RAJAH BROOK-LIEUT. WAGHORN

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 462, 5 January 1850, Page 3

RAJAH BROOK-LIEUT. WAGHORN

Notwithstanding our resolution to Cut the estimates, seeing they cannot be cat down, still the prominence given in last week's letter to the censure of governmental expenditure on Labuan, excusably prompts a reference to Cobden's energetic and repeated remonstrance last nigh against the profligate squandering of money on that bead* Many of the Leaguer's remarks seemed to hint at something behind the scenes ; and the truth will out one of these fine days, that our particularly romantic, heroic, chivalric, and philofrt? friend, the Rajah of Sarawak, is an accomplished jobber. People do say here in the city that be is considerably deeper in the Eastern Archipelago Company than befits a representative of her Majesty, and one who has a touch of oriental' sovereignty in himself. And talking of things Eastern you will be concerned to hear that the overland route experiments, via Trieste, in the winter of 1846-7, have left expenses behind them likely to place Waghorn on a par with those somewhat kindred spirits, Raleigh and Columbus, in the matter of a gaol, if Parliament do not liquidate the liabilities he incurred by the direction of the, officials, who took vast credit in the defeat' of Guizot and the French ministry in five out of the six trips, but only paid four out of six thousand pounds outlay attendant thereon. Waghorn is about addressing to members of Parliament a private circular, which is quite a curiosity in its way, and strongly characteristic of the man. The first paragraph is worth quoting, if only for giving us a peep at a hitherto unpublished bit of expenditure on the part of the Premier :—: — "Of the many contrarieties that have marked a life full of vicissitudes, not the least singular in itself and mortifying to me is, that I should have to appear as a claimant for public justice almost immediately after being a recipient of public bounty. The First Minister of the Crown lately recommended me to Parliament for a grant of £1,500. Parlia- > roent unanimously sanctioned that recommendation, and the public vote approved of it. Further, the First Minister, with a personal anxiety for my welfare, which I shall ever regard as the most flattering recognition of my services, presented me with a gratuity of £200 from a source the Sovereign has placed at his disposal for such purposes* And lastly, my fellow citizens of London and the other great commercial ports of the empire, testified their appreciation of my contributions to the general good of the Anglo-Indian community in a manner of which the most ambitions benefactor of his species might well be proud. Yet, in the face of these facts, I am driven to appeal to the country to rid me of liabilities ! incurred on behalf of the country — incurred by the direction of the official representative of the country, and for which those representatives are, in faith, and honour, and justice, bound, though my creditors cannot recover ! against them, and to satisfy which all my private exertions, and the devotion of all that has been given to me is unavailing; leaving me an impoverished, harrassed, distracted debtor, while nominally a favoured servant of the public." He then proceeds to give a history, first, of the Trieste experiments, and, secondly, of the original overland route, the latter being a perfect romance in its way, his opponent at every step being the India house and those who, one would imagine, ought to have been his most zealous auxiliaries. How, after overcoming all these difficulties, he ingratiated himself with Mehemet AH, planted hotels at Alexandria, Cairo, Suez, &c, and familiarized the Desert with the spectacle of horses, vans, and all the usual adjuncts of English travel, instead of the unchanging Arab and his primeval camel ; how, when realizing a rapid fortune, he was overwhelmed by the Peninsular and Oriental Company's getting the monopoly of a carrying charter — and by the hostility of his old enemy the India-house, with whose snail's pace doings and dogmatizings he had no patience ; how these and fifty other matters fell out this is not the place to tell. Towards the end he says v — " Such is an outline of twenty years' foil and anxiety, resulting in almost irreparable, damage to the mind, body, fortune, and fair commercial character of the writer, who is solicitor, not for himself, his personal wants being few and the domestic claims upon him trivial, but for his country's creditors, for, he repeats, it is debts contracted solely in his capacity of a public servant that oppress him, and without the liquidation of which it is impossible he can spend his remaining days in the peace of mindlabours like his should, he conceives, entitle him to." It is not a little singular that just on the eve of Waghorn making this statement, Sir John Pirie should have returned from Egypt, and detailed to the Peninsular and Oriental Company (see city article of yesterday's Times) how advantageously he had carcied out those very plans which the gallant pi-

oncer ef the overland route had initiated, but, alas, with the usual personal profit that results tQ the conception of original genius. — London Correspondent of Liverpool Albion.