that the English bethought themselves of improving their newly acquired province by the construction of a railway, and it was not till 1877 that the first line from Rangoon to Prome—­a distance of only one hundred and sixty-one miles—­was opened.  During all this time King Mindon ruled in native Burma.  He “gave abundant alms to monks,” and, moreover, which was perhaps more to the purpose, he was wise enough to maintain relations with Great Britain which were “quite cordial.”  Eventually the Nemesis which appears to attend on all semi-civilised and moribund States when they are brought in contact with a vigorous and aggressive civilisation appeared in the person of the “Sapaya-lat,” the “middle princess,” who induced her feeble husband, King Thibaw, to carry out massacres on a scale which, even in Burma, had been heretofore unprecedented.  Then the British on the other side of the frontier began to murmur and “to consider whether it was possible to endure a neighbour who was so cruel and so unpopular.”  All doubts as to whether the limits of endurance had or had not been reached were removed when the impecunious and spendthrift king not only imposed a very unjust fine of some L150,000 on the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, but also had the extreme folly to “throw himself into the arms of France”—­a scheme which was at once communicated by M. Jules Ferry to Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador in Paris.  Then war with Burma was declared, and after some tedious operations, which involved the sacrifice of many valuable lives, and which extended over three years, the country was “completely pacified” by 1889, and Lord Dufferin added the title of “Ava” to the Marquisate which was conferred on him.

In 1852, when Lord Dalhousie annexed Lower Burma, Rangoon was “merely a fishing village.”  It is now a flourishing commercial town of some 300,000 inhabitants.  In 1910-11 the imports into Burmese ports, including coast trade, amounted to L13,600,000.  The exports, in spite of a duty on rice which is of a nature rather to shock orthodox economists, were nearly L23,000,000 in value.  The revenue in 1910 was about L7,391,000, of which about L2,590,000 was on Imperial and the balance on local account.  Burma is in the happy position of being in a normal state of surplus, and is thus able to contribute annually a sum of about L2,500,000 to the Indian exchequer, a sum which those who are specially interested in Burmese prosperity regard as excessive, whilst it is apparently regarded as inadequate by some of those who look only to the interests of the Indian taxpayers.

The account which M. Dautremer, who was for long French Consul at Rangoon, has given of the present condition of Burma is preceded by an introduction from the pen of Sir George Scott, who can speak with unquestionable authority on Burmese affairs.  It is clear that neither author has allowed himself in any way to be biassed by national proclivities, for whilst the Frenchman compares British and French administrative methods