The telegrams from Burmah are still full of stories of
small disasters. The papers talk nonsense about " massacres " of Europeans, of whom three appear to have been killed ; but it is true that the disbanded soldiers and the Shams are attacking large villages to the Eastward. The most important person, the head of the district from which Burmese soldiers are drawn, has, he's-sever, submitted ; and the dacoits do not face anybody sent in pursuit. Mr. Bernard, the Chief Commissioner of British Burmals, has arrived in Mandelay ; and the order of the kingdom, which has been in anarchy for six years, will speedily be restored. It must be noticed that General Prendergast's extremely foolish expulsion of the Times' correspondent has made all reports from Rangoon unfavourable, and multi- plied those which suggest that he is incompetent to his work. He did it very well, nevertheless ; and it is rather hard that he should be expected, with less than three thousand men, and no decree of annexation, to restore order in a dis- orderly country as large as France. It is a great deal safer at this moment to be a European in Barmah than to be a landlord in Ireland ; and we have thirty thousand picked troops cantoned in that island. It is rumoured that the proclamation of annexation is coming out ; hut there is still some hitch, and, according to Baron de Worms, the Government has received unexpected protests from France, and attends to them. In a Liberal Government that would be considered very weak.
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