Note 2 — Chapter IV · Decline of Sulu, 1851–1896

The resentment of Spain, as visited upon the Sultan of Sulu, seems equally impolitic and unjust. The pretext was piracy, of which some solitary instance may very possibly have been established against a Sulu prahu; but the Sultan was certainly sincere in his wish to coöperate against that system. There is ground to fear that national jealousy was desirous of striking its puny blow at an European rival, through the degradation of the Sultan of Sulu—that he has incurred, in fact, the resentment of the Spanish colonial governors, by those commercial treaties with ourselves which were but lately concluded by Sir James Brooke.2