Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/129

Rh results, since the annexation of Upper Burma by Lord Dufferin on the 1st of January, 1886.

The difficulty in Burma was complicated by the fact that the whole population had been bred up, during a long period of native misrule, to look upon disorder as the natural state of society. The Burmese villagers, even when they had themselves settled down into hard-working fathers of families and tillers of the soil, regarded dakáití or gang-robbery as a manly sport in which every young Burmese of spirit should, at one time or another, have engaged. This was the deep-rooted popular sentiment which Lord Dalhousie had to encounter in Lower Burma in the years following 1852, precisely as Lord Dufferin has had to encounter it in the years following 1886. Lord Dalhousie accomplished his task not by any sudden magic of transformation, but by constructing a British administrative body strong enough and patient enough to weary out the elements of disorder. But it was only by slow degrees that his able lieutenant, Sir Arthur Phayre, could create a public conviction among the Burmese that, under British Rule, peaceful industry yields an easier livelihood than crime.

Into the splendid results of the administration which Lord Dalhousie then inaugurated in Burma, I am precluded from entering. They are written in large letters in every account which has been