range of our guns. Our forts were attacked, our convoys
ambushed, our steamers fired into on the rivers. There was no safety for
an Englishman or a native of India, save within the lines of our
troops, and it was soon felt that these troops were far too few to cope
with the danger. To overthrow King Thibaw was easy, to subdue the people
a very different thing.

It is almost impossible to describe the state of Upper Burma in 1886. It
must be remembered that the central government was never very strong--in
fact, that beyond collecting a certain amount of taxes, and appointing
governors to the different provinces, it hardly made itself felt outside
Mandalay and the large river towns. The people to a great extent
governed themselves. They had a very good system of village government,
and managed nearly all their local affairs. But beyond the presence of a
governor, there was but little to attach them to the central government.
There was, and is, absolutely no aristocracy of any kind at all. The
Burmese are a community of equals, in a sense that has probably never
been known elsewhere. All their institutions are the very opposite to
feudalism. Now, feudalism was instituted to be useful in war. The
Burmese customs were instituted that men should live in comfort and ease
during peace; they were useless in war. So the natural leaders of a
people, as in other countries, were absent. There were no local great
men; the governors were men appointed from time to time from Mandalay,
and usually knew nothing of their charges; there were no rich men, no
large land-holders--not one. There still remained, however, one
institution that other nations have made useful in war, namely, the
organization of religion. For Buddhism is fairly well
organized--certainly much better than ever the government was. It has
its heads of monasteries, its Gaing-dauks, its Gaing-oks, and finally
the Thathanabaing, the head of the Burmese Buddhism. The overthrow of
King Thibaw had not injured any of this. This was an organization in
touch with the whole people, revered and honoured by every man and woman
and child in the country. In this terrible scene of anarchy and
confusion, in this death peril of their nation, what were the monks
doing?

We know what religion can do. We have seen how it can preach war and
resistance, and can organize that war and resistance. We know what ten
thousand priests preaching in ten thousand hamlets can effect in making
a peop