A Civil Servant in Burma. White Herbert Thirkell
share in the offices of the administration. As qualified men become available, by all means let them undertake higher duties. But do not let us try prematurely to impose representative institutions on people who neither demand nor understand them. Above all, let us avoid the pernicious cant of thinking that our mission in Burma is the political education of the masses. Our mission is to conserve, not to destroy, their social organism; to preserve the best elements of their national life; by the maintenance of peace and order to advance the well-being of the Burmese people.
At Bassein, in town and district, I first saw Burmans at home, and laid the foundations of many lasting friendships. My first two clerks were Maung Pe,26 and Maung Aung Zan. One has long been the respected Second Judge of the Small Cause Court in Rangoon, the Aristides of his race; the other is the first Burman District Judge. A well-known character was U Bya, the Judge of the Bassein Small Cause Court, an officer of age and dignity, who, it was said, had raised himself to his honourable rank from the humble position of peon in the Treasury. Although contact with foreigners had to some extent begun to affect the Burmese character, it must be remembered that the time of which I write was only twenty-five years after the taking of Rangoon, a shorter period than has now elapsed since the occupation of Mandalay. Even in Pegu the Burman was far less sophisticated than he has become in recent years. The great rice-plains of the delta were not nearly all under cultivation. The farmer worked his own moderate holding with the help of his family and of reapers who came down annually from Upper Burma. The inroad of coolies and settlers from Madras and Bengal not yet begun. The delta was sparsely peopled, and everyone was happy and contented.
After leaving Bassein, I spent a few weeks in Rangoon as personal assistant to the Chief Commissioner. The personal assistant combined the posts of private secretary and aide-de-camp, without the emoluments, and with only part of the work of those offices. Under Mr. Aitchison’s tolerant régime, the duties were extremely light, and consisted mainly in ciphering and deciphering telegrams. By him and by Mrs. (now Lady) Aitchison, we were treated with unvarying kindness. The days spent as members of their official family are days of happy memory. Mr. Aitchison was one of the first batch of competition walas, and was rightly regarded as a distinguished ornament of our service. At a very early stage in his career he became Foreign Secretary to the Government of India. That high office he exchanged for the comparative obscurity of Burma, only because he differed from the Viceroy (Lord Lytton) on points of frontier policy. He was a man of exceptional ability, of resolute character, with the most delicate sense of honour, a chief whom it was a pride and pleasure to serve. The Governor-General being his own Foreign Minister, Mr. Aitchison had been brought into close personal relations with every Viceroy27 who, up to that time, had held office. In his judgment, among these statesmen, the man of genius, the one who got most quickly to the root of a difficult problem, was Lord Lytton. As the two men were by no means sympathetic, this opinion is of special value.
We came to Rangoon early in 1879, at a time of great excitement. The preceding October had seen the death of Mindôn Min, who ruled the Burmese kingdom for more than five-and-twenty years. King Mindôn, or Min-taya-gyi Paya, was an enlightened monarch, worthy to be placed in the same class, though not side by side, with Solomon and Akbar. He wrested the throne from his incapable brother, Pagan Min, whose headstrong folly had involved his country in the Second Burmese War. With rare magnanimity, he neither slew nor blinded the deposed King, but allowed him to live in peace in his own house for the rest of his days. Indeed, Pagan Min survived his successor. Mindôn Min was an able administrator, and quite master of his kingdom. He held in his own hands all the threads of government, and kept himself informed of all that happened even in the remotest corners. Peace and order were reasonably well maintained, and projects for developing the resources of the country were initiated. The teak forests were opened out by English firms. Many Europeans, principally French and Italian, were attracted to his Court, and employed in various capacities. Among other reforms may be mentioned the levy of regular taxation on land and incomes, and the payment of salaries to officials. The practice had been for an official to be placed in charge of a local area, which he was expressively said to “eat.” After paying his dues to Government, he squeezed as much as possible for himself. In this reign, though the custom was not abolished, its prevalence was restricted. The King was a very pious Buddhist, a generous benefactor of the pagoda at Rangoon, and a steadfast pillar of his religion. He discouraged the taking of life, the use of opium, the consumption of intoxicating liquors. Like Solomon in wisdom, he rivalled him in the number of his wives. Although he declined to make a treaty ceding any part of his dominions to Great Britain, he respected the frontier-line laid down by Lord Dalhousie, he kept on good terms with our Government in Lower Burma, and he had the good sense highly to appreciate Sir Arthur Phayre. So long as he ruled in Mandalay, there was no likelihood of any expansion of British territory at his cost.
