And this is a fitting place for an account of the treatment of slaves among the Burmese, a subject of no little importance to its future interests.
Slavery is very general in Ava and the subdued provinces, and it has not yet been abolished in the territory ceded to the British in 1826.[169] It may be as well to mention this fact, as otherwise the British will get a character for inconsistency, and some one will plead, in extenuation of the African slave-trade, that though such efforts are made in the Atlantic, yet that in the tangible property of Britain, the provinces of Arakhan, Chittagong, Assam, and Tenasserim, the practice is not suppressed, notwithstanding that it might be effected with much more ease than in Africa, or on the Brazilian coast. Naturally, in so recent a possession, the measure cannot be immediately introduced; yet it would be well for the Company to think and act, as it is necessary to be consistent throughout, even if that were the only consideration.
A slight slave-trade appears to be carried on upon the frontiers; and though the Burmans, with somewhat of a Jesuitical spirit, do not actually engage in it themselves, yet they do not hesitate to recognise and support it by purchasing the slaves thus kidnapped from home.
Debtor slaves, Malcom tells us, are very numerous. When persons borrow, they mortgage themselves to their creditors till they can repay the money. In Burmah this is not done by any remuneration for the service thus rendered, but in our possessions it diminishes four pice per day. Their master can sell and chastise them, though he is restrained from ill-using them. However, when they can obtain the money, and tender it to their creditor, he is not at liberty to refuse the payment.
The children of slaves are free; though this is more by usage than by the law. Under that, there would be some redemption-money to be paid. However, custom has ordained that both mother and child are free. Husbands have the power of selling their wives, or rather borrowing money upon them; and of course, unless the person so sold, or pawned, can obtain a sum equal to the amount borrowed, they are condemned to life-servitude.
The condition of slaves, however, is little different from that of a free person. The estimation, too, in which they are held, is high, for they are, in a popular superstition, ranked with “a son, a nephew, and an ox;” and though the last of these appears somewhat ludicrous to the ear of an European, yet we must recollect that the religious value of an ox was high in the land, probably from the tinge of Brahminism with which the Burmans are dashed.
It is interesting to compare the state of the slaves of Burmah with the condition of the same class among the Visigoths, who may, in some respects, be looked upon as the Burmans of Europe. Prescott has given an able sketch in his “Ferdinand and Isabella:”[170]—
“The lot of the Visigothic slave was sufficiently hard. The oppressions which this unhappy race endured, were such as to lead Mr. Southey, in his excellent introduction to the ‘Chronicle of the Cid,’ to impute to their co-operation, in part, the easy conquest of the country by the Arabs. But, although the laws in relation to them seem to be taken up with determining their incapacities, rather than their privileges, it is probable that they secured to them, on the whole, quite as great a degree of civil consequence as was enjoyed by similar classes in the rest of Europe. By the Fuer Juzoo, the slave was allowed to acquire property for himself, and with it to purchase his own redemption.[171] A certain proportion of every man’s slaves were also required to bear arms, and to accompany their master to the field.[172] But their relative rank is better ascertained by the amount of composition (that accurate measurement of civil rights with all the barbarians of the north) prescribed for any personal violence inflicted on them. Thus, by the Salic law, the life of a free Roman was estimated at only one-fifth of that of a Frank,[173] while, by the law of the Visigoths, the life of a slave was valued at half of that of a free man.[174] In the latter code, moreover, the master was prohibited, under the severe penalties of banishment and sequestration of property, from either maiming or murdering his own slave,[175] while, in other codes of the barbarians, the penalty was confined to similar trespasses on the slaves of another; and by the Salic law, no higher mulct was imposed for killing than for kidnapping a slave.[176] The legislation of the Visigoths, in those particulars, seems to have regarded this unhappy race as not merely a distinct species of property; it provided for their personal security, instead of limiting itself to the indemnification of their masters.”
It is a curious circumstance that the malefactors, whose punishment has been commuted from death to slavery in the pagodas, are better off than the generality of the slave population; so that, in fact, there is not such indignity and misery in it as some authors have represented. The Mexicans, who formed some portions of their polity on a higher model, esteemed it an honour to serve in the temples of the gods. Let us now turn to a livelier theme—the Burman amusements.
Symes, the energetic envoy, to whose work I have so often referred, gives the following curious description of a dramatic entertainment in Burmah:[177]—