he province of
Tenasserim, as "the Directors of the East India Company looked upon this
territory as of no value to them." For a quarter of a century peace was
preserved, for there ruled at Ava a prince "who was too clear-sighted to
attempt again to measure arms with the British troops." Anon he was
succeeded by a new king--the Pagan Prince--"who cared for nothing but
mains of cocks, games, and other infantile amusements," and who, after
the manner of Oriental despots, inaugurated his reign by putting to
death his two brothers and all their households. "There were several
hundreds of them." It is not surprising that under a ruler addicted to
such practices the British sailors who frequented the Burmese ports
should have been subjected to maltreatment. Their complaints reached the
ears of the iron-fisted and acquisitive Lord Dalhousie, who himself
went to Rangoon in 1852, and forthwith "decided on the immediate attack
of Prome and Pegu." M. Dautremer speaks in flattering terms of "the
tenacity and persistence of purpose which make the strength and glory of
British policy." He might truthfully have added another characteristic
feature which that policy at times displays, to wit, sluggishness. It
was not until sixteen years after Lord Dalhousie's annexation of Lower
Burma that the English bethought themselves of improving their newly
acquired province by the construction of a railway, and it was not till
1877 that the first line from Rangoon to Prome--a distance of only one
hundred and sixty-one miles--was opened. During all this time King
Mindon ruled in native Burma. He "gave abundant alms to monks," and,
moreover, which was perhaps more to the purpose, he was wise enough to
maintain relations with Great Britain which were "quite cordial."
Eventually the Nemesis which appears to attend on all semi-civilised and
moribund States when they are brought in contact with a vigorous and
aggressive civilisation appeared in the person of the "Sapaya-lat," the
"middle princess," who induced her feeble husband, King Thibaw, to carry
out massacres on a scale which, even in Burma, had been heretofore
unprecedented. Then the British on the other side of the frontier began
to murmur and "to consider whether it was possible to endure a neighbour
who was so cruel and so unpopular." All doubts as to whether the limits
of endurance had or had not been reached were removed when the
impecunious and spendthrift king not only imposed a very unjus