It looks as though liquor and opium under the British Government were rapidly tightening their hold of the country, and it is quite time England made up her mind what she is really going to do in the matter, and whether she can reconcile this state of things with her notions of duty to a subject race.
It is urged by the advocates of the present system that there was drinking before, even under Burmese rule. No doubt there was. With the materials all around in abundance in the products of the country, both for fermenting and distilling liquors, it is not to be supposed that alcohol was unknown. It was, however, a very uncommon thing amongst Burmans to drink, and it can afford no possible justification for licensing and thereby increasing the evil.
It is also urged that it is impossible to do away with drinking entirely. “Prohibit it altogether,” say they, “and it will still go on secretly.” There scarcely could be a poorer plea than this. How many evils and crimes and vices there are in every country that cannot be entirely done away with, and yet no one in his senses would propose to license and regulate them on that ground. Our reply to this is that a Government can only do its best, and if, after we had done our best to discourage the drinking it still existed, despite all we could do, it would not be our fault. But if King Theebaw could do as much as he evidently did, with his worn-out methods of government, to keep his people sober, what might not we accomplish with the splendid machine of government we possess?
The last resort of the apologists for licensing intoxicants usually is that, good or bad, we are committed to the system, and cannot get rid of it without causing greater evils than what we now have. This is one of the arguments used with respect to India, but it fails altogether when applied to Burma, and has not a leg to stand on. We had every opportunity to have continued the law of prohibition just as we found it, and the people earnestly requested us to do so, and we ought to have done it. Even now it is not too late to retrace our steps in that direction, for the present state of things is felt to be unsatisfactory, and the law cannot be carried out.
Why cannot we end it by prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquor throughout the country? If it be said that this would bear hardly upon the foreign residents, it may well be replied that the rights and liberties of foreigners ought not to prejudice those of the vast majority, the natives of the country; and if that were the law, and foreigners did not choose to put up with it, they would have their remedy. No one is compelled to live in Burma.
The pity is, that England should so lag behind in the matter of temperance reform. The Empire is inevitably increasing, yet England, by continuing to cling to liquor as she does, fails in this respect to fit herself for properly carrying out her duty amongst the abstaining races that come within the sphere of our influence.
The day is coming, as every one can see, when England’s own liquor question must be effectually dealt with, for the mind of the majority of the English people is rapidly ripening for it. But in the meantime, the very painful, anomalous and inconsistent position we occupy in Upper Burma—a Christian nation establishing liquor shops in every centre of population, against the strongly expressed wishes of “all classes of Burmans, monks and laity”—is a humiliating proof of the need there is for this reform to be hastened at home, so that it may be faithfully carried out abroad, and that too before it is too late.
