TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CONQUEST OF BURMAH.
IT is by no means improbable that the sensation of the Recess will be the conquest of Burmah. The Government of India for some years past has doubted whether Lord Dal- housie was wise in refusing to put an end to the Burmese monarchy, and in 1878 had almost made up its mind to attack Mandalay, and either to annex the upper valley of the Irrawaddy, or to seat a vassal Prince on the throne of Ara. We write with confidence, when we say that an expedition had been arranged down to very minute details, when the opera- tion was interrupted by the Russian successes in Turkey, and the consequent necessity of recovering prestige with the British electors by seeking a scientific frontier in Afghanistan. The frontier has been found, a British envoy has been posted in Cabul, and Lord Lytton's hands are left free for an enterprise which offers many attractions. In the first place, a Burmese war would not be a difficult one, for King Theebau has practically no army which could withstand a British division, his troops being half armed, undisciplined, and as against Englishmen, without self-confidence. It .would not be a lengthy one, for with the fall of Mandalay the " Empire " would end ; and Mandalay stands on a river navigable by British steamers, and is defended only by fortifications of the old Asiatic kind,—that is, works in brick, which wouli crumble like sand under modern artillery. It would be quite possible, if Lord Lytton chooses an active General, not in- tent on making the campaign serious, and if the Madras Government will display a little energy, to conquer Burmah before Parliament reassembles, and therefore without the slightest chance of popular interference from home. And the base of operations being the well supplied province of Pegu, already in our own possession, and the main road a river navig- able for transport steamers, the campaign would be a com- paratively cheap one, requiring, probably, no loan. Then the undertaking would be extremely popular in India, both for good and for bad reasons. The Anglo-Indians like the acquisition of paying provinces, not merely because they supply fresh civil appointments, new military commands, and profitable mercantile adventures, but because such provinces help to fill a Treasury about which they are at once selfishly and patriotically anxious. They would not be disinclined to seek compensation for the burden of the rocky and sterile deserts just acquired in the north, in the seizure of rich and taxable districts in the south, and they have for years been saturated with accounts of the great natural resources of Upper Burmah. It is pro- bable that upon this point Indian opinion is in the right. No one knows with anything like scientific accuracy the re- sources of Burmah Proper; but there is a strong, we might in- deed say a violent, presumption that the country, though thinly populated by a race disinclined by a natural content of temper to severe labour, is naturally exceedingly rich. It is a mine of minerals, that is certain, though the minerals in these days may yield little profit ; it contains what is possibly the richest oil district in the world, and it is full of magnificent and hitherto undevastated forests. It is a land full of wheat, rice, petroleum, rubies, and gold, and though only the rice may be valuable, the remaining products touch Indian imaginations. And then,to do our countrymen in India justice, Burmah appeals to the highest of their qualities,—that aggressive benevolence which finds it so difficult to endure the remediable oppression of the weak. The best Anglo-Indians know what kind of oppression it is which reigns in Burmah, an oppression not, indeed, degrading to its victims, like the oppression of Turks on Christians, which turns decent men into slaves ; but utterly inhuman, brutal, and above all, senseless in its methods. The King of Burmah might be one of the richest men in the world, if he had only ordinary sense ; but his plan for obtaining wealth is to crush its sources, by for- bidding all trade but his own. He is as secure as monarch can be, yet he slaughters out all relatives, with the most horrible aggravations of cruelty ; and though no subject would dream of resisting him if he would govern with decent de- spotism, no subject is safe from his suspicious tyranny. The Anglo-Indians are sick of such crimes incessantly perpetrated on their own borders, as sick as Russians of similar scenes in Turkey, feel as if in tolerating them when they could arrest them so easily they were almost sharers in the guilt.
