the reigning dynasty, their monarchs have steadily and unintermittingly pursued a system of aggressive warfare and encroachment. For the past seventy years, they have been engaged in almost perpetual wars with Siam; but it is only within the past five or six years that they have been pushing their frontier into Assam and Cassay, so as immediately to border on the British territory. Their plans of aggression in the late war had evidently been long matured; and as they had nothing to require or to gain by negotiation, it is not very likely that they would have been induced by it to retract or concede, or that pacific overtures would have been viewed in any other light than as a confession or demonstration of fear and weakness. The obstinate pertinacity with which the war has been maintained by the Court of Ava, convinces us that that haughty power would have accepted of peace in no other attitude than that of a defeated and humbled foe. The Birmans are a fine and, in many respects, an interesting people; far more so than the degraded Hindoos; but their government is a ruthless despotism. Their wars have been wars of extermination, and of the spirit of their laws, it will be sufficient to give one practical illustration. Desertion or misconduct on the part of a conscript, invariably proves the destruction of all his family, who are put into a straw hut, and burned alive! There is, perhaps, no country in the 'world,' remarks the Rev. G. H. Hough, (one of the American missionaries long resident at Rangoon,) in which the sway of despotism has been less controlled by any correct feeling or 'sentiment, or which exhibits a stronger specimen of its injurious effects upon the physical and moral powers of mankind, than the Birman dominions...... The petty acts of tyranny 'practised by the subordinate civil officers, åre a terror to the public, and create between man and man that jealousy and suspicion which destroy confidence, and annihilate the best 'feelings of humanity.'* The most respectable part of the standing army, if such it may be called, consists of the marines who man the war-boats; and these, Colonel Francklin says, live chiefly by rapine, and are in a constant state of hostility against the rest of the people, which makes them audacious and prompt to execute any orders, however cruel or violent.' A Birman,' he adds is seldom any thing else than a govern⚫ment servant, a soldier, boatman, husbandman, or labourer.'+ Yet, could their public character be formed in a different mould from that in which their system of government has 'cast it,' Mr. Hough admits that they would be by no means

* Friend of India, No. xii.

Asiat. Journal, vol. xix. p. 8.

'destitute of those elementary principles which combine to ⚫ form the happiness of civilised society.' Indeed, it is impossible to rise from the perusal of Mrs. Judson's Letters, without conceiving a high esteem for many of the individuals to whom they introduce us, or without very favourable impressions respecting some features of the national character. Even the personal character of the monarch does not seem to be unamiable. But history supplies abundant proofs that this affords no security against the abuse of power under a system of military despotism. The late Emperor of France was certainly, in domestic life, an amiable and even a humane man. And so was our Charles the Second.

The Birman empire, like that of Napoleon, was a heterogeneous aggregate of provinces and kingdoms, held together by no common tie but that of conquest. The Peguans were never reconciled to the yoke. The peaceful Carayns, an agricultural tribe, have never mixed with their masters. The Siamese cherish an inextinguishable hatred to the Birmans, from whom they differ as widely as the Dutch do from the French. The Arracanese or Mughs, the Cassayers, and the Assamese of the other conquered districts, whatever affinity they may bear to the Birmans in filiation or language, are still equally distinct, and can regard the Birmans in no other light than as enemies and oppressors. The dismemberment of the empire which has been effected by the late treaty of peace, only reduces the Birmans to their original and natural limits, leaving them in possession of the whole course and delta of the Irrawaddy or Ava river, but excluding them from the valley of the Burrampooter, from Cachar and Arracan, from the Zeet-taung river, and the eastern coast of the Gulf of Marta

ban.

Lieut. Col. Stewart, in his pamphlet, published before intelligence had been received of the successful termination of the contest, deprecated such a dismemberment of the empire, as tending to weaken the British frontier, by destroying an efficient government as the neighbouring power, and one capable of being made responsible for the acts of its subjects,-as rendering necessary an extension of the system of residencies, -and as obstructing the improvement of society, which can be promoted only in large communities. This last objection appears to us the most unreasonable of the three. The consolidation of small independent states into large communities by conquest, so far from advancing the improvement of society, has almost uniformly been attended by a frightful depopulation, and by a positive deterioration in the condition and character of the people. Spain under the Emperor Charles the Fifth,

Portugal under Philip II., Ireland under the Plantagenets, (to come no lower,) Greece and Asia Minor under the Turkish empire, the Crimea under the Czars, Arracan under the Birmans, are all cases in point, illustrating in the most striking manner, the reverse of Col. Stewart's most paradoxical assertion. But he must have been thinking only of our Indian empire, which certainly has been an infinite benefit to the subjects of those various petty despotisms which it has displaced ;-although even in this instance, he seems to think that the extension of territory and consolidation of empire have been carried too far, for he charges the British Government with obstructing in India the improvement of society. We have given them,' he says, 'tranquillity; but it is the tranquillity of stagnation, agitated by no living spring, unruffled by any salutary breeze, and prone to corrupt into every vice, or to ferment into every baneful and pernicious excess." But unless this gentleman is of opinion that the Birman Government is of a more wise and beneficent character than the British, and better adapted to promote the improvement of society, we cannot understand how he can consistently object to the contraction of its territory, or rather, the emancipation of those territories into which it had obtruded.

