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COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
of Englishmen, carefully selected, who took their tone 
and manner from him; and every native knew well that 
if he were wronged he could get redress, and that the 
wealth or power of his oppressor would avail nothing 
with his judges. 
The success of this system of rule was never better 
shown than during the Chinese insurrection, when, having 
narrowly escaped with his life—his friends killed or 
wounded, his house burnt down, and much of the town 
destroyed—the whole population, Malay and Dyak alike, 
rallied round the English Eaja, drove out and almost 
exterminated the invaders, and triumphantly brought him 
back to rule over them. In what other country shall we 
find rulers alien in race, language, and religion, yet so 
endeared to their subjects ? And the phenomenon is still 
more marvellous when we consider that these subjects 
were themselves of two races—a superior and an inferior, 
an oppressing and an oppressed; yet both alike joined to 
bring back the foreign ruler who had introduced equality 
and had stopped oppression. This example shows us that 
the art of governing half-civilised races is not so complex 
and difficult as has been supposed. It requires no peculiar 
legal, or diplomatic, or legislative training; but chiefly 
patience, and good feeling, and the absence of prejudice. 
The great thing is, not to be in a hurry; to avoid over¬ 
legislation, law-forms, and legal subtleties; to aim first to 
make the people contented and happy in their own way, 
even if that way should be quite opposed to European 
theories of how they ought to be happy. On such prin¬ 
ciples Sir James Brooke’s success was founded. It is true, 
he spent a fortune instead of making one; but he had 
his reward in having brought peace, and safety, and plenty 
where there was before war, and oppression, and famine, 
and in leaving behind him, over the whole of Northern 
