Major Yule, in his “Embassy to Ava,” gives the following graphic description of the mental and moral traits of the Burmese:
“Unlike the generality of the Asiatics, they are not a fawning race. They are cheerful, and singularly alive to the ridiculous; buoyant, elastic, soon recovering from personal or domestic disaster. With little feeling of patriotism, they are still attached to their homes, greatly so to their families. Free from prejudices of caste or creed, they readily fraternize with strangers, and at all times frankly yield to the superiority of a European. Though ignorant, they are, when no mental exertion is required, inquisitive, and to a certain extent eager for information; indifferent to the shedding of blood on the part of their rulers, yet not individually cruel; temperate, abstemious, and hardy, but idle, with neither fixedness of purpose nor perseverance. Discipline or any continued employment becomes most irksome to them, yet they are not devoid of a certain degree of enterprise. Great dabblers in small mercantile ventures, they may be called (the women especially) a race of hucksters; not treacherous or habitual perverters of the truth, yet credulous and given to monstrous exaggerations; when vested with authority, arrogant and boastful; if unchecked, corrupt, oppressive, and arbitrary; yet distinguished for bravery, whilst their chiefs are notorious for cowardice; indifferent shots, and though living in a country abounding in forest, not bold followers of field sports.”
But what is the industrial life of the Burmans? The soil of Burmah is richly productive of all that is needed for food or clothing or shelter or ornament. The chief crops are rice, maize or Indian corn, wheat, tobacco, cotton, and indigo. It is computed that 80 per cent. of all the rice brought from the East to Europe is produced in the rich paddy-fields of British Burmah.
There is an abundance of delicious fruits—the jack-fruit, the bread-fruit, oranges, bananas, guavas, pine-apples, and the cocoa-nut. After the annual inundation, the subsiding rivers leave behind them, in the depressions of the ground, ponds well stocked with fish. Beef and mutton the Burman learns to forego, as his religion does not allow him to eat cattle or sheep unless they die a natural death. His meal of rice and curry is sometimes enriched by the addition of poultry. The bamboo yields building material for his houses, and the teak forest timber for his ships. The mineral resources are large. The earth yields iron, tin, silver, gold, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, amber, sulphur, arsenic, antimony, coal (both anthracite and bituminous), and petroleum oil, which is used by all classes in little clay lamps.
And yet at the time of the arrival of our missionaries, and even now in Independent Burmah, there is no commerce on a large scale. This is shown by the high rate of interest, 25 per cent., and 60 per cent. when no security is given. The very productiveness of his country made the Burman of fifty years ago feel independent of foreign nations. He took the narrow view that exportation only tended to impoverishment. The Government rigidly prohibited all important exportation except that of the cheap and abundant teak timber. Gold and silver and precious stones must not be carried out for fear of reducing the country to poverty. If in those days an English merchant had carried a large quantity of silks and calicoes to the royal city, and had exchanged them for £5,000 in gold, he could possess and enjoy the money there, but he could not, except by bribery, succeed in carrying it home. His wealth made him practically an exile and a prisoner. The marble could not be exported, because it was consecrated to the building of idols and pagodas. The cotton and the rice could not be exported, lest there should not be enough left for the clothing and food of the population. The only commerce worth mentioning was with China. The Chinese caravans brought, overland, large quantities of raw silk, and received cotton in exchange.
On account of the low state of commerce, the science of navigation was quite unknown to the Burmans. When sailors made their little trips, in the dry season, along the shore of the Bay of Bengal, they took pains never to pass out of sight of land.
There were no extensive manufactures in Burmah, for these required an accumulation of large capital; and a man could never be sure that his wealth would not be wrested from him by the Government. And so the chief article of manufacture is lacquer-ware, as this requires but little capital. Woven strips of bamboo were smeared with mud, and baked, and polished, and varnished, and then manufactured into beautiful boxes and trays.
Most of the Burmans, however, are engaged in agricultural pursuits. They raise rice and catch fish, which they pound up into a mass with coarse salt, and so produce their favorite relish, ngapee. Immense quantities of rice and ngapee are carried up the Irrawaddy in boats, and sold at the capital and in the upper provinces of Burmah.
The government of Independent Burmah is an absolute despotism. The king has supreme power over the life and possessions of every subject. He may confiscate property, imprison, torture, or execute at his pleasure,—his only restraint being fear of an insurrection. An English writer relates that at the sovereign’s command one of the highest officers of the State was seized by the public executioner, and stretched on the ground by the side of the road, under a scorching sun, with a heavy weight upon his chest, and afterward restored to his high position. There are, indeed, two Councils of State, by which the government is administered, but the members of these councils are appointed by the king, and may be degraded or executed at his word. The late monarch of Burmah saw the evils of this despotic system, and, in arranging for the succession, formed a plan by which his successor should be subject to limitation by his prime ministers. But the new king, Thebaw, a brutal and licentious boy of 20, frustrated this benignant purpose. He murdered his counsellors, massacred his blood relations, and Burmah, that had roused herself for a moment from her long nightmare of despotism, sank again into sleep.
The whole country is divided into provinces, townships, districts, and villages. Over each province is a governor, or as the Burmese call him, an Eater. Through his underlings he taxes every family. His officers receive a share of what they can extort, and the rest he divides with the king. In this way the whole land is a scene of enormous extortion. There are no fixed salaries for Government functionaries. The higher officer eats a certain province or district. The lower officer lives on fees and perquisites. Courts of law are corrupted by bribery. It is customary to torture witnesses. The criminal is usually executed by decapitation. He may, however, be disembowelled, or thrown to wild beasts, or crucified, or have his limbs broken with a bludgeon—if he can not effect his escape by the plentiful use of money.