400 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. YI., No. 144. 



should appoint an ' arbitrator ' to whose decision 

 the other party — in this instance an independent 

 sovereign, so far as the British are concerned — 

 should agree to abide, even before knowing the 

 arbitrator's name, seems to possess features as 

 objectionable as they are novel. The Burman 

 government did not take kindly to the idea of 

 exposing all the secrets of Burman mal-administra- 

 tion to the gaze of a foreigner, even though he 

 possessed the confidence of the Viceroy of India. 

 A reply was accordingly drawn up, and sent to 

 Eangoon in the most insulting way that could be 

 devised. One sentence will show the weight which 

 the despot of Mandalay attached to the demands of 

 the British government. '' The chief commis- 



person sent by the chief commissioner of British 

 Burma shall be received with all honor ; (2) that 

 all proceedings against the Bombay-Burma com- 

 pany shall be suspended, pending his investiga- 

 tion ; (3) that a British resident with a sufficient 

 guard shall be accepted. If the first two demands 

 are not conceded before a certain day, ' action will 

 be immediately taken.' In other words, if the 

 monarch of Burma will not submit peaceably to 

 demands which were just in the eyes of Lord Duf- 

 ferin, he wiU be compelled to submit to them and 

 to become a vassal of the Empress of India. There 

 are two sides to every question, and in the pres- 

 ent case it must be admitted that, from a Burman 

 point of view, Theebaw, the Lord of the White 



sioner is distinctly informed," so this strange let- 

 ter reads, ' ' that on no account wiU there be any 

 suspension of any order or action which it may be 

 necessary to pass or take against the Bombay- 

 Burma company pursuant to the judgment of the 

 shildaw on the timber case." If the affair did not 

 involve the lives of thousands of innocent Bur- 

 mans, and also, as will presently appear, the con- 

 tinued trade supremacy of the English in the east, 

 this reply of the ruler of less than four miUion 

 partially-civilized and poorly-armed persons to an 

 official letter of a servant of the Empress of India 

 would appear simply ridiculous. 



The matter was placed in the liands of Lord 

 Dufferin, the present viceroy ; and after some 

 delay an ultimatum was sent to King Theebaw. 

 In it three demands are made : namely, (1) that a 



Elephant, is acting entirely within his legal rights 

 in confiscating to his own use any thing upon 

 which he can lay his hands. It is hardly to be 

 expected that the English would view the matter 

 in the same light; and it should always be borne 

 in mind that, as a late viceroy once said, when the 

 English are attacked in their mercantile interests, 

 they are wounded in their most irritable point ; 

 and the present issue involves not merely the ruin 

 of a particular commercial corporation. It is a 

 part of the contest for supremacy in the east, 

 which began years ago, in 1746, when the French 

 captured Madras, and of which the end is not yet. 

 The first thing that strikes the eye when directed 

 upon a map of Indo-China is the fact that all the 

 great rivers of this region — the Hong-Chui (Long 

 River or River of Canton), the Hoti-Kiang (Son 



