one is very proud except a few 
native chiefs who still chuckle with delight at the idea of having 
caused the English to retreat. Those who are desirous of learning 
the cause, conduct, and termination of this war, may be referred to 
Newbold’s pages, where they will find that the cause was the non-pay¬ 
ment of a tribute of 400 Gantangs of paddy, value 12 Dollars, that 
the conduct of the war cost somewhere about twenty lacs of Rupees, 
and that it ended in pensioning the rebel chief on a hundred Rupees 
