But this holds good only for those
who remain in the districts in which they have long been settled.
The sum raised by direct taxation forms now but a small part of the
total revenue of the State of Sarawak; for the development of trade
and agriculture, especially the cultivation of pepper and sago and
rubber, and the growing capacity and facilities for the purchase of
imported goods by the people even of the remotest parts, enable the
government to raise a considerable revenue by indirect taxation in
the form of customs duties.
The minerals, worked in the main by the Borneo Company,[218]
principally gold, antimony, and mercury, have also been an important
source of revenue. The recent discovery of supplies of petroleum
promises to result in an important addition to the wealth of the
country.[219] But these various commercial and industrial developments
affect hardly at all the lives of the pagan tribes, So far as they
are concerned, the work of the government may be summed up by saying
that it has suppressed the chronic warfare which kept them all in a
state of armed hostility and uneasy distrust of one another; that it
has suppressed head-hunting and crimes of violence, has rendered life
and property secure, and has administered justice with a firm hand
and a strict regard to the customs and traditional sentiments of the
people; that it has wellnigh extinguished slavery; that it has opened
the whole country to trade, and, by thus improving the facilities for
sale of the jungle produce, has increased the purchasing power of the
people, while bringing within the reach of all of them the products of
civilised industry that they most value; and that while it has strictly
regulated the sale of those products, such as fire-arms and strong
liquor, which have proved detrimental to so many other peoples of the
lower culture, it has encouraged the people to cultivate a greater
variety of vegetable products, especially sago, coconuts, pepper, and
rubber, and to improve the methods of cultivation of PADI.
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