Debtors once absorbed into the Rajah's household are looked upon as his property, just as his bullocks or his goats, and those who alone would have the power to interfere look on and say nothing, because they do the same themselves.
In different States this debtor-bondage is carried to greater or less extremities, but in Perak the cruelties exercised toward debtors are even exclaimed against by Malays in other States.
Many chiefs in Perak have a following principally composed of young men and girls, for the most part debtors.
The men are treated as I have already described—either food and clothes are found for them or not; they are usually found—for the Rajah's power and his pride consists in the number of arms-bearing followers he has at his beck and call; men, too, are useful to him in many other ways. Those who have grown old in their bondage, whether men or women, either for very shame the Rajah provides for, or he compels their children to support them.
The men either (1) follow because they like it (a very small percentage indeed); or (2) they are debtors, or the children of debtors; or (3) they are real slaves from Sumatra or Abyssinia, or the children of slaves.
The girls are treated differently; they are (1) either slaves or the daughters of slaves; or (2) debtors, the daughters or granddaughters of debtors; or (3) the Rajah has simply taken them from their houses into his own house because he wanted them; or (4) they follow him for pleasure.
In Perak some of the chiefs do not provide their girls with food or clothing, but they tell them to get these necessaries of life as best they can, i.e., by prostitution—for the labor of the debtor being the property of the creditor, prostitution is in this case a necessity and not a choice.
Each Rajah in his own district claims the privilege of fining, either for a capital offence or for a trifling misdeed. Should, then, a man be fined and not pay the fine, he and his family, if he has one, are at once taken into this debt-bondage, not to work out the fine, but to toil away their lives amid blows and upbraidings—the daughters driven to prostitution, the sons to thieving, and even greater crimes.
This is no exaggerated statement, but the plain truth.
When the Rajah gives nothing, neither food nor clothes, or when he is a passionate man, and threatens to kill one or other of his followers for some trivial offence, or for no offence at all, it often happens that one will seek refuge in flight. If caught, though, it may be said to be the received custom to inflict only some slight punishment; yet that would not deter a Rajah from punishing such an offence even with death should it seem good to him.