The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1875-07-10 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

OUR RELATIONS WITH BURMAH."  The Times of Tuesday has the following leader Our relations with Burmah are becoming uncomfortably 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 dispensaCoil 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 likewise said that he commands a force of severalthousand men, and that he has offered to put them at the command 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 equivocation. Sir Douglas Forsyth may have deemed it prudent 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 interesting 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 suggestion 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 conquered; and those reasons are so applicable to the present '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 suspicious 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