ABSTRACT
In no sphere was British influence more beneficent than in the sphere of law. But British was not the first European influence experienced in one Malay port: Malacca had been under the reign of both Portuguese and Dutch law. The Portuguese appointed leading citizens as magistrates with civil and criminal jurisdiction, and from their decision appeal lay to a Chief Justice; but there was no divorce between the judiciary and the executive, because in criminal cases triable in his court the Chief Justice had to apply for the advice and confirmation of the Governor. To adjudicate in the disputes of the Minangkabaus of Naning and to punish their misdeeds, a Portuguese was appointed bailiff for life, but he too had administrative functions. The Bendahara appointed by the Portuguese to have jurisdiction over foreign Asiatics in Malacca derived part of his income from fines. Portuguese justice, indeed, was no less corrupt than Portuguese administration, and it was the Portuguese from whom words for “rack”, “torture” and “dungeon” crept into the Malay language. Then, when in 1641 Malacca was wrested from Portugal by the Dutch, the Malays came under a people with a profound respect for law, but it was still law that adjudged the ferocious punishments of the age. When the crew of a Dutch patrol ship butchered the crew and passengers of a Moorish ship off Kedah in revolting circumstances, the Netherlands East India Company with even-handed justice sentenced the offenders to lose their right hands and be broken on a cross before execution. Keel-hauling was regarded as a mild punishment for the Company’s servants. And slaves were liable to inhuman floggings. Such had been the law of the conqueror before the British period, and it was a happy accident of history that by the time the British came to impose a uniform system of criminal law throughout the Malay peninsula, law, or, as Hobbes called it, “the public conscience”, was coloured with the humane ideas that had followed the French Revolution. When Lord Minto burnt the stocks and the racks and released the debtors from the Dutch prison at Malacca, it was no idle gesture but the symbol of a new era.
