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on those who provoked them. While Lower Burma is in a state of anarchy and rebellion, it is little short of madness to disarm the villagers and terrify them by threats of judicial vengeance if they should dare to hit the rebels and dacoits too hard.*

The last attribute of Karen nationality is—their religion. My readers will perhaps wince at the bare mention of the subject. But in the case of the Karens the policy of Government is much simplified. We, as a Christian power, occupy common ground with the Karens in regard to religion. The Christian section have a faith identical with our own. The heathen section are in reality theists in an attitude

* A very serious case of injustice to Karens has been reported in the newspapers, and the report has received subsequent confirmation in certain details. The story is that, in a certain district which had been much disturbed, a punitive police-tax was levied on villages which had been conspicuously turbulent, or had harboured marauders, or which had failed to warn the authorities of the movements of dacoit gangs in their vicinity. This tax was to defray the cost of extra police stationed in these villages. The tax is said to have been assessed and collected by Burmese tax-collectors. The injustice complained of is this: that loyal Karens, and even those who had aided the authorities in quelling the disturbances, have been taxed alike with disloyal Burmese. If this be true, it is most discreditable, and may be most mischievous. The following extract from a letter dated September 13 seems to leave little room for doubt on the matter: "I first saw punitive tax-bills imposed on actively loyal Karens on the 2nd of May. . . . The very villages whose contingents I that day enrolled had their punitive tax-receipts stamped in the court that very day."

of expectancy-expectancy for what? for a revelation from the common God. Christianity has been found to satisfy the expectations of those who have been earnestly looking forward and upward for a fulfilment of the ancient prophecies of their seers. The so-called heathen section see that in Christianity the God of their fathers has revealed Himself; they admit intellectually the truth of Christianity, but they refuse, as yet, to conform to its self-denying ordinances. In openly sanctioning and encouraging the teaching of the Christian religion to Karens, the British Government would be in no sense interfering with the religious freedom of the people. It would, in doing so, be only helping the Karens to a rapid and complete attainment of what their ancestors of old believed and they themselves avow to be their rightful possession. Were a plebiscitum of the people to be taken on the question—the right of the Karen nation to be taught Christianity as the promised revelation from the God of their fathers-it would, I am certain, be carried almost unanimously. In promoting the spread of Christian doctrine, therefore, among the Karens, the British Government would be guilty of no usurpation of power, but would simply be fulfilling at once the historical destiny and the

universal wish of the people. The position is a curious and unique one. Rarely, if ever, has it been the good fortune of any Christian State to be placed in a position of such legitimate and commanding influence over the religion of a people.

The Karens, as I have already shown, look on Christianity and education as inseparable factors in their civilization. A school must always have a church, and a church can never be without a school. State encouragement to their school should be accompanied by State aid to their churches and

missions.

Much, however, remains to be done for the material comfort and well-being of the Karens. Thousands of them live from hand to mouth in feverish jungles and on sterile mountain-tops, struggling, body and soul, for the barest subsistence. Their wives and their children toil ceaselessly for their food. The land they cultivate yields grudgingly, and only to hard and incessant labour. Civilization makes but slow progress amongst a people living from hand to mouth, and migrating every year. The children should be rescued from the daily exhausting labour which they now have from sheer necessity to undergo. The only way to accomplish this is to give the people permanent

paying cultivation. The Government should endeavour by every possible means to draw the hill Karens down to the plains, and settle them on good rice-growing lands. Those who have already settled in the valleys and on the rivers have learnt lowland cultivation, and now make the most successful rice-growers on the plains. Grasp the children, freed from killing labour, for the school, and you will very soon find the communities prosperous and happy, and you will be raising a great permanent bulwark of strength for British rule.

Only one remark in conclusion. We have many difficulties yet to face in Burma. The annexation of the upper country will not be the unmixed blessing either to ourselves or to the people which many seem to suppose. It is an accomplished fact now, and we dare not recoil from the responsibility which we have imposed on ourselves. That there is trouble in store for us, both from within and from without, seems certain. That from within. is the most menacing, and may for years be the most dangerous. Our thirty years' rule in the lower country has been, on the whole, less successful than in any other province of the Indian Empire, from causes which it is unnecessary here to describe. It will be of incalculable advantage for us to have

the loyal Karen people occupying points of vantage all over the country. They are at heart true to the British Government; the Burmese are not. Let us, then, cement the Karen allegiance. They owe all they have to their missionaries under the protection afforded by British rule. They have a firm belief in the good intentions of our Government, even although these intentions have as yet borne but scanty fruit. It is the highest and best policy to bind them closely to ourselves, to show by our attitude towards them that we wish them to be a strong and prosperous community, and to give them every facility for developing a national civilization and a national religion. If we succeed we shall not only have achieved a great triumph of administration, but shall also have raised a living wall of defence against aggression from without and turbulence from within.

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