dictum of Sir John Seeley has rendered famous, took possession of some
of the maritime provinces of Burma, and in doing so lost three thousand
one hundred and fifteen men, of whom only a hundred and fifty were
killed in action. Then the customary fit of doubt and despondency
supervened. It was not until four years after the conclusion of peace
that a British Resident was sent to the Court of Ava in the vain hope
that he would be able to negotiate the retrocession of the province of
Tenasserim, as "the Directors of the East India Company looked upon this
territory as of no value to them." For a quarter of a century peace was
preserved, for there ruled at Ava a prince "who was too clear-sighted to
attempt again to measure arms with the British troops." Anon he was
succeeded by a new king--the Pagàn Prince--"who cared for nothing but
mains of cocks, games, and other infantile amusements," and who, after
the manner of Oriental despots, inaugurated his reign by putting to
death his two brothers and all their households. "There were several
hundreds of them." It is not surprising that under a ruler addicted to
such practices the British sailors who frequented the Burmese ports
should have been subjected to maltreatment. Their complaints reached the
ears of the iron-fisted and acquisitive Lord Dalhousie, who himself
went to Rangoon in 1852, and forthwith "decided on the immediate attack
of Prome and Pegu." M. Dautremer speaks in flattering terms of "the
tenacity and persistence of purpose which make the strength and glory of
British policy." He might truthfully have added another characteristic
feature which that policy at times displays, to wit, sluggishness. It
was not until sixteen years after Lord Dalhousie's annexation of Lower
Burma that the English bethought themselves of improving their newly
acquired province by the construction of a railway, and it was not till
1877 that the first line from Rangoon to Prome--a distance of only one
hundred and sixty-one miles--was opened. During all this time King
Mindon ruled in native Burma. He "gave abundant alms to monks," and,
moreover, which was perhaps more to the purpose, he was wise enough to
maintain relations with Great Britain which were "quite cordial."
Eventually the Nemesis which appears to attend on all semi-civilised and
moribund States when they are brought in contact with a vigorous and
aggressive civilisation appeared in the person of the "Sapaya-lat," the
"middle princess," who induced her feeble husband, King Thibaw, to carry
out massacres on a scale which, even in Burma, had been heretofore
unprecedented. Then the British on the other side of the frontier began
to murmur and "to consider whether it was possible to endure a neighbour
who was so cruel and so unpopular." All doubts as to whether the limits
of endurance had or had not been reached were removed when the
impecunious and spendthrift king not only imposed a very unjust fine of
some £150,000 on the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, but also had the
extreme folly to "throw himself into the arms of France"--a scheme which
was at once communicated by M. Jules Ferry to Lord Lyons, the British
Ambassador in Paris. Then war with Burma was declared, and after some
tedious operations, which involved the sacrifice of many valuable lives,
and which extended over three years, the country was "completely
pacified" by 1889, and Lord Dufferin added the title of "Ava" to the
Marquisate which was conferred on him.
In 1852, when Lord Dalhousie annexed Lower Burma, Rangoon was "merely a
fishing village." It is now a flourishing commercial town of some
300,000 inhabitants. In 1910-11 the imports into Burmese ports,
including coast trade, amounted to £13,600,000. The exports, in spite of
a duty on rice which is of a nature rather to shock orthodox economists,
were nearly £23,000,000 in value. The revenue in 1910 was about
£7,391,000, of which about £2,590,000 was on Imperial and the balance on
local account. Burma is in the happy position of being in a normal state
of surplus, and is thus able to contribute annually a sum of about
£2,500,000 to the Indian exchequer, a sum which those who are specially
interested in Burmese prosperity regard as excessive, whilst it is
apparently regarded as inadequate by some of those who look only to the
interests of the Indian taxpayers.
