As we have before pointed out, in the Sultanate of Bruni, there are various rights claimed. The Sultan has his rights, some districts revert to the holders of certain offices, and others are under the hereditary feudal rule of the pangirans. Limbang pertained to this last category. The Sultan was sovereign, but his sovereign rights consisted in this alone, namely, to send his agents into the country and squeeze it. The feudal lords were the pangirans, and as they could not oppress the exasperated and revolted people any more, they were ready to surrender their rights to the Rajah, but could not do this without the Sultan's confirmation and seal. What the Sultan wanted was that the Rajah should crush the rebellion, so that he might work his vengeance on the Limbang people, and turn the screw on them till nothing more could be extracted from them. This the Rajah perfectly understood, and he declined to do the dirty work for the Sultan. The refusal of assistance by the Rajah produced a coolness on the part of the Sultan. He would not, however, receive this refusal as final, and he repeated his request to the Rajah in an altered form; he requested him to place the gunboat _Aline_ with a strong force of Sarawak Dayaks, also a large sum of money, at his (the Sultan's) disposal, for the purpose of enabling him to reduce the Limbang people under his own officers, if the Rajah himself would not head the expedition. The Rajah's refusal aroused an angry feeling in the breast of Hasim, and this was fanned to bitter hostility, when the Consul-General informed him and the Limbang people simultaneously, in reply to a petition of the latter that they might be placed under the rule of white men, that her Majesty's Government was prepared to consent to the transfer of Limbang to Sarawak. The Sultan's hostile attitude was not shared by his ministers, or by the Bruni people generally, or even by the hereditary owners or rulers of the Limbang. These latter, as has been shown, unable to extract more taxes from the people, hoped to receive from the Sarawak Government an annual stipulated income in lieu of precarious and uncertain exactions. They accordingly begged the Rajah to take over the river. But the Sultan refused to consent, and his refusal was probably actuated even then by motives other than those of revenge and resentment as the sequel will show.