if the Carlisle law of mortality is adhered to. Most of the premiums in it are lower than theirs, and those who have already taken out policies could thus be released from paying the old premium, and permitted to pay the new. This column will give the fairest and justest premiums, unless some tables of mortality better adapted to our country than those of Carlisle can be found; and, until then, it is recommended for general adoption.

Art. V. MR. BROOKE, OF SARAWACK, BORNEO.

UNTIL very recently, the Island of Borneo has occupied a small share of public attention. It was known to exist on the charts of Eastern Asia, and that was about all. True, the Dutch, for many years, had taken possession of a considerable portion of it; but the world was not the more enlightened on that account, for the Dutch are not over communicative about their colonies, and the difficulty of access into the interior of any of them places them much in the condition of a sealed book-the outside may be seen, but the eye of the vulgar is not allowed to pry inside.

How much longer Borneo would have remained a terra incognita, without the instrumentality of Mr. Brooke, it is impossible to say; but to him, a private English gentleman, the honor of devoting a superior mind, great intelligence, and large fortune, in the great work of civilization, is due.

Mr. James Brooke embraced a military life early, in India. His regiment being ordered to Birmah, during the late war, he was dangerously wounded in the breast, which compelled him to return to England, his native land, and ultimately to resign the service. He joined the Royal Yacht Club, and made several distant excursions in his vessel, the Royalist, a schooner of about 150 tons, for the benefit of his health, which was greatly undermined by his wound; and finally he determined to quit Europe, and all the elegances and refinements of a world which he was so eminently prepared to adorn, to devote himself to regenerate a people known but to few. Mr. Brooke, whilst serving in India, had visited China, and as Borneo lays near the usual ships' route, the deserted condition of that immense and fertile island, and more especially, the depressed, de. graded, and wretched condition of the Dyacks, supposed to be its primitive inhabitants, gave rise to sympathies which, instead of becoming more faint, increased in intensity in more mature life; and it was to enter on this bold undertaking, that Mr. Brooke, in the Royalist, arrived at Singapore, in 1839.

The writer of this, a citizen of the United States, has known Mr. Brooke well, from that time; and it is to rebut certain uncharitable paragraphs, relating to his settlement of Sarawack, which have appeared in the United States, and to set him in his own proper light before the American public, that this notice is written.

Those who have attributed to Mr. Brooke the desire of monopolizing the products of Sarawack, and acquire riches, could know but little of him, the man of all others of the purest philanthropy, and not of mercantile speculation; and those who have pointed out Sarawack as a new jewel added to the colonial wreath, with which "the grasping ambition of England" encircles the globe, must have made a very different publishment had they themselves encountered the discouraging indifference with which

his applications to be admitted on the footing of a British colony, or placed under her protection, and allowed to display the national standard, were received in London. So far from complying with his prayers, or entering into views, exclusively philanthropic, only cold replies were returned, and he was left without a flag even to this day, and to sustain himself against land and sea pirates, until the commanders of the British forces on the China station became sensible of the impolicy of allowing so important an outwork in the very centre of the seas still infested by pirates: and then, and only then, was aid extended to his settlement. He has now embarked for England, and no one who knows him, or what are his designs, can but wish him every success. But whilst he is journeying to the West, let us return to Sarawack.

No sooner had Mr. Brooke made some necessary arrangements at Singapore, than he proceeded to the scene of his future actions. Borneo proper, on the charts, or Bruni, as called by the natives themselves, and Sarawack, also, are situated on the North-west coast of the island, and near the equator. Bruni is a floating town* of considerable extent, and there the sultan resides. Under the feudal system of the Malays, the rajah of Sarawack was his vassal, though an independent prince living in his own states. Sarawack has a sea-coast of about sixty miles, and its inland boundaries are remote and undefined. The settlement, or town, is seated on a large river, navigable for ships of a large size. The soil is generally rich, and the climate very healthy. For many years it had been a place noted for its exports of rich antimony ore, which abounds in the country.

As has already been said, Mr. Brooke's feelings were engaged in favor of the Dyacks; and it was to regenerate them that he entered into negotiations, which were pending for some time with the rajah, for the cession of his sovereign and proprietary rights over the country, for a consideration in money. The sultan, at Bruni, who was suspected of giving every aid to the pirates, opposed the negotiations to his utmost, and subsequently, when Mr. Brooke had obtained quiet possession of the government, he sent assassins to take away his life; but so popular had the new ruler become, that they dared not make any attempt.