The Government of India, therefore, is far from disinclined for war with Burmah, and it is not likely that the Govern- ment of Great Britain will be very anxious to restrain Lord Lytton. A short and brilliant campaign, begun while Parlia- ment is in recess, and finished as Parliament reassembles by the acquisition of a new kingdom, might reanimate the flag- ging enthusiasm of the votaries of Imperialism, and enable them to describe Lord Beaconsfield as a man who, at all events, had widened the boundaries of the Queen's dominion. It would be a substantial success with which to go to electors who do not know where Burmah is, but who would understand quite well that in Indian judgment the Tory Administration had, on the whole, and allowing for some mis- takes, proved itself in Asia alike vigorous and successful. The English do not at heart dislike new annexations, and are only too ready to condone any conduct which leads to any addition to what they think substantial power. The Government, therefore, will not be unwilling to have its hand forced, and it is more than probable that the crazy being now seated on the Burmese throne will enable Lord Lytton, if he pleases, to force it irresistibly. It is just possible that King Theebau is not quite so demoniacally bad as he is represented to be, but only an ordinary Asiatic monarch, rendered by a varnish of English culture, like Azimoollah, the villain of the Clawnpore tra- gedy, unusually cynical. He has slaughtered out all his accessible relatives, but that was, down to our own time, the unvarying practice of Turkish Sultans ; and he has murdered a good many courtiers, but opinion in Asia holds their lives to be properly at the disposal of the Sovereign. If the story about his half-sisters is true, the man is outside the pale of humanity altogether, and deserves no more mercy than a wolf ; but the evidence for that story is, to say the least of it, as yet insufficient. There is no doubt, however, that Theebau is one of those monarchs who are produced only by Oriental dynasties in decay, an evil lad, drunk with the intoxication of despotism, who has lost the power of restraining his own fury, whose only pleasure is the gratification of unrestrained volition, and who feels no dis- tinction between a decision and a whim. Vanity in a man of that kind becomes a delirium, and so does the desire to realise power, to enjoy the sense of it to the full, by performing some mad act of despotism, or carrying through some danger- ous or forbidden adventure. It would be just like such a Sovereign to attack suddenly and treacherously a Power which he knew to be superior, and still more like him to play with the temptation to attack it,—to do something which is not attack, but which will produce all the dangers an attack would bring. We imagine Theebau is just in that mood.; and if he is, there is no way out of it. Whether he insults the Resident, or invades British Burmah, or fires Ran- goon through emissaries, or invades the Karenee country, after distinct warning that the Karns are under British pro- tection—a warning we were bound by our history to give— makes little difference. If he will do such things, he must go, that is certain.
But we want our countrymen, nevertheless, to consider care- fully what is going on, and watch the conduct of the Govern- ment. Unless we or our dependents are attacked, or the °hare d'Affaires is wilfully insulted, there is no necessity for this war, and the gravest reasons against it. We are not about to declare that such a war would be akin in point of morality to the war in Afghanistan. It would not. The Burmese King would not be attacked because we were afraid to attack a greater Power alleged to be behind him. There is no reason for believing that the world would be the worse for the annexation of Burmah, and much for believing that it would be the better. The Burmese are not fanatic Mussulmans, proud 'of their freedom, and practically irre- concilable; but a rather genial and pleasant people, who like comfort and jollity, and get along with their English masters very fairly well. We have scarcely ever had a riot in all our Burmese provinces, and govern them reason- ably well with the merest show of force. They have always accepted the inevitable quietly enough, and are keenly alive to the blessings of wealth and order, which in these riverine or maritime provinces always follow our rule. But we do not see we are bound to go to Mandalay, unless we are attacked. However infamously the Burmese are governed, they can, if they choose, remedy their own condition. They can kill the King or depose the King, if they please. He is not protected by an idea, for the race of Alompra does not end with him, or by an armed caste devoted to its own ascendancy, or by a great army, or by any power .ozo.reept, it is possible, the mob of the capital, among whom a capricious, hard- drinking, unaccountable despot may be as popular as Nero was
in Rome. The Burmese of Mandalay have only to make a rush on the Palace, defended by men as badly armed as themselves, and the tyranny is at an end. It is more than probable that a mere communication from Calcutta to the Ministers insisting on Theebau's deposition, as the alternative of war, would be followed by a Palace revolution, and the elevation of some man at least as sane as other men to the Burmese throne.
And if we are not bound to go to Mandalay, there is every reason for not going there. The British Government is crushed with responsibilities already. We are loaded with provinces like a savage beauty with metal ornaments. We eat territories so fast, that we have no time to digest them. This very Government, not yet in its teens, has absorbed the Feejee Islands, a whole group larger than the British West Indies ; the Transvaal, half as large as France ; the Suleiman range, say, three Pyrenees ; and Cyprus, not to speak of the Protectorate it has claimed in Asia Minor ; and it has not, nevertheless, added one man to the Regular Army. We have not troops enough for the mere garrison of our estates, and do not know where to get them, so that if a brave tribe anywhere makes a show of resistance, the British Army is " strained " and its organisation dislocated. Is it common-sense, under such circumstances, to take over charge of another large kingdom—God only knows the precise boundaries of Burmah, but its area is either 45,000 square miles, or 185,000, or any number between them, according as we govern or neglect the tributary tribes—with less than two millions of people, and a dependence acknowledged for ages upon Pekin. Do we want these endless Chinese for neighbours? Our readers have doubtless seen the recent German proposal, pub- lished in the Times of Saturday, to form an alliance with China against Russia, and have recognised that., wicked as the proposal is, it is strictly within the possibilities. Do they really want to make it possible for the Russians, or the Germans, or the French, whenever they are sufficiently excited, to throw the Chinese armies, which only yesterday swept away a kingdom on the Burmese frontier, upon British territories ? We will not ask how statesmen can think of such a project, for we are just now not governed by statesmen, but adventurers ; but we may ask what advantage reasonable Englishmen propose to themselves from an enterprise from which even Lord Dalhousie shrank with a kind of horror. If we must conquer Burmah, we must; but to do it willingly, to do it under any compulsion short of actual duty, is folly, and folly of the kind for which empires like ours pay for generations.
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