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The annual revenue paid to Borneo was 300 reals; but they were subject to extra demands, and to the extortions of the powerful chiefs.
The destinies are with us. The Mameluke Beys who favour exclusively English commerce, whose extortions oppress our merchants, and who tyrannise over the unfortunate inhabitants of the Nile, a few days after our arrival will no longer exist. The people amongst whom we are going to live are Mahometans. The first article of their faith is this: "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet."
His extortions were the more resented since he kept no order; the environs of the city swarmed with brigands and footpads, and kidnappers were allowed to work their will inside the city. At length the burgesses seized an opportunity, when the bishop was away in England, to set up a commune.
His triumphs were but few, his fall ignominious. His father's treasure was squandered, the curse of a standing army fixed upon his people, the trade and manufactures of the country paralyzed by his extortions, and he accomplished nothing.
Thirdly, it will act as a Poor Man's Tribune, and will undertake the defence of friendless prisoners supposed to be innocent, together with the resistance of illegal extortions, and the prosecution of offenders who refuse legal satisfaction for the wrongs they have committed.
Like ignorant farmers, who exhaust fertile fields by forcing crops; they rapidly ruined their vast and rich empire by exorbitant exactions. Inexorable conquerors and insatiable masters, with one hand they flogged their slaves and with the other plundered them. Nothing was superior to their insolence, nothing on a level with their greed. They were never glutted, and never relaxed their extortions.
This intemperance having come to the ears of the King, his indignation was excessive; but, as on previous occasions, he lacked the moral courage to assert his dignity; and satisfied himself by bitter complaints to Sully of the fatal hold which her two Italian attendants had secured upon the affections of the Queen, and by replying to the reproaches of Marie upon the subject of his new attachment for Charlotte des Essarts, and the continued insolence of Madame de Verneuil, with vehement upbraidings on the vassalage in which she lived to the indecent caprices and shameless extortions of a waiting-woman and her husband.
He had been left by Alexander at Ecbatana in charge of the royal treasures, and appears also to have held the important satrapy of Babylon. During the absence of Alexander in India he gave himself up to the most extravagant luxury and profusion, squandering the treasures intrusted to him, at the same time that he alienated the people subject to his rule by his lustful excesses and extortions.
The impression then made on his mind and heart, led him, afterwards, to other and more extensive and efficacious measures for the relief of poor debtors from the extortions and oppressions to which they were subjected by gaolers, and from the humiliation and distress in which they were often involved without any fault of their own, or by some conduct which deserved pity rather than punishment.
This measure made Usui feudatory to Karague, so that much of the produce of the extortions committed in Usui went to Karague, and therefore they were recognised, though the odium always rested on Suwarora, "the savage extortioner," rather than on the mild-disposed king of Karague, who kept up the most amicable relations with every one who visited him.
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