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

ThE STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER.

tempting to cure them at the cost of starvation to
their wives and children. Again, the dipsomaniacs who
especially require shutting up are precisely those whom it
is most difficult to get hold of. They are quite cunning
enough at present to allow no outward evidence of their
vicious habits to appear, and would no doubt become more
cunning than ever it there were a prospect of their being
placed under restraint There are many other difficulties in
the way of legislating on the subject which might be men-
tioned; and if Mr. cross succeeds in overcoming them, he
will certainly have solved one of the "great problems" of
the day.

Bahmo, which lies about WO miles above Mandalay,
at the very place where Burma,h meets the debat-
-ahlrrand. One, as we have said, was undertaken
in 1863 •by. Major Sladen, and the other a few months
ago by Colonel Brown. Both were defeated by the
mingled agency of the Chinese and Burmese Govern-
ments. The Chinese authorities were, doubtless,
aotuated by their inveterate dislike to strangers in
general, and especially to those English traders who,
in the name of peace, usually split up the nationali-
ties of the East like a wedge. The traders of Yun-nan
were also anxious to keep the trade in their own hands.
The King of Burmah had equally strong motives for
wishing to keep our countrymen away from the rich
Chinese Province. He concentrates all the wholesale
trade of his dominions into his own hands by forcing
the dealers in any commodity that will yield a
profit to sell it at the price which he names, and
by then re-selling it at any sum he can extract from
the foreign merchants. Such is a great source of
his revenue, and so much does he value it that,
although he pledged himself to give freedom of trade
to our countrymen by the Treaty of 1862, he after-
wards systematically refused to abandon his monopolies.
Apparently brought to reason by the retaliation of the
Indian Government, he signed another Treaty of Com-
merce in 1867 • but he has broken the second bargain
as flagrantly, if not as openly, as he broke the first.
Nothing but force will make him give up his mono-
poly of the wholesale trade. Hence one of the
main reasons why he has been persistently hostile to
the attempts of our merchants to open up an
overland trading route with Western China. He knows
that the trade with Yun-nan would slip out of his
hands if English caravans were to ply through Bhamo.
It may be open to doubt whether such a line
of traffic would prove highly profitable to our
capitalist and the lawless tribes of the debatable
land would certainly make it perilous; but since
we have begun the enterprise we cannot permit our-
selves to be turned back either by the King of Burmah
or the authorities of China. We cannot afford to
make such a confession of weakness to rulers who lie in.
wait for an opportunity of breaking our hold on the
East, and therefore the Indian Government does right
to insist that it shall be allowed to send troops through
Burmese territory for the protection of our merchants.
Nor is it for commercial reasons alone that Lord North-
brook demands a passage for British soldiers. The
King is believed still to hope that he may regain
Pegn which was the richest of his Provinces. Such
an enterprise may seem the easier to him because Pegu
is defended by no mountain frontiers. His delusion
has been strengthened by the boasts of marauding
Chinese commanders like Leeseetahi, whose natural
vanity permits them to believe that the valour which
conquered the Panthays would avail against the troops
of this country. _ _ _

If he should persist in his refusal to give the Indian
Government a military right of way, Lord Northbrook
must, of course, send a naval and military force to
Raßgoon. If such a menace should not make him
yield, it will be necessary to despatch a force to Man-
dalay. That task would not be difficult, for the lira-
wady is open all the way to vessels of light draught.
But the main objections to a war are political, and
they are of a nature that the King can scarcely be ex-
pected to understand. So far from coveting the re-
mainder of his territory, the Indian Government
would regard the necessity of seizing it as a great
calamity, since our dominions would then be brought
close to those of China, and we should be exposed to new
and multiplied risks of war. At present Burmah acts
like a buffer against the shock of Chinese aggression on
the one side, aad the restlessness of our own traders
on the other. That is the main reason why Lord
Dalhousie refused to send an Expedition to Mandalay
in 1852 and 1853. He knew that if he took the
capital he must keep it, and he feared to open up new
possibilities of conflict with China. The same motive
will induce Lord Northbrook to exhaust all the resoures
of diplomacy before striking a blow; but our Viceroys
would seen fated to be conquerors. Lord Aberdeen
once said that all of them left this country with a
desire to be pacific, and yet all had been forced to
engage in war. Although the most pacific of men,
Lord Northbrook may find himself exposed to the same
sad necessity.