The account which M. Dautremer, who was for long French Consul at
Rangoon, has given of the present condition of Burma is preceded by an
introduction from the pen of Sir George Scott, who can speak with
unquestionable authority on Burmese affairs. It is clear that neither
author has allowed himself in any way to be biassed by national
proclivities, for whilst the Frenchman compares British and French
administrative methods in a manner which is very much to the detriment
of the latter, the Englishman, on the other hand, launches the most
fiery denunciations against those of his countrymen who are responsible
for Indian policy. Their want of enterprise is characterised by the
appalling polysyllabic adjective "hebetudinous," which it is perhaps as
well to explain means obtuse or dull, and they are told that they "are
infected with the Babu spirit, and cannot see beyond their immediate
horizon."
M. Dautremer thinks that it is somewhat narrow-minded of the Englishman
to inflict on himself the torture of wearing cloth or flannel clothes in
order that he may not be taken for a _chi-chi_ or half-caste, who very
wisely dresses in white. He expostulates against the social tyranny
which obliges him to pay visits between twelve and two "in such a
climate and with such a temperature," and he gently satirises the
isolation of the different layers of English society--civilian,
military, and subordinate services--in words which call to mind the
striking account given by the immortal Mr. Jingle of the dockyard
society of Chatham and Rochester. It is, however, consolatory to learn
that all classes combined in giving a hearty welcome to the genial and
sympathetic Frenchman who was living in their midst. Save on these minor
points, M. Dautremer has, for the most part, nothing but praise to
accord. He thinks that "all the British administrative officers in Burma
are well-educated and capable men, who know the country of which they
are put in charge, and are fluent in the language." He writhes under the
highly centralised and bureaucratic system adopted by his own
countrymen. He commends the English practice under which "the Home
Government never interferes in the management of internal affairs," and
it is earnestly to be hoped that the commendation is deserved, albeit of
late years there have occasionally been some ominous signs of a tendency
to govern India rather too much in detail from London. Speaking of the
rapid development of Burmese trade, M. Dautremer says, in words which
are manifestly intended to convey a criticism of his own Government,
"This is an example of the use of colonies to a nation which knows how
to put a proper value on them and to profit by them."
The warm appreciation which M. Dautremer displays of the best parts of
the English administrative system enhances his claims for respectful
attention whenever he indulges in criticism. He finds two rather weak
points in the administration. In the first place, he attributes the
large falling-off in the export of teak, _inter alia_, to "the increase
in Government duties and the much more rigid rules for extraction," and
he adds that the Government, which is itself a large dealer in timber,
has "by its action created a monopoly which has raised prices to the
highest possible limit." The subject is one which would appear to
require attention. The primary business of any Government is not to
trade but to administer, and, as invariably happens, the violation of a
sound economic principle of this sort is certain sooner or later to
carry its own punishment with it. In the second place, the Forest
Department, which is of very special importance in Burma, is a good deal
crippled by the "want of energy and want of industry which are
unfortunately common in the subordinate grades. The reason for this
state of things is to be found in the fact that the pay and prospects
are not good enough to attract really capable men." In many quarters,
notably in Central Africa, British Treasury officials have yet to learn
that, from every point of view, it is quite as great a mistake to employ
underpaid administrative agents as it would be for an employer of labour
to proceed on the principle that low wages necessarily connote cheap
production.
Sir George Scott in his introduction strikes a very different note from
that sounded by M. Dautremer. He alleges that the wealthy province of
Burma, which M. Dautremer tells us is not unseldom called "the milch-cow
of India," is starved, that its financial policy has been directed by
"cautious, nothing-venture, mole-horizon people," who have hid their
talent in a napkin; that "everything seems expressly designed to drive
out the capital" of which the country stands so much in need; that not
nearly enough has been done in the way of expenditure on public works,
notably on roads and railways, and that when these latter have been
constructed, they have sometimes been in the wrong directions. He cavils
at M. Dautremer's description of Burma as "a model possession," and
holds that "as a matter of bitter fact, the administrative view is that
of the parish beadle, and the enterprise that of the country-carrier
with a light cart instead of a motor-van."
