[Footnote 84:  History of the Peninsular War, vol. iii. p. 209.]

[Footnote 85:  Maxwell’s Life of Wellington, vol. i. p. 78]

[Footnote 86:  British Statesmen of the Great War, p. 241.]

XVI

BURMA[87]

"The Spectator,” June 28, 1913

The early history of the British connection with Burma presents all the features uniformly to be found in the growth of British Imperialism.  These are, first, reluctance to move, coupled with fear of the results of expansion, ending finally with a cession to the irresistible tendency to expand; secondly, vagueness of purpose as to what should be done with a new and somewhat unwelcome acquisition; thirdly, a tardy recognition of its value, with the result that what was first an inclination to make the best of a bad job only gradually transforms itself into a feeling of satisfaction and congratulation that, after all, the unconscious founders of the British Empire, here as elsewhere, blundered more or less unawares into the adoption of a sound and far-seeing Imperial policy.

In 1825, Lord Amherst, in one of those “fits of absence” which the dictum of Sir John Seeley has rendered famous, took possession of some of the maritime provinces of Burma, and in doing so lost three thousand one hundred and fifteen men, of whom only a hundred and fifty were killed in action.  Then the customary fit of doubt and despondency supervened.  It was not until four years after the conclusion of peace that a British Resident was sent to the Court of Ava in the vain hope that he would be able to negotiate the retrocession of the province of Tenasserim, as “the Directors of the East India Company looked upon this territory as of no value to them.”  For a quarter of a century peace was preserved, for there ruled at Ava a prince “who was too clear-sighted to attempt again to measure arms with the British troops.”  Anon he was succeeded by a new king—­the Pagan Prince—­“who cared for nothing but mains of cocks, games, and other infantile amusements,” and who, after the manner of Oriental despots, inaugurated his reign by putting to death his two brothers and all their households.  “There were several hundreds of them.”  It is not surprising that under a ruler addicted to such practices the British sailors who frequented the Burmese ports should have been subjected to maltreatment.  Their complaints reached the ears of the iron-fisted and acquisitive Lord Dalhousie, who himself went to Rangoon in 1852, and forthwith “decided on the immediate attack of Prome and Pegu.”  M. Dautremer speaks in flattering terms of “the tenacity and persistence of purpose which make the strength and glory of British policy.”  He might truthfully have added another characteristic feature which that policy at times displays, to wit, sluggishness.  It was not until sixteen years after Lord Dalhousie’s annexation of Lower Burma