a year, mentioned by the Sultan in his letter as suitable compensation for the loss of his trading privileges. In the communications which had passed at the outset this part of the conditions outlined had been discreetly evaded. But now it was found a convenient handle by which to exert pressure. Light was too well acquainted with the environment of the Sultan's Court-to give the somewhat sordid Royal ménage a high-sounding description—to be seriously alarmed at the claim. But he, nevertheless, wrote to India strongly representing to the authorities there the necessity of coming to terms. No arrangement, he stated, would, in his opinion, be acceptable which did not promise the King protection. Without such an alliance as would compel the King to furnish the Settlement at all times with provisions and prevent other European nations from settling in any other part of the country, Penang would be subject to many inconveniences. He proceeded: "Should the Siamese be permitted to take possession of his [the Sultan's] country, we shall not only find an insolent and troublesome neighbour, but be under the necessity of assisting them in their wars or go to war with them ourselves. I humbly conceive that it will be easier, and attended with less expense to the Honourable Company to declare at once the King of Kedah under our protection; little else than the name of the Company will be wanted; the longer it is delayed the greater will appear the consequence of the island, and the more difficulty there will be in fixing a settlement. The Danes, the Dutch, and the French have solicited permission to have only a house in Kedah; either of them will promise much, and should the King consider himself aggrieved or disappointed by the English, he may in despair seek for other alliance." Light's arguments were irresistible if the object of the occupation of Penang were

the consolidation of British interests in the Straits. But a cold fit had supervened in India on the first warm burst of approval with which the scheme for the new Settlement had been received, and his vigorous, and, if we may say so, statesmanlike communications missed their mark. The bent of the official mind is illustrated in a minute, penned by the Governor-General (Sir John Macpherson) quite early in the occupation before the monetary demand had been seriously formulated. The minute declared that the then embarrassed state of the finances did not warrant the occupation. Money was required for other and more important objects. The plan, however, had now gone too far to be hastily retracted. He should, therefore, consider it his duty to promote its success as far as he could consistently with the rigid economy which their present circumstances so loudly called for. Not encouraging, this, for a man who was faced by a situation calling so urgently as that at Penang did for the application of an energetic and liberal policy. That Light felt at the time that his hold on Penang was precarious is clearly shown in the letter he addressed to Lord Cornwallis at Madras while that eminent peer was on his way to Calcutta to assume the reins of Government as the first of the great line of rulers of India drawn from the ranks of British public men. Light, writing on December 15, 1786, earnestly supplicated his lordship's attention in favour of the young Settlement, which position he pointed out was urgently needed for upholding British interests in the face of the aggressive policy of the Dutch. There is no evidence that any direct reply was given to the appeal, and the tenour of the official communications which passed subsequently does not suggest any very deep interest on Lord Cornwallis's part in the Company's new acquisition in the Straits. It seems probable that the question was prejudiced

by the jealousy of a clique or faction at the capital who were inimical to Light and spread stories to his disadvantage. An element of plausibility was lent to the attacks by the course adopted by Light in joining in business with his friend Scott and monopolising most of the trade of the new station. There was nothing irregular about this, as Light was left a free hand where his own private affairs were concerned, and in any event he only followed the custom which up to that time had prevailed almost universally at the Company's distant stations of the officials engaging in private trade. But it made him enemies in many quarters, and gave point to the charges which were circulated that in founding Penang he had his eye far more to his own interests than to those of the Company. His memory was ultimately so brilliantly vindicated that we find the writer of an official paper,1 prepared it would seem not long after Light's death, in quite heroic style, citing Chatham's famous declaration that the American Colonies were "the brightest jewels in the British diadem " to give point to a declaration in relation to Penang that "the national glory which he viewed sinking in the West had, like the resplendent original to which he emblematically alluded, risen again in the East with renewed splendour."

* "A Memoir of Prince of Wales's Island, considered Politically and Commercially" ("Straits Settlements Records," vol. i.).

CHAPTER VI

PENANG ATTAINS ITS MAJORITY

Land development-Trouble with the Sultan of Kedah-Conclusion of treaties-Light's views on the Administration-His illness and death-His character-The Manila Expeditionary Force at Penang-Colonel Wellesley's Memoir-Conquest of Malacca -Penang made a Presidency.

LIGHT found Penang a jungle: he left it a garden. All the arts of the tropical agriculturist as then known were called in aid to make the island a centre of production as well as of distribution. Plantations rose on every side with extraordinary celerity having regard to the precariousness of the tenure of the Settlement at that early period. To the original beauties of a scene, famed even in that region of opulent natural charm, were added the luxuriant but ordered growths of the pepper garden, the gambier plantation, and of the orchards in which the common fruits of the tropical world were cultivated with extraordinary success. Light's influence counted for much in securing this highly valuable result. There was trust in his word that the British had come to stay, and men were content to sink the capital represented by their labour in the work of development. Their path no doubt was made easy by the liberal regulations which Light introduced relative to the land. He made free grants to practically any one who would undertake to remove the jungle growth and plant the cleared area with products required for the sustenance

of the Settlement and its future enrichment. In so doing he was acting well within his instructions, but in afteryears there was a disposition shown by the authorities to repudiate his grants, and it was only after the most energetic representations that the policy was abandoned. It is morally certain that without the incentive offered by a free grant with undisturbed possession Penang would never have been settled. We may, perhaps, go farther and say that only a man of Light's extraordinary influence could have effected what he did even with the potent aid of unlimited land grants. The whole melancholy history of Bencoolen is a standing proof of the sterilising incapacity of the ordinary officialdom of that period when faced with the problem of building up a British community in Malaya. Yet there were men sitting in their chairs in the recesses of the Government offices at Calcutta to carp and cavil at the foolish generosity of his grants, and even to hint far from obscurely at the existence of motives not altogether disinterested in the making of them. One official, however, was there to do him full justice. This was Captain Kyd, the functionary who had surveyed Penang on its occupation in 1787. Kyd was despatched from Calcutta in 1793 to settle doubts which had arisen in the official mind as to the comparative advantages of the Settlement formed in the Andaman Islands in the previous year, and Penang as a port of refitment and refreshment for vessels of war. In his report to the Government, Captain Kyd drew an interesting comparison between the Settlement as he saw it in 1787 and as it

"QUERIES BY LIGHT TO THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL.

"People will come from Malacca, from the coast of Coromandel, and many other places to settle at Penang: it will be necessary to grant them a proportion of land and to establish a police for their security."-" Note (by the Governor-General): That would be proper" ("Straits Settlements Records," vol. 1).