Almost the only chance the debtor has of raising this amount is by successful gambling. Of course it hardly ever happens that he is successful; but, like all gamblers, he always thinks he will be, and thus gambling becomes a mania with him, which he will gratify at all costs, caring little by what means he gets money for play so long as he does obtain it.
These are the general facts relating to the position of the slave-debtor, and these things which I have described, seemingly so difficult of belief, are done almost daily; looked upon by those who do them as a right divine; by the victims as a fate from which there is no reprieve.
To compel his followers to obey him implicitly, the Rajah treats them with a severity which sometimes makes death the punishment of the slightest offence to him. These followers he thus holds to do whatever he bids them, even to the commission of the gravest crimes.
They again, having to provide themselves with food and clothes, and yet having to work for him, are led to prey on the defenceless population, from whom, in the name of their Rajah-master, they extort whatever there is to get, and on whom they sometimes visit those cruelties which they have themselves already experienced.
This system of debtor bondage influences, then, the whole population, not slightly but deeply, in ways it is hardly possible to credit except when seen in a constant intercourse with all classes of Malay society.
The question at issue seems to be; how to deprive the Rajah of this great power—an unscrupulous instrument in unscrupulous hands—how to free the debtors from their bondage, the women from lives of forced prostitution, the unoffending population from the robberies and murderous freaks of Rajahs and their bondsmen.* [*Some of these remarks apply specially to Selangor, in which State slavery is now abolished. I. L. B.]
In Perak it is different; the debtor-bondage is one of the chief customs—one of the "pillars of the State"—an abuse jealously guarded by the Perak Rajahs and Chiefs, and especially by those who make the worst uses of it.
I have often discussed this question of debt-slavery with the Malays themselves, but they say they see no way under the rule of their Rajahs to put down this curse of their country, with all the evils that follow in its train. I have, etc.
(Signed) Frank A. Swettenham, (Now Asst. Colonial Secretary
at Singapore.)
The Honorable the Secretary for Native States, Singapore,
Straits Settlements.