They have been excluded as much as possible from gaining a footing in Batavia,[[38]] under the plea of their dangerous and usurious pursuits; but the probability is that they would have raised an unpleasant antagonism in the question of competition in that country. The Chinaman would be equal to the Master, or White Man, if both worked fairly by the sweat of his brow. As for their usury, it is not of so dangerous a character as that which prevails among the Javanese and the natives.
Upon my first arrival I was strongly possessed by the opinion that the Chinamen were all rascals and thieves—the character so generally attached to the whole race at home. But to be candid, and looking at both sides, I would as soon deal with a Chinese merchant in the East as with one who is European, and I believe the respectable class of Chinese to be equal in honesty and integrity to the white man.
The Chinese may be nearly as troublesome a people to govern as Europeans, certainly not more so; and their good qualities, in which they are not deficient, should be cherished and stimulated, while their bad ones are regulated by the discipline of the law under a just and liberal government. They are a people specially amenable to justice, and are happier under a stringent than a lenient system.
Of the Chinese the Sarawak Gazette (November 1, 1897) says:—
The characteristics of this extraordinary people must at once strike the minds of the most superficial of European residents in the East. Their wonderful energy and capacity for work; their power of accumulating wealth; their peculiar physical powers, which render them equally fertile, and their children equally vivacious, on the equator as in more temperate regions, and which enable them to rear a new race of natives under climatic conditions entirely different from those under which their forefathers were born, are facts with which we are all acquainted. Their mental endowments, too, are by no means to be despised, as nearly every year shows us, when the results of the examination for the Queen's Scholarship of the Straits Settlements are published, and some young Chinese boy departs for England to enter into educational competition with his European fellows.
Chinese get on well with all natives, with whom they intermarry, the mixed offspring being a healthy and good-looking type. They form the merchant, trading, and artisan classes, and they are the only agriculturists and mine labourers of any worth. Without these people a tropical country would remain undeveloped.
The only census that appears to have been attempted in Sarawak was taken in 1871. Judging by the report that was published in the Gazette this census was made in a very imperfect manner.[[39]] Of the interior population it includes Sea-Dayaks, but no means were obtainable for ascertaining the numbers of Kayans, Kenyahs, and many other tribes that go to make up the population of the State. It makes no separate mention of the large coast population of the Melanaus, who were presumably lumped with the Malays.
The census gives the following figures:—
| Malays | 52,519 |
| Dayaks | 70,849 |
| Chinese | 4,947 |
| Indians | 364 |
| 128,679 | |
| Allowed for evasions and omissions | |
| 10 per cent | 12,867 |
| Total | 141,546 |
The report concedes it was the generally received opinion that the population was nearer 200,000, and if we include the Kayans, Kenyahs, etc., and accept the approximate correctness of the above figures, that estimate would be about correct.