Of the many other parts which go to make up the working machinery of a great province nothing has been said, as the object of this account is to show how peace and order were restored, or rather given, to Burma. Along and step by step with this rough work, however, every part of an advanced administration began to take shape. There was none which was not, at the very least, called into existence.

The revenue of Upper Burma increased from £222,000 in 1886-7 to £1,120,000 in the year 1889-90. No new taxes were imposed. The revenue grew by careful administration. From the year 1888 I had the assistance of Mr. Fryer as Financial Commissioner in dealing with this branch of the work, and the subject of the land revenue of the Upper Province was examined more minutely than had been possible before. In 1889 a regulation declaring the law relating to rights of land and formulating a complete system of revenue law for Upper Burma was framed in Burma, and passed by the Governor-General in Council. In it provision was made for the gradual survey and assessment of the land; and before the end of 1890 the cadastral survey had broken ground in two districts in which the cultivated area was largest.

The Forest Department had been busy from the first, and progress had been made in ascertaining the condition and resources of the great teak forests of Upper Burma.

The Government of India had treated Burma with generosity in the matter of money for public works. The extent of our undertakings was limited by the difficulty of obtaining a competent staff, rather than by a deficiency of funds. The expenditure on barracks and other accommodation for troops at stations where garrisons were to be permanently kept was necessarily large. At district headquarters in civil stations, court-houses, and (where necessary) jails had been built, and court-houses had also been provided in many subdivisions. The irrigation works in KyauksÈ were not neglected, and the Mu Canal scheme in the ShwÈbo district had been taken in hand. The railway to Mandalay was opened in March, 1889, and the surveys for the Mu Valley line, which was to take the rails up the right bank of the river and through all the difficult country traversed by Major Adamson's expedition in 1887-8, had been completed and construction had begun.

Great attention had been paid to the improvement of communications, including several difficult hill-roads. A good cart-road had been made from the river to the ruby mines. Another from Mandalay to Maymyo was being taken on to Lashio; and, from Meiktila to Kalaw on the Shan plateau, seventy-six miles, a road was well advanced. The land-locked Yaw country had been opened up, and a mule-track from Kalewa on the Chindwin to Fort White in the Chin Hills had been finished. Roads over the Yomas, which had sheltered the MagwÈ dacoits, had been completed.

The money, poured into the country for roads and buildings, apart from the railway expenditure, was nearly all spent on native labour and on material produced in the country. In the aggregate it was more than the sums received as revenue. That it, along with the railway expenditure on labour, helped largely in settling the country directly and indirectly, is certain. If Indian and Chinese Shan coolies were employed, it was because Burman labour was not forthcoming.

Nor had some of the refinements of administration been neglected. In the larger towns a simple system of municipal government was introduced, care being taken not to hurry a somewhat primitive people accustomed to corrupt methods and with little sense of responsibility along the slippery paths of local self-government.

In the middle of 1890 a Judicial Commissioner was appointed for Upper Burma. I accepted this refinement more reluctantly than I would have welcomed a reduction of the garrison. But the character of the man appointed to the post (the late Mr. Hodgkinson) was an assurance that there would be no display of judicial pyrotechnics, such as lawyers sometimes indulge in, and that some regard would be paid to the conditions under which our officers were working.

The provision of medical aid for the people was taken in hand energetically, under the guidance of Dr. Sinclair, who administered the medical department of the whole of Burma. It was not possible to provide substantial public hospitals, and at first only temporary buildings were erected. Excellent permanent hospitals had been built for the military police, and on their withdrawal it was intended that these buildings should be converted into civil hospitals.

Vaccination was introduced also, and every district was furnished with the means of protection against smallpox. The people came readily to be vaccinated, and no Burman, so far as I know, expressed an objection, conscientious or other, to being protected from the ravages of a loathsome disease. But they are comparatively a backward race and still have much to learn.

In the matter of education, it was not the time to do much, and I was inclined to walk very warily in Upper Burma. The Director of Public Instruction was sent round the province in 1889 to examine the condition of the existing schools; and on his report a beginning was made by appointing an inspector and some assistant inspectors, more to ascertain and collate facts than with a view to active interference. Later on the grant-in-aid rules in force in the lower province were introduced. The author of the Burma Gazetteer (vol. i., p. 132) writes: "Missionary schools are now plentiful, and lay schools, both public and private, abound; but the bed-rock of vernacular education in Burma is still monastery teaching, and with it is intimately bound up the educational welfare of the people."

I am inclined to agree with this statement. The system of monastic schools has, I think, been an immense boon to the people of Burma, and if only the monks could be roused to educate themselves more and to cast off some of their old ideas I should like to see it maintained.

The danger is that the contact with Western knowledge and ascertained fact may destroy the belief of the young Burmans in the monastic teaching, and this danger is increased, if it is not caused, by the superstitious ignorance of the monks and their inability to disentangle the moral teaching of their great founder from the cobwebs of fairy tales, about the form and nature of the earth and the like. With this in mind, a beginning was made towards inducing the Pongyis to employ certificated assistant teachers in the monastic schools.

Western teaching may, however, have less effect on Eastern faiths than we think. I was visiting a lay school in Burma one day, I forget where, but I was talking to one of the pupils, a very intelligent boy. I asked him about the shape of the earth, and so on. He had it all pat, the conventional proofs included. I said: "Now, you know what the Pongyis teach, which do you believe—what you have learnt here, or in the monastery?" He replied unhesitatingly, "What the Pongyis tell me, of course." "Why then," I asked, "did you say the earth was round and went round the sun?" "Oh," he said, "I must say that or I should not pass the examinations; but I believe the other." There may be more intelligent students, even at a riper age, of the same mind as this boy. Sometimes, perhaps, in the West, it is the other way about.

On the 10th of December, 1890, I surrendered my charge to Sir Alexander Mackenzie,[68] one of the ablest men of his time in India.

In his summary of the Administration Report of Burma, for the year 1890-1, dated December 21, 1891, is written: "Upper Burma being now perfectly tranquil, it is not necessary to describe separately the progress made in the pacification of each district. The fact that there were fewer crimes in Upper than in Lower Burma during the year is sufficient proof that except in certain frontier tracts the work is complete."

It is pleasant to most of us to know that our work is appreciated by others. It pleased me the other day, and it may please those for whom I have put together this rough account of the pacification of Burma to read this passage from the "Shans at Home," by Mrs. Leslie Milne and the Rev. Wilbur Willis Cochrane (p. 29):—

"At the time of the annexation, every part of the Shan highlands west of the Salween was ravaged with war, Shans against Shans and Burmans against them all. To bring peace and an era of prosperity, put an end to feuds, settle the disputes of princes, re-establish the people in their homes, and organize out of chaos a helpful and strong government was no easy task. That it was accomplished with so small a force, so quickly and with so little opposition, was due to the energy, ability, and tact of the British officials upon whom the Government had placed responsibility.

"Immediately after the annexation, began the era of improvement. Twenty-four years have passed since then. The British peace officers have retired, or are retiring, but they leave behind them a prosperous and peaceful people. The towns are growing towards their former dimensions; wealth and trade are increasing beyond all expectations. Population is rapidly increasing. A mother with her little child can travel alone from Mogaung to the border of Siam, and from Kengtung to Rangoon, with comfort and perfect safety."

[68] The late Sir Alexander Mackenzie, K.C.S.I., afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.