It would require greater local knowledge than any possessed by the
writer of the present article either to endorse or to reject these
formidable accusations, although it may be said that the violence of Sir
George Scott's invective is not very convincing, but rather raises a
strong suspicion that he has overstated his case. Nothing is more
difficult, either for a private individual or for a State financier,
than to decide the question of when to be bold and when cautious in the
matter of capital outlay. It is quite possible to push to an extreme the
commonplace, albeit attractive, argument that large expenditure will be
amply remunerative, or even if not directly remunerative, highly
beneficial "in the long run." Although this plea is often--indeed,
perhaps generally--valid, it is none the less true that the run which is
foreshadowed is at times so long as to make the taxpayer, who has to
bear the present cost, gasp for breath before the promised goal is
reached. Pericles, by laying out huge sums on the public buildings of
Athens, earned the undying gratitude of artistic posterity. Whether his
action was in the true interests of his Athenian contemporaries is
perhaps rather more doubtful. The recent history of Argentina is an
instance of a country in which, as subsequent events have proved, the
plea for lavish capital expenditure was perfectly justifiable, but in
which, nevertheless, the over-haste shown in incurring heavy liabilities
led to much temporary inconvenience and even disaster. But on the whole
it may be said that where all the general conditions are favourable, and
point conclusively to the possibility and probability of fairly rapid
economic development, a bold financial policy may and should be adopted,
even although it may not be easy to prove beforehand by very exact
calculations that any special project under consideration will be
directly remunerative. Egyptian finance is a case in point. At a time
when the country was in the throes of bankruptcy, a fresh loan of
£1,000,000 was, to the dismay of the conventional financiers,
contracted, the proceeds of which were spent on irrigation works. So
also the construction of the Assouan dam, which cost nearly double the
sum originally estimated, was taken in hand at a moment when a
liability of a wholly unknown amount on account of the war in the Soudan
was hanging over the head of the Egyptian Treasury. In both of these
cases subsequent events amply justified the financial audacity which had
been shown. In the case of Burma there appears to be no doubt as to the
wealth of the province or its capacity for further development. In view
of all the circumstances of the case the amount of twelve millions,
which is apparently all that has been spent on railway construction
since 1869, would certainly appear to be rather a niggardly sum. In
spite, therefore, of the very unnecessary warmth with which Sir George
Scott has urged his views, it is to be hoped that his plea for the
adoption of a somewhat bolder financial policy in the direction of
expenditure on railways, and still more on feeder roads, will receive
from the India Office, with whom the matter really rests, the attention
which it would certainly appear to deserve. The case of public
buildings, of which Burma apparently stands much in need, is different.
They cannot, strictly speaking, be said to be remunerative, and should
almost, if not quite, invariably be paid for out of revenue.
[Footnote 87: _Burma under British Rule_. By Joseph Dautremer. London:
T. Fisher Unwin. 15s.]
XVII
A PSEUDO-HERO OF THE REVOLUTION[88]
_"The Spectator," July 5, 1913_
If it be a fact, as Carlyle said, that "History is the essence of
innumerable biographies," it is very necessary that the biographies from
which that essence is extracted should be true. It was probably a
profound want of confidence in the accuracy of biographical writing that
led Horace Walpole to beg for "anything but history, for history must be
false." Modern industry and research, ferreting in the less frequented
bypaths of history, have exposed many fictions, and have often led to
some strikingly paradoxical conclusions. They have substituted for
Cambronne's apocryphal saying at Waterloo the blunt sarcasm of the Duke
of Wellington that there were a number of ladies at Brussels who were
termed "la vieille garde," and of whom it was said "elles ne meurent
pas et se rendent toujours." They have led one eminent historian to
apologise for the polygamous tendencies of Henry VIII.; another to
advance the startling proposition that the "amazing" but, as the world
has heretofore held, infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious
reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia
Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a
fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barère, as he is called
by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately
misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many
picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a
pang of regret. We are reluctant to believe that William Tell was a
mythological marksman and Gessler a wholly impossible bailiff.
Nevertheless the inexorable laws of evidence demand that this sacrifice
should be made on the altar of historical truth. M. Gastine has now
ruthlessly quashed out another picturesque legend. Tallien--the
"bristly, fox-haired" Tallien of Carlyle's historical rhapsody--and La
Cabarrus--the fair Spanish Proserpine whom, "Pluto-like, he gathered at
Bordeaux"--have so far floated down the tide of history as individuals
who, like Byron's Corsair, were
Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.
