So late as June, 1877, when the Rajah had long been dead, Mr. Gladstone in addressing the House on the question of Turkey and Bulgarian atrocities, and probably as a comparison, said, "I cannot recollect a more shameful proceeding on the part of any country than the slaughter of the Dayaks by Her Majesty's forces and by Sir James Brooke."
Earl Grey and Admiral Farquhar published indignant replies. Mr. Bailie-Cochrane[185] took Mr. Gladstone to task in the House, whereupon the latter shuffled out of what he had said with less than his usual ingenuity, by saying that he never meant to blame the Rajah personally, but only the Government. The following is from Earl Grey's reply:—
The additional information respecting him which I have since gained has only tended to confirm the impression I then received that his character was a truly noble one, and I am sanguine enough to believe that it would be regarded in the same light by yourself if you would be induced to read the letters he addressed to his mother in the early part of his career as Rajah of Sarawak. These, to my mind, most beautiful letters are to be found in the very interesting life of Sir James Brooke published some months ago by Miss Jacob. They were written while the events they describe were going on, to a mother whom he passionately loved, obviously without the remotest idea that they would ever be published, and contain an account, bearing the clearest impress of truth and sincerity of all that he did, and of the feelings and motives by which he was guided. We find in them a touching record of his pity for the oppressed Dayaks,[186] of his righteous indignation against the oppressors, of his noble self-devotion, and of his fixed determination to hazard, and if necessary to sacrifice for their welfare, not only the whole of his moderate fortune, but ease, health, and life itself, while he steadily refused to listen to all attempts that were made to induce him to use the position he had acquired for his own personal advantage.
The Commission had done no serious harm with his own loyal people. They heard with bewilderment that the man on whom their prosperity, and indeed their security, depended, had been maligned in England, and was to be tried as a malefactor in Singapore, and their dread was lest he should be taken from their head, or should throw up his task in disgust, and the country be allowed to relapse into oppression and anarchy; for so surely as the Rajah left, would the pangirans return and resume their blood-sucking operations on one side, and on the other the pirates recover from their humiliation and recommence their depredations, and so they would perish between the upper and nether millstone.