Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

In addition to the regular administrative officers mentioned there are departmental officers, such as an engineering corps, which has the care of all public works. There is the growing educational department and a medical department including care of prisons, hospitals, and a great forestry department, that conserves the valuable forests of the empire. There is also a department of marine with full official equipment.

There is a civil service system operating throughout all these departments of government, including even the most subordinate clerkships. The higher officials are usually brought out from some part of Britain, and have been taken into Government employ after the severest examinations. Their promotions are given by grade and service, allowing also for special promotions for distinctive service. Having been so placed that I have had to do with a wide range of these officials, in most departments of the service, it becomes a great pleasure to me to record the character of their official conduct as I have found it in personal dealing. In the first place, they almost without exception are men of courteous, gentlemanly manners. This alone goes far to smooth the way in official transactions. Then I have found them generally men who are very fair and even generous in dealings where public interests, missionary matters, or property have been dealt with. This is partly due to the system of aid given especially to schools with which both the Government and the missionary have to do, and partly due to fair dealing on general principles, which I am led to believe from an experience all over the province of Burma for a period of ten years, and from inquiries from others of longer experience, is a British characteristic. This is especially true of the better cultivated men. The snobbery of the uneducated Briton is equal to that of the American of the same class. In the whole range of my experience I have never met with other than manly treatment from officials but twice, and then these were not of the higher ranks, and one of them can not be said to be a Briton. If an officer might be disposed to be unfair, he knows that there is a superior above him that is ready to correct any abuse. But the whole system of Indian service is well worth study, for it is not a creation of a day, but the best fruit of England’s extensive colonial experiences. In this matter it is well worth study, especially on the part of America, which has now to enter upon the rule of large and distant possessions. It is also to be noted that the wonder of England’s Government is that she has been able to allow of a diversity of Governments in her several possessions suited largely to local conditions, so that no two of her colonies are entirely alike, and yet she has been able to give protection, justice, and the largest measure of liberty to each country that the people are able to utilize for their own good. In these respects it is only fair to say her system of Government over remote and diverse peoples is the best yet seen on this globe.

Burmese Festival Cart

There is also a striking feature of the Government of municipalities in India. Municipalities have not wholly self-government, yet they are so ordered that the popular will has a representation, even when it retards the actual progress of the city, as it not infrequently does. The municipalities are governed by commissioners, about half of whom are elected by the people, and the other half are appointed by Government. The latter are not Government officers, however. They may be as democratic in their votes as any member of the municipal committee. But these commissioners are representative of the different native races, as well as the Europeans in the city. In a city like Rangoon there are several great race divisions that are recognized on the municipal committee, both elective and appointive. In the election of these commissioners appears one of the most extreme examples of the democratic principles that the writer knows of anywhere. Perhaps it has no parallel. In the case of the ballot, it is allowed freely to all Europeans and Americans on exactly the same conditions. They, as aliens, never having become British subjects, and never intending to do so, have the ballot the same as an Englishman. This broad democracy has greatly surprised many Americans when I have told them of it. The alien has a right to hold the office of city commissioner, if elected, the peer of the native-born Briton. This is the broadest democracy found anywhere within the defined limits of franchise.

The Government has a vast system of railroads in India amounting to sixteen thousand miles, with many other extensions and new lines in prospect. These roads now reach nearly all the districts which could sustain them. They are sometimes built for military purposes, but they are mostly directed for the carrying of traffic in times of peace. The province of Burma, one of the later provinces to be thoroughly developed, is having railroads to all its principal sections, and some of these roads are being projected to the very borders. That to Kunlon is extended to the borders of China. They also talk of a line from Rangoon through Western China, and there is every likelihood of connections direct with Bengal. So the old world moves under the impetus of Western enterprise. The telegraphs attend the railway, and exist even far outside of railway lines to all parts of the empire and to foreign lands. Let it be remembered that probably none of these improvements would have been thought of in the country had not it been taken in hand by an enlightened and enterprising people from the West.

Great systems of canals have been constructed, and more than thirty million acres of land are irrigated, and famine in this area is forever forestalled. Larger plans are being suggested by the recent famine. The famine relief works constructed many tanks on land too high for irrigation from running streams.

Good pavements in cities and good roads have been made in the land universally. These roads are nearly all metaled and kept in good order.

Public buildings of the most substantial and imposing kind are built in all capital cities. The Government wisely erects buildings in keeping with its own governmental ideas, and with its declared intention of remaining in the land to work out its plans. The public parks and gardens are on an elaborate scale, and are enjoyed by everybody. The memorials to great men of India and the great men who have made India British territory are placed in all public gardens. Great men and great deeds are set before the world as they should be, that the world may emulate them. The latest design is to build a memorial to Queen Victoria in the city of Calcutta, to which many of the rajahs of India are subscribing. The building is to cost perhaps more than five million dollars, and while it is a great memorial to Queen Victoria, it is to be a museum of great men of India as well. There will be other memorials established in other cities of the Indian Empire also. The taxes of the Government are reasonable. They are mostly placed directly on the earning power of the individual, or tax upon land assessed in proportion to the amount of grain it produces, There is also a tax on houses in villages outside municipalities. The land tax is very just. If the land produces regular good crops, it is taxed accordingly. If there is a failure of crops, the tax is reduced or remitted. As land needs rest, it is allowed a tax at fallow rates, which is very light indeed. The income tax is collected chiefly in cities, but of all Government employees, beginning with the viceroy. This tax is two per cent per month. This is to be paid out of the monthly salary. But it is said this tax only reaches one out of three hundred and fifty of the native-born inhabitants of India.

The Government claims to own the land, very much as the American Government owns the public lands. But, of course, the greater part of this land comes into the ownership of the people, and is transferable as elsewhere in the world. In the comparatively rich province of Burma, where there has been until recently much of the very best land of the tropical world lying idle, grown into grass and forests—land that never was cultivated, the land is given out freely to would-be cultivators. They only have to show that they are prepared to cultivate it. They have to pay nothing but for its survey. When it is cultivated they get a title to it, and then they can sell it as the actual owners. If it is grass land, the cultivators are allowed one year exemption from tax. If forest land, ten years are allowed exemption. A more liberal plan could not be devised than this. It is just here that England’s policy in the country is shown. If a Burman asks for a piece of land, and a European, any Englishman indeed, asks for the same piece of land, the Burman will surely get it. One becomes more and more convinced that the policy of Government in India is to govern for the best interests of the Government. There is another great plan of Government to aid agriculture. The people of all parts of the Indian Empire are chiefly agricultural. They are like all Asiatics, great borrowers of money. They generally mortgage the crop by the time it springs out of the soil. The native money-lender demands as much as three per cent a month; but here the Government comes forward, and agrees to loan the agriculturalist money at six per cent a year, and allow him to repay it in partial payments. This is eminently fair, and any man can get it who can show that he can repay it, and can give two personal securities. This seems a very liberal proposition.