Of the crimes there could, indeed, never have been any doubt, but
posterity took but little heed of them, for they were amply condoned by
the single virtue. That virtue was, indeed, of a transcendent character,
for it was nothing less than the delivery of the French nation from the
Dahomey-like rule of that Robespierre who deluged France in blood, and
who, albeit in Fouché's words he was "terribly sincere," at the same
time "never in his life cared for any one but himself and never forgave
an offence." Moreover, the act of delivery was associated with an
episode eminently calculated to appeal to human sentiment and sympathy.
It was thought that the love of a fair woman whose life was endangered
had nerved the lover and the patriot to perform an heroic act at the
imminent risk of his own life. Hence the hero became "Le Lion Amoureux,"
and the heroine was canonised as "Notre Dame de Thermidor."
M. Gastine has now torn this legend to shreds. Under his pitiless
analysis of the facts, nothing is left but the story of a contemptible
adventurer, who was "a robber, a murderer, and a poltroon," mated to a
grasping, heartless courtesan. Both were alike infamous. The ignoble
careers of both from the cradle to the grave do not, in reality, present
a single redeeming feature.
Madame Tallien was the daughter of François Cabarrus, a wealthy
Spaniard who was the banker of the Spanish Court. The great influence
which she unquestionably exerted over her contemporaries was wholly due
to her astounding physical beauty. Her intellectual equipment was meagre
in the extreme. At one period of her life she courted the society of
Madame de Staël and other intellectuals, but Princess Hélène Ligne said
of her that she "had more jargon than wit." As regards her physical
attractions, however, no dissentient voice has ever been raised. "Her
beauty," the Duchess d'Abrantès says in her memoirs, "of which the
sculptors of antiquity give us but an incomplete idea, had a charm not
met with in the types of Greece and Rome." Every man who approached her
appears to have become her victim. Lacretelle, who himself worshipped at
her shrine, says, "She appeared to most of us as the Spirit of Clemency
incarnate in the loveliest of human forms." At a very early age she
married a young French nobleman, the Marquis de Fontenay, from whom she
was speedily divorced. It is not known for what offence she was arrested
and imprisoned. Probably the mere fact that she was a marquise was
sufficient to entangle her in the meshes of the revolutionary net. It is
certain, however, that whilst lying under sentence of death in the
prison at Bordeaux she attracted the attention of Tallien, the son of
the Marquis of Bercy's butler and _ci-devant_ lawyer's clerk, who had
blossomed into "a Terrorist of the first water." He obtained her release
and she became his mistress. She took advantage of the equivocal but
influential position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic.
She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the
unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so
narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The venal
lenity shown by Tallien to aristocrats rendered him an object of
suspicion, whilst the marked tendency displayed by Robespierre to
mistrust and, finally, to immolate his coadjutors was an ominous
indication of the probable course of future events. Robespierre had
already destroyed Vergniaud by means of Hébert, Hébert by means of
Danton, and Danton by means of Billaud. As a preliminary step to the
destruction of Tallien, he caused his mistress to be arrested, probably
with a view to seeing what evidence against her paramour could be
extracted before she was herself guillotined.
From this point in the narrative history is merged into legend. The
legend would have us believe that on the 7th Thermidor the "Citoyenne
Fontenay" sent a dagger to the "Citoyen Tallien," accompanied by a
letter in which she said that she had dreamt that Robespierre was no
more, and that the gates of her prison had been flung open. "Alas!" she
added, "thanks to your signal cowardice there will soon be no one left
in France capable of bringing such a dream to pass." Tallien besought
Robespierre to show mercy, but "the Incorruptible was inflexible." Then
the "Lion Amoureux" roared, being, as the legend relates, stricken to
the heart at the appalling danger to which his beloved mistress was
exposed or, as his detractors put the case, being in deadly fear that
the untoward revelations of the Citoyenne might cost him his own head.