The whole sea-coast of Borneo, as is indeed that of every part of the Malayan Archipelago, is governed by Mahommedans, composed of Arabs and Malays, who, by superior energy and intelligence, rule despotically over the Dyacks, whom they have subdued, and in subduing have destroyed all spirit of resistance, and reduced them to a condition of dependence and slavery. They are compelled to labor, but the fruit of it is taken by their hard masters, and they are reduced to resort mostly to wild plants and roots for their own daily sustenance; and so fallen are they that the last spark of human ambition has departed from them. A custom, which prevails in the native mountains, of cutting off human heads as tokens of prowess, and without the possession of a certain number of which the young Dyack cannot approach the chosen of his heart, tends to keep down the population of the central lands of that fertile country, watered everywhere by large and small rivers.

It was to free this people from the oppression of their Mahommedan masters-to rouse them from the state of stupor they had fallen into-to

*The houses are built on rafts.

put new life into them, and give them energy, that Mr. Brooke purchased the country. His first care was to establish a court, where justice was done to the poor as equitably as to the rich, and every one was made to understand that he could hold, without fear of having it taken away, that which was his own. He called on all the petty Dyack chiefs, and persons of note around him, and explained the change of condition which had come over them, and bid them to adopt industrious habits now that they had nothing to apprehend from the rapacity of their late masters. One by one he has cleared his territory of that greatest of all plagues, the petty Malay rajahs and chiefs, and, also, of that set of vagabonds, the Hadjees, or pilgrims, who have been to Mecca to be made holy, so as to return into the country from whence they came to pass the remainder of their lives in the practice of detestable crimes, in idleness, and in exacting from the industrious the fruit of their hard earnings. The country is now free of its former oppressors, and in about four years mark the change. A country which, under the former government, yielded scarcely rice enough for its scanty population, this year exports 1,000 tons. The gold mines, which were surrounded with danger, now are estimated to yield $100,000, and birds' nests $20,000, annually. Plantations of pepper, gambier, and spices, have been commenced, which will soon add to the exports; and when the Chinese, who now turn their attention wholly to the working of the gold mines, shall become agriculturists, the facilities of obtaining waste lands will bring out the resources of the country on a large scale.

But the establishment of Sarawack as a European colony, assumes immense importance, as an outpost in the very centre of the seas infested by those bold, daring, and merciless pirates, who prowl into every nook and corner of the Malayan Archipelago in quest of booty, be it in human flesh or merchandise. There is very good reason for believing, that the sultan of Bruni was one of their main supporters, as has already been said, which, by the perseverance of Mr. Brooke, he has renounced, by treaty with England, and which his presence at Sarawack enables him to see is honestly observed. Not only has he extended his influence over the ruler of Bruni, but over more distant ports, formerly noted as places for fitting out piratical prahus, or in close connection with them.

An instance of the benefits of that influence, of a recent date, will find an appropriate place here. The ship Mary Ellen, of Boston, Captain Dearborn, was unfortunately cast away a few months since, on her passage from China to New York, on the Island of Soobie South Natulas, a small island laying near the coast of Sarawack. The ship's company succeeded in reaching the shore, and presented themselves to the chief of the island in a perfectly helpless condition, being unarmed. Now it is notorious (by many well-known instances of similar disasters) that, up to the time of the settlement of Mr. Brooke on Borneo, the whole crew of the Mary Ellen would either have been murdered, or else sold as slaves. But what better fate awaited them now! The Oorang-Kayah, or head man of Soobie, in the first place, sent to a distance to purchase rice, of which he had no supply, to feed the strangers; then he sent over to Sarawack to notify Mr. Brooke of the event, and that the white men were under his protection; and finally, he fitted out one of his own prahus, and had all of them conveyed to Singapore!

Such are the results of the efforts of a single man, using his own resources, and his own resources only-and that man is James Brooke, one

of those extraordinary creatures entrusted with a high mission, by a bounteous Providence, to dispense light, civilization, and Christianity, among benighted men. And yet this man, who devotes life, acquirements, and fortune, to improve the condition of his fellow-men--that man, too, finds detractors, who, unable to comprehend the spirit of philanthropy that moves him, or his high calling, resort to vulgar abuse to bring him down to their own level. But misrepresentation of his motives will not discourage him, or lessen his energy. He will yet accomplish the task which he has set to himself that of extirpating piracy from the Northern and Eastern coast of Borneo, and the adjacent islands. He has already entered into communication with some of the principal chiefs of the places from whence they sally out; and it is to be hoped that, on his return from England, the home government will put him in a condition to do by force, what he may not be able to do by treaty. To appreciate duly the extent of the ravages, even now committed by these daring marauders, it is only necessary to peruse the Singapore "Straits Times," or the "Free Press," of the end of June of the present year, where will be found the details of an engagement, which the little "Nemesis," of China celebrity, had, with a fleet of eleven prahus; and in the "Free Press," of July 1, may be read the depositions of several rescued captives brought to Singapore, showing with what perfect security they carry on their infamous trade from island to island. Even poor little Poolo Soobie, on which our shipwrecked countrymen were so humanely treated, has been made to feel the weight of their vengeance, created, no doubt, by their new connection with Mr. Brooke.

