the other hand, there is a large and ever increasing body of patient, orderly and industrious labourers flowing southwards from the parent source, who meet with every inducement to settle in the undeveloped regions of Borneo, Sumatra and the Malayan Peninsula; these men not only engage in tillage, but are the most successful traders in the East. The mercantile section have established for themselves connections in almost all the islands to which our foreign commodities are carried; their agents reside in Sumatra, Java, Borneo and on the Indo-Chinese mainland, collecting produce by barter with the natives, to whom they are not infrequently related by social, as well as commercial ties. In this way much of the produce shipped from the East passes through the hands of Chinese middlemen, or they forward it direct to their agents in Europe and America. The great majority of the Chinese who emigrate to the Straits Settlements are natives of the island of Hainan, or of the Kwangtang or Fukien provinces. Should they intermarry with the Malays, the children of such parents assume the dress and acquire the language of the father in addition to an English education in the Government schools. They also obtain commercial training under the compradors employed by European firms to deal directly with the natives in buying and selling produce, and the result of this is that a large percentage of the direct trade has passed into the hands of the Chinese. They have indeed adopted the philosophy of Bacon, which differs from that of Plato and Confucius, its sole aim being "to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man," while that of the Platonic and Chinese philosophy was "to raise us far above vulgar wants." The aim of the Baconian philosophy was "to supply our vulgar wants," and this is the business to which the immigrant from Cathay devotes his energies, when