The next act in this Aeschylean drama is described by the believers in
the legend in the following words: "Tallien drew Theresia's dagger from
his breast and flashed it in the sunlight as though to nerve himself for
the desperate business that confronted him. 'This,' he cried
passionately, 'will be my final argument,' and looking about him to make
sure he was alone he raised the blade to his lips and kissed it."
The result, it is alleged, was that Tallien provoked the episode of the
9th Thermidor (July 22, 1794). The few faltering sentences which
Robespierre wished to utter were never spoken. He was "choked by the
blood of Danton," and hurried off to the guillotine which awaited him on
the morrow.
History, which in this instance is not legendary, relates that on the
death of the tyrant a wild shout of exultation was raised by the joyous
people who had for so long wandered in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. To whom, they asked, did they owe their liberty? What was more
natural than to assume that it was to the brave Tallien and to the
loving woman who armed him to strike a blow for the freedom of France?
Tallien and his mistress became, therefore, the idols of the French
people. The Chancellor Pasquier relates their appearance at a theatre:
The enthusiasm and the applause were indescribable. The occupants
of the boxes, the people in the pit, men and women alike, stood up
on their chairs to look at him. It seemed as though they would
never weary of gazing at him. He was young, rather good-looking,
and his manner was calm and serene. Madame Tallien was at his side
and shared his triumph. In her case also everything had been
forgiven and forgotten. Similar scenes were enacted all through the
autumn of that year. Never was any service, however great, rewarded
by gratitude so lively and so touching.
It would be impossible within the limits of the present article to
summarise the arguments by which M. Gastine seeks to destroy this myth.
Allusion may, however, be made to two points of special importance. The
first is that neither Tallien nor the lovely Spaniard languishing in
the dungeon of La Force had much to do with the episode of the 9th
Thermidor. "Tallien was a mere super, a mere puppet that had to be
galvanised into action up to the very last." The man who really
organised the movement and persuaded his coadjutors that they were
engaged in a life and death struggle with Robespierre was he who, as
every reader of revolutionary history knows, was busily engaged in
pulling the strings behind the scenes during the whole of this chaotic
period. It was the man whose iron nerve and subtle brain enabled him, in
spite of a secular course of betrayals, to keep his head on his
shoulders, and finally to escape the clutches of Napoleon, who, as Lord
Rosebery tells us,[89] always deeply regretted that he had not had him
"hanged or shot." It was Fouché.
In the second place, there is conclusive evidence to show that, to use
the ordinary slang expression of the present day, the celebrated dagger
letter was "faked." When Robespierre fell, Tallien never gave a thought
to his mistress. He still trembled for his own life. "His sole aim was
to make away with Robespierre's papers." It was only on the 12th
Thermidor--that is to say, two days after Robespierre's mangled head had
been sheared off by the guillotine--that, noting the trend of public
opinion, and appreciating the capital which might be made out of the
current myth, he hurried off to La Force and there concocted with his
mistress the famous letter which he, of course, antedated.
The subsequent careers of Tallien and his wife--for he married La
Cabarrus in December 1794--are merely characterised by a number of
unedifying details. The hero of this sordid tale passed through many
vicissitudes. He went with Napoleon to Egypt. He was, on his return
voyage, taken prisoner by an English cruiser. On his arrival in London
he was well received by Fox and the Whigs--a fact which cannot be said
to redound much to the credit either of the Whig party or its leader. He
gambled on the Stock Exchange, and at one time "blossomed out as a
dealer in soap, candles, and cotton bonnets." After passing through an
unhonoured old age, he died in great poverty in 1820. The heroine became
intimate with Josephine during Napoleon's absence in Egypt, was
subsequently divorced from Tallien, and later, after passing through a
phase when she was the mistress of the banker Ouvrard, married the
Prince of Caraman-Chimay. Her conduct during the latter years of her
life appears to have been irreproachable. She died in 1835.
[Footnote 88: _The Life of Madame Tallien._ By L. Gastine. Translated
from the French by J. Lewis May. London: John Lane. 12s. 6d. net.]
[Footnote 89: _The Last Phase_, p. 203.]
XVIII
THE FUTURE OF THE CLASSICS
_"The Spectator," July 5, 1913_