That the late arrangements will not tend to weaken the British frontier, will be evident to any person who has a competent acquaintance with the nature of the country. On the side of Sylhet and Chittagong, we were decidedly vulnerable. The acquisition of Arracan, besides providing us with a most important line of coast, completing in fact our possession of the whole Bay of Bengal, gives us, instead of an open frontier, a natural barrier towards the east, formed of almost inaccessible mountains. Throughout this chain, which runs in a direction parallel with the coast from Assam to Cape Negrais, there are only two openings, so far as known, which admit of the passage of an army; and of these, one only is practicable the greater part of the year. On the other side of this frontier, we shall still have the Birmans for our neighbours. In placing Assam and Cassay under native princes, with residents at Rungpore, Cospoor, and Munnipore, we certainly cannot be considered as having either weakened our frontier, or placed ourselves in contact with a less efficient government than that of the Birman chobwas who previously held possession of them. After all, politicians are divided with respect to the expediency of having a very efficient government as the neighbouring power; and it has been thought, that Turkey, on account of the very weakness and non-efficiency of its government, was the most desirable border country that Christendom could have.

The cession of the provinces of Mergui, Tavoy, and Yea to the British, together with the proposed establishment of a resident at Zeet-taung, brings us in immediate contact with the Siamese nation, who are expressly included in the treaty of peace. An immense chain of mountains, the spine of the whole region, stretching down through the isthmus and peninsula to the Sincapore strait, separates the newly acquired territory in this quarter from the great valley of the Siamese Nile. We could not, apparently, have more inoffensive neighbours. The present race of Siamese are a semi-aquatic people, more fond, however, of their river than of the ocean;-diminutive in stature, their average height being not more than five feet three inches ;-of a squat shape, inclining to obesity;-in their general character, mild, patient, good-humoured. A very large proportion of the population of Siam (some accounts make it one third, others nearly one half) consists of Chinese emigrants, or the descendants of those who were encouraged to settle in this country by King Pe-ya-tac, (himself the son of a Chinese,) about fifty years ago, after the country had been almost depopulated by a Birman invasion, followed by a year of famine. The original race of Siamese, the Tai-yai, or Great Tays, as they are called, are now to be found only in the northern and interior provinces, or in the unexplored countries between the Siam and Cambodia rivers. Siam is in fact scarcely an Indo-Chinese country; so decidedly does the Chinese character predominate, in combination with the Malay. Mr. Finlayson says:

The skin of the Siamese is of a lighter colour than in the generality of Asiatics to the west of the Ganges, by far the greater number being of a yellow complexion; a colour which, in the higher ranks, and particularly among women and children, they take pleasure in heightening by the use of a bright yellow wash or cosmetic, so that their bodies are often rendered of a golden colour. The texture of the skin is remarkably smooth, soft, and shining.'

A Chinese complexion, it seems, together with black teeth, is, in Siam, as well as in Birmah, the perfection of beauty. White teeth, they say, are fit only for dogs. This fondness for a golden complexion is not peculiar to the Indo-Chinese. Van Egmont tells us, that the Greek ladies at Smyrna, on high occasions, used to gild their faces, which was considered as rendering them irresistibly charming. Yellow is, moreover, a sacred colour among all the worshippers of Buddha. The priests are distinguished by their yellow garments, the yellow lotos is sacred to Buddha, and the precious yellow metal is the type of all grandeur and excellence.

The language of Siam is considered by Dr. Leyden as an original one. It is, he says, more purely monosyllabic than the languages of Birmah, Arracan, and Pegu, and is certainly connected in some degree with the Chinese dialects; espe'cially the mandarin or court language, with which its nume'rals, as well as some other terms, coincide.' In its construction, its intonations, and its modes of expression, it coincides much more closely with the Chinese dialects, than with those of Birmah; and the words which it has borrowed from the Pali or Magadha, (the sacred language of the votaries of Buddha,) are much more contracted and disguised than in the other vernacular idioms*. The Siamese calendar differs little from that of the Chinese. Mr. Finlayson says indeed, that it is very doubtful if they could construct one without the assistance of a Chinese calendar, which they procure regularly from Pekin. Their era, answering to A.D. 638, also appears to be derived from China. What event it dates from, is unknown; but it is remarkable, that it corresponds very nearly to the accession of the first emperor of the Tang dynasty, the successor of the sovereign under whom China was first united in one empire. The comparatively modern date to which this era ascends, makes strongly against any pretensions of the present race of Siamese to an original literature. The history of their kings does not, indeed, go further back than A.D. 756. Their religion, which is that of Buddha, whom they worship under the name of Sommono-Kodam (the holy Kodam, the Godama or Gaudama of the Birmans and Cingalese), is believed by the priests to have had its origin in Ceylon; but there is no room to doubt that they received it by way of China, into which it was introduced towards the close of the first century. Mr. Finlayson states that the founder of their religion is also known under the name of Pra-Phut, which he interprets the 'high lord.' Phut or Phoodh is no other word than the Chinese Fuh or Fohi, the Japanese Buth, and the Pali Boodh; and Pra is a titular prefix, signifying lord. It is used in Birmah as a regal title, (as Alom-praw, Minderajee-praw,)† and is also applied to their sacred edifices; as, in India, the divine titles of Deo, Paal or Baal, &c. are used as appellatives of a dynasty. Col. Symes conjectures with great plausibility, that Pra or Phra is no other word than the Egyptian Pharoah or Phralı, which, Josephus tell us, signified king, and which occurs in composition in the name of Potipherah, prince of On.

* Asiat. Res. Vol. X. p. 244.

† In Siamese, the word for lord is Chaw, the same, probably, as the Persian Shah.