WHY WE WENT TO BOOTAN.
THE Government of Bengal has at last published through the Calcutta Review what is understood to be its account of the unfortunate embassy to Bootan. It is the first narra- tive at once connected and authentic which has been given to the public, and we are bound to say that it places the discre- tion of the Bengal Government and the action of Mr. Eden in a newer and much less unfavourable light than any which has hitherto made its appearance. The primary motive for the expedition, in the first place, was in itself a sound one. There was no idea of conquest or aggrandizement, and only a secondary one of trade. The Bootanese chiefs who under various titles keep up a permanent anarchy in the country have been accustomed to steal large numbers of British sub- jects, and hold them in a very oppressive form of slavery. They seized, for instance, between November, 1861, and Feb- ruary, 1862, twenty-seven persons, none of whom have everbeen restored, and daring the mutinies they were particularly active in kidnapping. Of course as the marauders issue through particular passes it was possible to prevent some of these incur- sions, and troops were can toned in a position which almost prohibited the inroads. Still considerable numbers of persons were carried off in detail, and every application for redress was treated either with contempt or with a neglect continued for years. The British Government in India has always pur- sued the just and generous policy of protecting all within its dominion as strictly as if they were Englishmen, and it was decided that a last effort must be made to redeem these unhappy slaves through the agency of a mission despatched direct to the highest nominal authority in Bootan. This was supposed to be the Deb Rajah, the elective chief of an anarchy fit petty but almost independent governors. The difficult task was entrusted to the Hon. Ashley Eden, Secretary to Govern- ment, and after many hindrances from the cold—the snow kill- ing two porters—from hostile Rajahs, and from accidents of travel he reached the presence of the governing Durbar. To it he submitted a treaty ensuring the release of the slaves, the payment of compensation for incursions, freedom of trade, and the appointment of a British agent in Bootan. The Durbar accepted the first two clauses but refused the two last, wliich Mr. Eden waived, and matters despite the hostility of the mob, and some insults endured by the Mission, seemed at last iu a fair train for settlement.
Two days sufficed to make a complete change. During that time the most powerful man in the Durbar, styled the Pilo, or Penlow, who had from the first been bitterly opposed to the Mission, contrived to obtain the ascendancy over his colleagues, and the envoy was met on the 26th November with a sudden demand for the cession of the Assam Dooars (passes), and of all the back revenue received since their annexation, calculated at 30,000/. a year. This preposterous demand was at once refused, and then the insults reported by telegram were showered upon the Mission. Mr. Eden's face was smeared with dough, betel was flung in Dr. Simpson's face, and a watch was stolen from another member of the party. Mr. Eden did not, as reported, thereupon sign the treaty ; but retired, and endeavoured to make preparations for his retreat into Bengal, preparations in which he was assisted by one of the members of the Durbar. In a day or two, however, he ascertained that his departure would not be permitted, that the Barber had resolved to arrest him, and that he and his followers would be kept in prison until the treaty was signed. Escape was out of the question unless the Mission abandoned its 280 followers to hopeless slavery, and for armed resistance the Envoy had only fifteen Sikhs. The position was an unpleasant one, for while Mr. Eden and his associates had to fear not merely death or imprisonment but a lingering slavery, their seizure would have forced on the Government the conquest of Bootan at the wrong season of the year. Partly influenced by a sense of duty to the State, partly, we suspect, by the horrible fate which awaited them; a fate a thousand times worse than death, the Mission resolved unanimously that for the sake of their followers as well as themselves the treaty must be signed. It was signed, "with the words under compulsion attached to the signature, and it is needless to point out that a treaty obtained in such circumstances, signed by-an Envoy having no authority to agree to such terms, and unratified by the Government, is no more than waste-papor." We ques- tion if the compulsion was explained to the native chiefs, interpreters naturally failing just at the critical point, but at any rate the embassy was released, and reached Darjeeling without any further interruption. The Government of course refused to ratify any such agreement, the garrison watching the Dooars was strengthened, and there the matter apparenlly has remained.
It is a melancholy affair, the policy of the Government of India making all its envoys in filet plenipotentiaries; but the
Government of Bengal was not originally greatly in the wrong. It was bound to redeem its subjects, and do it if possible without declaring war, and all other means save a mission had been tried in vain. It remained to adopt that resource, and the- Government is, we think, only to blame in the terms of agreement offered to the Durbar. There was nothing in its proposal to conciliate anybody, no quid pro quo suggested,
while the demand for the admission of' an envoy is under- stood all over India to imply the extinction of local independence. Nothing but force induces any of these hill chiefs to receive an agent, who is certain in a few years to become 'their master, and the Bootanese were known to entertain the Chinese hatred of outsiders in addition to the Asiatic distrust of all European designs. As the Government did not intend to employ force it should have employed money, and enabled the envoy to make the safety of the mission matter of direct interest to some one chief. The slaves should have been purchased back, the Dooars garri- soned till kidnapping became visibly hopeless. As to Mr.
Eden, if he shrank from anything it was not from the terror of death but of a lengthened imprisonment, or lingering slavery, and though he ought even under those circumstances to have refused his signature, still he had a distinct political reason for averting his own arrest, and the bravest may shrink from a fate compared with which a public execution would be mercy. For the rest the alternatives before the Government of India seem clear. Either it must treat the atrocious outrage passed upon its envoy as a cause of war, or it must buy Mr. Eden's treaty and the unhappy slaves back the best way it can. The' latter would be the cheaper and perhaps the fairer course; but in any case simple quiescence is. forbidden by duty towards our own subjects. if we have any claim on the natives at all it is clearly this, that under our sceptre they are safe from all overt foreign attack. When quiet villagers are liable to be carried off by tribes, however wild, that claim comes to an end, and we remain masters by a right which has in it no one element either of contract or of political morality.
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