BRIGANDAGE IN BURMAH. B RIGANDAGE in Burnaah is not precisely the
semi- patriotic offence which many persons in England believe it to be, chiefly on the evidence of the Times corre- spondent, who is obviously strongly prejudiced against successive Chief Commissioners. It is simply gang-robbery, though several of the discontented members and de- pendants of the dethroned family avail themselves of the robber's services to promote emeutes. The system began under Theebau's predecessor, and under his own weak reign attained dimensions for which we can find no Euro- pean parallel, unless it be in Germany for a few years after the Thirty Years' War. The Burman is fond of change and adventure ; when excited he cares no more about the destruction of human life, his own included, than a Chinese ; and he has no fitting outlet for either his good or his bad qualities in military service, a defect which we hope will be remedied. Every Burman, therefore, of high spirit and dissolute life, when funds fell short or he was avoided by his friends, took to brigandage as a profession. He collected a few followers from among his poorer kinsfolk, and the bad characters of his own and neighbouring villages, established communication with similar men in distant villages, sometimes for instance marrying wives by the score, and then began a career of plunder. He assessed a village at so much, and if the sum was not paid, levied it by massacre, often accompanied by atrocious cruelties. As agriculture is exceedingly profitable in Upper Burmah, owing to the richness of the soil, the villagers usually could pay, and as there was no regular force to defend them, usually did pay. The Burman officials, seeing this, and being greatly troubled by their own want of force to collect revenue and their own littld perquisites on revenue, began to make leagues with the brigand chiefs, who, in considera- tion of impunity, levied the taxes as well as their own assessments, and gradually became, under King Theebau, recognised members of the official hierarchy, and, of course, friends of the Court, whose officials, besides receiving taxes otherwise beyond collection, enjoyed also heavy bribes. Those villages, again, which dis- liked to be harried, sought the protection of other brigand chiefs, who for their part demanded the taxes and blackmail for the protection they gave, and obtained both. Of course, in a country full of adventurers, such a system, so safe, so profitable, and 89 full of adventure, rapidly expanded ; and when the annexation was proclaimed, the British found the whole country, from Arracan to the Chinese frontier—a country, remember, nearly as large as France—parcelled out among brigand leaders, who were at once Fermiers-Generaux, robber-chiefs, and criminals in close alliance with the Central Government. The taxes were trebled by extortions, and whenever a village resisted, the terror was kept up by a terrible example. With the annexation, the keystone of the system fell in. The British Commissioners were not going to see the peasants robbed and the taxes diverted for the benefit of brigands, and they announced that, while previous offences would not be punished, brigandage must absolutely cease. The brigand chiefs, who had become as accustomed to their revenue from plunder as the robber-lords of the Rhine, did not like this, nor did the old native officials who had shared the plunder, nor did—and this was the annoying feature of the position—the brigands' allies in the plundered villages. They rose, there- fore, in insurrection, formed leagues, proclaimed this or that Prince, defied the British Government, and in default of official help, re-established their terrorism by torture. The Government, however, soon put down open resistance, and accumulating troops and military police in the province, broke up the most formidable gangs, and so convinced the leaders of their inability to resist, that now, whenever the troops or police approach, the brigand forces melt away, dispersing into the forest, to meet again as the soldiery retire.
The larger brigandage, confused here with insurrection, speedily ended, the last two really dangerous leaders having been killed a few months ago ; but it still remained to suppress the smaller brigandage, which, because it could never develop into regular lordship, was even more dangerous to the community. This system was utterly fatal to the growth of wealth, to peaceful agriculture, and to the collection of revenue ; but it proved exceedingly difficult to put down. As in South Italy, it had become rooted in the habits of the people. It was the proper profession for a spirited Burman, and even the villagers who suffered were inclined, like the villagers in many parts of the Turkish Empire, to look upon a brigand as a hero. The Commissioners found that the brigands had friends everywhere, that all their relatives screened and followed them, and that they received information from their friends in a way which continually baffled the efforts of the police. After Sir George White, therefore— now promoted to the command in Quetta for his splendid services in Burmah—had broken up the greater gangs, Sir Charles Crosthwaite, the Chief Commissioner, a most energetic and competent civilian, decided that it was necessary to strike at the brigands' allies and harbourers as well as at the brigands themselves. The villages had been so terrorised, especially during the insurrection, when the brigands, wild with fear of losing their gains, committed endless atrocities, that no promises of pro- tection gave the villagers courage to cease paying black- mail to their tyrants or giving them information. The Government of India, therefore, authorised the Com- missioners to compel the villagers to give up their alliance, and to rely upon the police for defence against their tyrants. The villages which paid blackmail were steadily fined until they left off the practice, while all persons related to or allied with the brigands were compelled to remove themselves to other localities. The former device needs no defence, for even in England we punish those who pay blackmail to thieves for the sake of recovering their property, and the latter is far less unjust than it may seem to those unacquainted with the province. Exceptional cases of injustice may occur ; but the police have usually ample evidence about the men they expel, the brigands when captured relating their histories, with all details as to the aid they received, with the curious truthfulness observed also in Thugs. A Burman also is always a more or less educated man, and the British officers, greatly to their surprise, have repeatedly seized minute lists of the gangs, with the names of all those who give them information, kept with the accuracy and method of an Adjutant's office, the truth being that the brigands, favoured as they were by the Court, and compelled to buy protection by the collection of taxes, developed into regular men of business. Under this system, the villagers are at last bestirring themselves, the brigands find the pursuit too dangerous for enjoyment, the number of leaders surrendering or betrayed is con- stantly increasing, and the country is sinking into a quiet marked by the constantly increasing receipts of the Treasury from a taxation at present preposterously light, the land-tax not averaging 3 per cent. upon the total crop. Not that brigandage.will be, or can be, wholly put down. The extent of the country is too vast for that, and. the habits of the people too deeply rooted, while it might at present be dangerous to organise the villages, and. make of each community an armed band competent under its head man to defend itself. The Government should, how- ever, we think,. lose no time in following the precedent liy2.grYtch,vre believe Sir Frederick Halliday crushed deeeitii An Bengal Proper. It had risen in 1852 to a terrible height, so that no native with Its.100 was safe from murder, tortnre, or robbery ; but the Lieutenant- Governor applied the Th.uggee Act, and in three years gang,robbery almost disappeared. The two grand prin- cipies.of that Act are that to be a Thug, independently of apy.apecific act of Thuggee, is a capital offence—death is not inflicted, but only detention in a tent-factory—and that corroborative confessions taken at distant points con- stitute sufficient legal evidence. Those two principles, applied by the series of remarkable officers who have pre- sided. over the department, and aided by an efficient system of espionage, have almost extirpated Thuggee,—though we fear the great society of poisoners still exists,—and dacoity ; and they would, in the end, root out brigandage from ]urmah.
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