The death of Mindôn Min threw the whole of Upper Burma into confusion. By a palace intrigue, in which the principal actors were Queen Sinbyumashin and the Taingda Mingyi,28 the Thebaw Mintha,29 was placed on the throne. King Thebaw was about eighteen years of age. He seems to have been a dull youth, of no character, good or bad. The beginning of his rule was stained by the murder of most of the sons of Mindôn Min, a massacre as ruthless and almost as many-headed as the slaughter of the sons of Ahab. Though the Princesses were not killed, they were consigned to captivity. Of the massacre of the Princes, two extreme views have been held. The young King has been represented as a monster of cruelty, himself personally responsible for this atrocity. The cynical suggestion is that, in Burma as in other Oriental countries, it was a measure of ordinary precaution for the King to remove possible rivals and pretenders; in so doing, Thebaw was no worse than his predecessors. As a matter of fact, most likely neither the King nor his much-maligned Queen had much to do with the massacre. It was, no doubt, the work of his Ministers, chiefly of the blood-stained Taingda Mingyi, a name to all succeeding ages cursed. But it is also the case that this wholesale butchery, though not without precedent, was not in accordance with the practice of Burman Kings, at least, in recent years. Certainly no such deluge of blood sullied the opening days of King Mindôn. The probable explanation is that the title of the new King was felt to be precarious, while his personality did not compensate the insecurity of his claim. He was not the eldest, nor the ablest, nor the most popular, of Mindôn Min’s sons. For these reasons, I conjecture, some of the Ministers thought it desirable to remove potential centres of revolt and disaffection. I cannot believe that my learned and mild-tempered friend, the Kinwun Mingyi, though nominally the head of the State Council, approved this savage measure. The stories current at the time, of the King priming himself with drink, and personally directing the slaughter, were certainly false. It is true, however, that in the early days of his reign King Thebaw was much under the influence of a titular Prince, Maung Tôk,30 and that these two boon companions did hold drunken orgies together. After Maung Tôk’s removal there is no record of intemperance in the Palace.
The massacre of the sons of Mindôn Min sent a thrill of horror through the civilized world. Our Resident at Mandalay, Mr. R. B. Shaw, entered vehement protests. He also sheltered two Princes, the Nyaung-yan and Nyaung-ôk Minthas, who were, I understand, brought to the Residency by M. d’Avéra, and whose lives were saved by their despatch to Lower Burma and thence to Calcutta. In Rangoon the Press and public were loud in condemnation, and clamorous for action. In the interests of humanity and civilization the Indian Government were urgently pressed to intervene. They nearly did so. Preparations for the despatch of troops were begun. One regiment, the 43rd Light Infantry, actually came over from Madras, in hot haste and with the barest camp kit, and was sent to the frontier. All its officers expected to be in Mandalay in a fortnight, and sore was the indignation of the British regiment in Rangoon that these new-comers should go to the front while it remained in cantonments. The Rangoon Regiment had its consolation. For all their term in Burma the 43rd stayed on the frontier, and never put a foot across it. The Government of India were fully occupied with troubles in Afghanistan, which some few months later culminated in the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari at Cabul. At home, Ministers were staggered by the disaster of Isandhlwana in February of this year. Both Governments had their hands too full to find leisure for upholding the cause of humanity in Upper Burma. It
Maung Pe, I.S.O., K.S.M.
The first Viceroy was Lord Canning. Many people erroneously think that Clive or, perhaps, Warren Hastings was the first who attained that dignity.
See p. 126.