Note 22 — Chapter XVIII

If the reader will refer to the “Times” of the 29th of September, 1854, he will perceive that a liberal collection was made at St. James’s, Piccadilly, for the Borneo Mission. In the same journal, three days earlier, the police magistrates express their regret that want of funds compels them to deny assistance to surviving sufferers from the cholera! All have, of course, a right to do as they like with their money; but after the hat had passed round at St. James’s, I should have liked to have seen its liberal contents transferred at once to Bermondsey instead of to Kuchin. And for this reason, that I know, from personal experience, that my old friends the Dyaks are as fat and sleek a people as any in the world, well fed, well housed, and free from disease, whilst the stomachs of those at Spitalfields, charitable sir, are aching with the hunger that drives man to crime!