Sir John Lawrence's treaty with Bootan is severely attacked in
India, and is indeed rather an imbecile arrangement. The Durbar agree to cede the Doars, or valleys leading down into the plain, to surrender the treaty extorted from Mr. Eden, and, if they can, to induce the Toungso Penlow—say the Military Prefect of Toungso, or Eastern Bootan—to give up the two guns he took from us in the discreditable affair of Dewangiri. On the other hand, we agree to pay them 50,000 rupees a year, and to help in reducing the troublesome Penlow to order. In other words, we agree to pay 50,000 rupees a year for a peace one clause of which may compel us to go to war. Moreover, the payment is not to begin till the guns are restored, an arrangement which suggests, the natives sneer, that we have bought back guns lost in battle. It is quite natural that the Government of India should be glad to be out of an intolerably costly scrape, and quite natural also that Anglo-Indians bred under Lord Dalhousie should not appre- ciate this mode of getting out of it. He would have harnessed the Durbar to the guns sooner than not have them.
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