752 THE HISTORY AND PRESENT CONDITION OP MALACCA. 
ed with rich tropical cultivation, rendering it desirable to negotiate 
with neighbouring states for an extension of territory. Such has 
been the result of enterprise in Province Wellesley, and such it would 
have been in Malacca, where the lands are superior in their adapta¬ 
tion to sugar cultivation, had the good fortune of the place and that 
of the speculators themselves brought them here. But it is not 
merely as an agricultural country that the settlement of Malacca is, 
or rather ought to be, so valuable to us. It must be, borne in mind 
that Malacca has the prestige of antiquity attached to her, that her 
well authenticated annals reach hack several centuries, during which 
they record noble feats of arms both native and European, and a de¬ 
gree of commercial splendour and magnificence rivalling that of Tyre 
or Venice, that her very name is held in veneration by the Ma¬ 
lays, who look to Malacca as the chief seat of their literature ami 
the chief source of their laws and customs, and that such is the at¬ 
tachment of the Malay to all that is ancient either in name or fami¬ 
ly that the very word Malacca has a peculiarly attractive sound to 
him. The consequence is that not only what may be called the in¬ 
digenous population, but the immigrants from the surrounding states 
look to Malacca as, in some measure, their mother country, and are 
far from considering themselves as strangers when settled in it. All 
these circumstances, combined with the undisputed paramount pow¬ 
er of the British Government in these parts, tend to give an influ¬ 
ence to the possession of Malacca which, judiciously exerted, ought 
to prove instrumental in the gradual imp rovement and civilization 
of the states of the Peninsula, It is to be feared however that ei¬ 
ther no efforts have been made towards so desirable an end as the 
amelioration of the condition of the people of the neighbouring states, 
or that those efforts have been misdirected, for it is an undoubted 
fact that the petty states immediately surrounding are all of them in 
a sad state of anarchy and disorder, without any settled government 
and enjoying no protection of either person or property. The 
chiefs, under whatever designation, are needy and rapacious, ready 
to sell themselves to any party that will purchase the use of their 
name and influence, and the people are wretchedly poor and enjoy 
no means of bettering their condition, for though the countries are 
as fertile as Malacca, and some, if not all of them, still more abound¬ 
ing in mineral products, yet such is the state of insecurity and law¬ 
lessness among them that but very little can he -done to benefit by 
such resources. We have ourselves, in pur wisdom, tended greatly 
