BORNEO—SIR JAMES BROOKE. (Hansard, 18 March 1852)

§ MR. HUME
moved— That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that She will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House, a Copy of Letter from Mr. Robert Burns to Viscount Palmerston, dated Singapore, 28th day of June, 1851, with its Inclosures, complain- 1258 ing of the obstructions and discouragements he had received to his commercial affairs in Borneo, at the hands of Her Majesty's Commissioner and Consul General to the Sultan and independent chiefs of Borneo, whilst prosecuting his lawful commercial proceedings in that country; together with Copy of any Answers thereto.

MR. HENRY DRUMMOND
said, the lion. Gentleman a few nights ago had given notice of a Motion similar to the present, but that Motion contained a statement that was not the fact. The same operation was performed by the hon. Gentleman several times last year. He kept continual Motions on the paper relating to the conduct of Sir James Brooke; and, upon the same principle, he (Mr. H. Drummond) supposed, that calumny, like flattery, should be laid on thick enough, so that some of it at last might stick, the hon. Member had contrived to keep that gentleman's name before the House until the end of the Session. The hon. Gentleman had had the kindness and urbanity to write him a private letter to bog him to take the earliest opportunity, when this subject came before the House, to make some amende respecting some observations which he (Mr. H. Drummond) had made as applied to a Mr. Miles last year. He (Mr. H. Drummond) replied to the hon. Gentleman in general terms that he would not do in private that justice to Mr. Miles which the hon. Gentleman had requested him to do, but he would do that justice to Mr. Miles in his place in that House whenever an opportunity occurred. Repeatedly had he sought that opportunity, but never had he been able to get one; and he was not now going to apologise for, or extenuate, or deny one word he had said last year; on the contrary, he only insinuated last year that which now he was going to assert positively, that this Miles was a runaway convict. The hon. Gentleman had himself not clean hands with respect to this Miles, for he had published in the papers read in this House a letter from this Miles, which he (Mr. Drummond) had shown to be a forgery. He proved it to be a forgery from the handwriting of that gentleman—a gentleman he would not call him—of that man, and that he could neither spell nor write. Nevertheless, that false testimony the hon. Gentleman made use of, and never had he explained either to Sir James Brooke or to that House why he brought forward that false testimony. He (Mr. H. Drummond) had asserted that Miles, upon whose information the hon. Gentleman relied, was a runaway convict. He 1259 insinuated it before; he now said it, and he said that Miles was worse—that he was a thoroughly worthless fellow, and he would now proceed to prove what he had stated. He had an affidavit by a Mr. Henry Adams, which was as follows:— Western Australia, Perth, Oct. 10, 1851. I, Henry Adams, late of Adelaide, in the province of South Australia, but now of the colony of Western Australia, master mariner, master and owner of the schooner Unknown, solemnly declare as follows:—That is to say, that I was in the police force in the province of South Australia for about fifteen months; that a person who passed by the name of Peter Loyd kept a house of ill fame called the Scotch Thistle; that the police force always had their eyes on the said Peter Loyd, as he was considered a very had character, and that the Scotch Thistle was frequently searched by the police for stolen goods, and for persons suspected of robberies; that I saw a man called William Miller accuse the said Peter Loyd openly upon a racecourse in South Australia of having picked his pocket, when several bystanders declared they had seen the theft committed by the said Peter Loyd, and when I saw the said Peter Loyd return the said William Miller the sum of 3s., being the amount alleged to have been stolen from him on that occasion by the said Peter Loyd; that the stores of Messrs. Murray and Gregg, of Adelaide, were robbed, and that there was very strong ground for suspecting the robbery had been committed by the said Peter Loyd and a man named—Ring; that a reward was offered by the local Government for their apprehension, and the police were sent in search of them, but were unable to arrest them, as they rode to Cape Jervis, and succeeded in getting on board a vessel shortly before the arrival of the police in pursuit; that I knew him, Peter Loyd, well during his residence in Adelaide, and that he there lived with a woman who passed as his wife, and who escaped with him from Cape Jervis; that I heard this woman state that he, Peter Loyd, was a runaway convict: that I did not again see the said Peter Loyd, until the year 1844, when he arrived at Freemantle, in the said colony of West Australia, as owner of the Buffalo, from Singapore, and passed under the name of William Henry Miles; that I at once recognised him, and could not be mistaken as to his identity; that I then heard he was about to be married to a daughter of a Mr. Wickstead, who kept a public-house at Freemantle, and that I conceived it to be my duty to, and I accordingly did, communicate to Mr. Wickstead what I knew of the said Peter Loyd or William Henry Miles, and particularly that I had reason to believe he was then a married man; that I afterwards met at Singapore several persons who informed me that the woman whom I had formerly known as the wife of the said Peter Loyd, or William Henry Miles, at Adelaide, and also Mrs. Miles, the daughter of the said Mr. Wickstead, whom the said Peter Loyd, or William Henry Miles, married at Freemantle aforesaid, had both been resident at Singapore together; but I did not on that occasion see the said Peter Loyd, or William Henry Miles, as he was then at Labuan, where I learned he had gone to lease or work a coal mine. (Signed) "H. E. ADAMS. 1260 Subscribed by the abovenamed H. E. Adams in my presence, at Perth, Western Australia, this 10th day of October, 1851. (Signed) "W. H. MACKIE, J.P., Commissioner of the Civil Court of Western Australia, and Chairman of the Court f Quarter Sessions. It was upon the authority of that man that the hon. Gentleman brought forward all his charges against Sir James Brooke last year; and that was the man whom the hon. Gentleman called upon him, on the authority of a respectable London merchant, to do justice to. The respectable London merchant stood godfather for the respectability of Peter Loyd, a partner in his veracity and in his respectability. Would the hon. Gentleman be so good as to tell the House who was that respectable English merchant? Respectable!—yes, perhaps he kept a gig.

§ MR. HUME
hoped the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken would tell the House where he had got the document from which he had just read. For himself, he would say that he did not believe a word of the allegations contained in it. He had stated to the hon. Gentleman, that as he had in his place calumniated Mr. Miles, he thought it was an act of justice to explain it, and he asked the hon. Gentleman whether he had seen the proceedings that had taken place in the Court of Singapore against the Singapore Free Press for a libel, in consequence of the statement mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Miles's letter was given to him by a merchant on whose authority he relied, and he published it on that authority—the authority of a respectable English merchant in this country. The hon. Gentleman had on a former occasion produced a document, and said that Mr. Miles could not write. The letter, certainly, was badly spelt; and, if that was a type of what that individual could write, he should say it was not very creditable. But how did that letter get into the possession of the hon. Gentleman? Was it stolen when the troops made the attack which had before been referred to, at the suggestion of Sir James Brooke? and did that hon. Gentleman know that Mr. Miles had brought an action in the Court of Singapore against Sir James Brooke or his agent? In the opinion of the Judge at Singapore, the real libeller was the hon. Member for West Surrey. As to Sir James Brooke, his conduct had continued as monstrous as it had begun. Before any satisfaction had been made for his previous excesses, Sir James Brooke, 1261 on the 31st of July, had an ambush laid for 4,000 persons, whom, in order to create a pretext for plundering them, he; chose to call pirates, whereas they wore not pirates, nor anything of the sort: they were Dyaks. If there were any pirates, they are Malays. Of those 4,000 persons, 500 were barbarously slaughtered, and 1,500 more or less injured; for the massacre and injuries of these poor people the Government had to pay 20,700l.; yet no inquiry was to be granted into this barbarous and disgraceful outrage.