Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/127

Rh 'Wherefore, in compensation for the past, and for better security in the future, the Governor-General in Council has resolved, and hereby proclaims, that the province of Pegu is now, and shall be henceforth, a portion of the British territories in the East.

'Such Burman troops as may still remain within the Province shall be driven out. Civil government shall immediately be established, and officers shall be appointed to administer the affairs of the several districts

'The Governor-General in Council, having exacted the reparation he deems sufficient, desires no further conquest in Burma, and is willing to consent that hostilities should cease.

'But if the king of Ava shall fail to renew his former relations of friendship with the British Government, and if he shall recklessly seek to dispute its quiet possession of the Province it has now declared to be its own, the Governor-General in Council will again put forth the power he holds, and will visit, with full retribution, aggressions which, if they be persisted in, must, of necessity, lead to the total subversion of the Burman State, and to the ruin and exile of the king and his race.'

Lower Burma thus passed in 1852 under British government. I have narrated the four visits which Lord Dalhousie himself made to the Peninsula, to secure that his policy and system of administration were firmly carried out. The new British Burma was the product of his own personality in a scarcely less degree than the new British Punjab had been three years before. But the