The time is not, perhaps, distant, when the Malay population of Sarawack will be suddenly and greatly increased. The freedom and security enjoyed at that settlement, contrasts so favorably with the oppression under which the natives groan all around, that a strong disposition is manifested by the inhabitants of the Anambas, Natulas, and other islands adjacent to that part of Borneo, to abandon their native soil, and seek a participation of the quiet of Sarawack.

The amount of misery which these islanders are made to suffer, by the cruelty and rapacity of their chiefs, is little dreamed of in the Western hemisphere. A recent occurrence will show the every-day excursions of pleasure of the young Malay nobles. An eye-witness, it is, who speaks :—

Some time in the early part of this year, three prahus, of considerable size, came to the Anambas from the Island of Linga, (under Dutch protectorate,) on board of which were brothers and connections of the young sultan of that island. They came, apparently, to have a sky-lark; and that they certainly had with the poor islanders, their vassals and subjects, as all the islands about acknowledge themselves dependent on the sultan of Linga. They helped themselves to all the young virgins, which they took in turn to their prahus, during their stay there, and carried off about twenty of them, besides all the oil, cocoa-nuts, rice, and other things there was room for in their boats, and returned to Linga with the booty.

Thus are these poor people exposed to the wholesale robberies of the professed pirates, who land, and carry away as many of the people, large and small, male and female, as they can lay a forcible hand on, as well as all that is otherwise valuable; and, on the other hand, their liege lords, whom they dare not oppose, rob them of that which is dear or precious.

Is it to be wondered at, that they should meditate to take refuge in a Christian settlement?

Before closing these remarks, a few words of Mr. Brooke's personnel may be interesting to those who have read them. He was born in 1803, and consequently is now about forty-four; somewhat above the ordinary European height; of a frank, open countenance, which bespeaks him what he really is, every man's man-be he high in station, or occupying an inferior position in life, still Mr. Brooke becomes, without effort, "his man." Joyous with the gay-grave with the serious-he is always natural. In an aquatic excursion, or at pic-nic, he will enter into the spirit of the thing with more spirit than any one else; and so in a refined assembly of ladies, he will be the object of their predilection. Seated in a library, no one will be better acquainted with the contents of the books composing it; and he is as ready to discuss matters of abstruse science, theology, history, &c., &c., as he is the merits of the last of D'Israeli's Jewish visions.

After dinner, at Sarawack, with his European household and friends assembled around him, his practice is, to invite them to propose a subject for general discussion and debate, and in this profitable manner a good part of the night is passed. On other nights, he receives certain persons of note among the natives, with whom, seated and smoking until the ap. proach of morning, the time is passed in listening to their wild historical legends, or in instructing them in the ways of civilization. Highly endowed by nature-highly cultivated by study and intercourse with the world-gifted with a kindly and sweet disposition-he is universally beloved and respected by all classes of men. Singapore, July, 1847.

J. B.

Art. VI. THE CONSULAR SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE, ETC.

SIR-Observing that you have given place in your columns to various remarks on the consular system of the United States, I would take the liberty to submit to your notice the subjoined outlines of a revision, by which I think that the main objections to the present system may be obviated, without injury or injustice to a class of public officers, second to none in the value and importance of their service.

The varied and important duties which devolve upon the consular agents of the government, are, unfortunately, not as generally known as they ought to be; hence arises the mistaken idea, that they can be performed by any and everybody, and that the compensation for those services is a useless charge upon the nation; but I am confident that if the people of the United States did but know how very advantageous to all the interests of the country a well-organized consular corps would be, they would not hesitate to urge upon the representatives in Congress the necessity of prompt and careful attention to it.

It would occupy, I fear, too large a space, to attempt a detail of the various duties assigned to consuls by law, and by the long established usages and customs of nations; suffice it to say, that they have to watch over the maritime, commercial and manufacturing interests of their coun