Among Sir James Brooke’s most active friends and supporters was Mr John Abel Smith, who was very intimate with Lord John Russell, our Foreign Minister, and, in 1862, he opened negotiations with him and other Ministers for the recognition of Sarawak as an independent State. At first there was a proposal to make it a Crown Colony, but that was prudently discarded. Then a Protectorate was proposed, and at last all the negotiations centred on one point, the recognition of Sarawak. There was little or no opposition in the Ministry, when someone unfortunately suggested that Lord Elgin, the Governor-General of India, should send over an official to report on the actual condition of Sarawak. The Governor of the Straits Settlements, Colonel Cavanagh, was chosen to prosecute this enquiry. Instead of simply carrying out his instructions, he showed Captain Brooke the secret and confidential papers which had been entrusted to him. The latter thought that his rights were being tampered with, whereas, had he been fully informed, he would have found that recognition was the only question then under the consideration of the Ministry. But Captain Brooke was not quite himself at that time. He had just lost his second wife and his eldest son, and the inquisitiveness of the Governor probably chafed him. Whatever may have been the cause, he wrote to Lord John Russell to say that the country could not be handed over to England without his and the people’s consent, and then sent a defiant letter to his uncle announcing that he had assumed the government of the country and would defend his rights by force. The Rajah could not accept such a defiance. He returned to Sarawak, met his repentant nephew at Singapore, and sent him home on leave. Bad advisers in England induced him to withdraw his submission, and it ended in a complete estrangement between the uncle and nephew. He was deposed from his position as heir apparent, and thenceforth he ceased to have any interest in Sarawak. He had been my most intimate friend, and I regretted his action exceedingly, particularly as it was one of my own confidential memoranda to our Government which had incited his ire. This memorandum related to a different question from that which was before the Government, and had he been more patient he would have learnt that Lord John Russell fully recognised the inhabitants of Sarawak as a free people, whose consent would have been necessary to any transfer.