The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-07-10 00:00:00

"OUR RELATIONS WITH BURMAH."

The Times of Tuesday has the following leader
Our relations with Burmah are becoming uncomfort-
ably like what they were before the war of 1852. Sir
Douglas Forsyth seems to have completely failed to
gain the guarantees for which he went to Mandalay.
The King was polite in his own way, it is true, for he
paid barbaric respect to our Envoy by sending kuards
of honour to meet him, and troops of Royal dancers to
charm his leisure hours during the voyage up the
Irrawady. Oriental cunning is profuse in the dispensa-
Coil of cheap civilities, and never more so than when
it intends to deceive. But the King seems to have
yielded nothing-of substantial importance. The first
demand was that he should explain why he had done
extraordinary honour to the Chinese General Le esee tahi.
That personage waylaid Major Sladen's Expedition
to Western China in 1868, and would, doubtless,
have murdered the whole company if it had not been
aided by a friendly band of Panthays. He is also
believed to be responsible for the murder of Mr.
Margary, and to have committed that crime with the
full consent of the Burmese Government, It is like-
wise said that he commands a force of severalthousand
men, and that he has offered to put them at the com-
mand of the King if bhat Potentate should wish to
make war on England. These statements give a
peculiar significance to the all but Royal honours with
which the Chinese chief was received at the Court of
Mandalay. We may conjecture, however, that the
King has offered plausible excuses, for the rudest
Oriental diplomacy is rich in the resources of equivoca-
tion. Sir Douglas Forsyth may have deemed it pru-
dent to accept empty explanations rather than break
off negociations at the outset. But more difficulty was
presented by the King's demand either that we should
abandon some of the Karennee villages which lie on
the British side of the boundary line or that we should
allow them to become neutral territory. It has
became almost a maxim of our Eastern policy that we
must not give up any land we have ever seized, lest
the neighbouring States should attribute our conduct
to weakness. We acted on that principle when we
drew the lines of British Burmah in 1853 and it is in-
teresting to remember that tile last political or military
decision given by the Duke of Wellington related to
this very point. In a paper drawn up at the sugges-
tion of Lord Ellenborough, only three weeks before the
Duke died, he marshalled with all his old dearness of
argument and firmness of style the reasons why we
should abandon no part of Burmah that we had con-
quered; and those reasons are so applicable to the pre-
sent 'case that we shall be surprised if Sir Douglas
r Forsyth has agreed to shift the boundary line even by
a single fort. But the most critical of all his demands
was the third. We required a pledge from the King
that our troops should be allowed to pass through his
dominion; and the King has refused. If His Majesty
had not attached the very highest importance to that
demand, he would have fallen back on the old Oriental
device, promising to grant all our Envoy asked, and
trusting that he would be able to avoid the fulfilment'
of his pledge. But he displayed a firmness as sus-
picious as it was unexpected. and Sir Douglas Forsyth
has gone back to Calcutta with a confession of failure.
Meanwhile, the Governor-General and Lord Salisbury
have been exchanging counsel respecting the next step,
and, although there may still be a hope of peace, we
should do well to prepare for war.
In order to understand the rafusal of the King, we
must call to mind both his commercial and his political
objects. A strip of debatable land, governed by savage
and half•independent tribes, cuts off the north east of
Burmah from the Chinese Province of Yun-nan, which
is, perhaps, the richest part of China. Its precious
metals, its coarser minerals, the fertility of its soil, its
silks, and its manufactured stuffs long ago marked it
out as a place that might be made one of the best
nillrl:cto in the East. It was cruelly wasted by the
Pauthay War, in which the Mahomedan part of the
inhabitants made themselves masters, for a time, of a
large stretch a territory, but it is nearly as good a
field as ever for commercial enterprise: Two important
attempts have been made to open it up to English
merchants, by means of a route from India through