A blow was immediately struck at the root of this black oppression.  As soon as the new government was fairly established, a few simple enactments were published.  They declared that every man, Dyak as well as Malay, should enjoy unmolested all the gains of his toil; that all exactions of every name and nature should cease, and that only a small tax, evenly distributed, should be levied for the support of government; that all roads and rivers should be free to all; that all molestation of the Dyaks should be punished with severity.  The proclamation which contains these laws concludes with exhorting all persons who are disposed to disturb the public peace to take flight speedily to some other country, where they can break with impunity the laws of God and man.  These enactments were firmly executed, without fear and without partiality.  Wonderful were the results!  Internal violence ceased.  The confidence of the natives was awakened.  Industry and enterprise sprang up on every hand as by magic.  Sarawak became a city of refuge.  Sometimes as many as fifty fled thither in a day.  In 1844, in the short space of two months, five hundred families took shelter in the province.  In 1850, three thousand Chinese fled from Sambas to Sarawak.  The Dyaks returned the good-will of their Rajah with love and reverence.  During one of his tours in the interior, delegations from tribes numbering six thousand souls came to seek his protection.  “We have heard,” said they, in simple but touching language, “that a son of Europe has arrived, who is a friend of the Dyaks.”  When he visited the native hamlets, the women would throw themselves on the ground and clasp his feet, and the whole tribe would spend the night in joyful feasting and merriment.  It is soberly affirmed by a credible witness, that on one occasion messengers came fifteen days’ journey from a distant province to see if there were such a phenomenon as Dyaks living in comfort.

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Mr. Brooke soon found that all his efforts for internal reform must be in a comparative sense futile so long as piracy, that curse of Borneo, was permitted to ravage unchecked.  “It is in a Malay’s nature,” says the Dutch proverb, “to rove on the seas in his prahu, as it is in that of the Arab to wander with his steed on the sands of the desert.”  No person who has not investigated the subject can appreciate how wide-spread and deep-seated this plague of piracy is.  The mere statistics are appalling.  It was estimated, in 1840, that one hundred thousand men made freebooting their trade.  One single chief had under control seven hundred prahus.  Whole tribes, whole groups of islands, almost whole races, despising even the semblance of honest industry, depended upon rapine for a livelihood.  “It is difficult to catch fish, but it is easy to catch Borneans,” said the Soloo pirates scornfully; and, acting upon that principle, they fitted out their fleets and planned their voyages with all the method of honest tradesmen.