GOVERNMENT
'Fire, water, storms, robbers, rulers--these are the five great
evils.'--_Burmese saying._
It would be difficult, I think, to imagine anything worse than the
government of Upper Burma in its later days. I mean by 'government' the
king and his counsellors and the greater officials of the empire. The
management of foreign affairs, of the army, the suppression of greater
crimes, the care of the means of communication, all those duties which
fall to the central government, were badly done, if done at all. It must
be remembered that there was one difficulty in the way--the absence of
any noble or leisured class to be entrusted with the greater offices. As
I have shown in another chapter, there was no one between the king and
the villager--no noble, no landowner, no wealthy or educated class at
all. The king had to seek for his ministers among the ordinary people,
consequently the men who were called upon to fill great offices of state
were as often as not men who had no experience beyond the narrow limits
of a village.
The breadth of view, the knowledge of other countries, of other
thoughts, that comes to those who have wealth and leisure, were wanting
to these ministers of the king. Natural capacity many of them had, but
that is not of much value until it is cultivated. You cannot learn in
the narrow precincts of a village the knowledge necessary to the
management of great affairs; and therefore in affairs of state this want
of any noble or leisured class was a very serious loss to the government
of Burma. It had great and countervailing advantages, of which I will
speak when I come to local government, but that it was a heavy loss as
far as the central government goes no one can doubt. There was none of
that check upon the power of the king which a powerful nobility will
give; there was no trained talent at his disposal. The king remained
absolutely supreme, with no one near his throne, and the ministers were
mere puppets, here to-day and gone to-morrow. They lived by the breath
of the king and court, and when they lost favour there was none to help
them. They had no faction behind them to uphold them against the king.
It can easily be understood how disastrous all this was to any form of
good government. All these ministers and governors were corrupt; there
was corruption to the core.
When it is understood that hardly any official was paid, and that those
who were paid were insufficiently paid, and had unlimited power, there
will be no difficulty in seeing the reason. In circumstances like this
all people would be corrupt. The only securities against bribery and
abuse of power are adequate pay, restricted authority, and great
publicity. None of these obtained in Burma any more than in the Europe
of five hundred years ago, and the result was the same in both. The
central government consisted of the king, who had no limit at all to his
power, and the council of ministers, whose only check was the king. The
executive and judicial were all the same: there was no appeal from one
to the other. The only appeal from the ministers was to the king, and as
the king shut himself up in his palace, and was practically inaccessible
to all but high officials, the worthlessness of this appeal is evident.
Outside Mandalay the country was governed by _wuns_ or governors. These
were appointed by the king, or by the council, or by both, and they
obtained their position by bribery. Their tenure was exceedingly
insecure, as any man who came and gave a bigger bribe was likely to
obtain the former governor's dismissal and his own appointment.
Consequently the usual tenure of office of a governor was a year. Often
there were half a dozen governors in a year; sometimes a man with strong
influence managed to retain his position for some years. From the orders
of the governor there was an appeal to the council. This was in some
matters useful, but in others not so. If a governor sentenced a man to
death--all governors had power of life and death--he would be executed
long before an appeal could reach the council. Practically no check was
possible by the palace over distant governors, and they did as they
liked. Anything more disastrous and fatal to any kind of good government
than this it is impossible to imagine. The governors did what they
considered right in their own eyes, and made as much money as they
could, while they could. They collected the taxes and as much more as
they could get; they administered the laws of Manu in civil and criminal
affairs, except when tempted to deviate therefrom by good reasons; they
carried out orders received from Mandalay, when these orders fell in
with their own desires, or when they considered that disobedience might
be dangerous. It is a Burmese proverb that officials are one of the five
great enemies of mankind, and there was, I think (at all events in the
latter days of the kingdom) good reason to remember it. And yet these
officials were not bad men in themselves; on the contrary, many of them
were men of good purpose, of natural honesty, of right principles. In a
well-organized system they would have done well, but the system was
rotten to the core.
It may be asked why the Burmese people remained quiet under such a rule
as this; why they did not rise and destroy it, raising a new one in its
place; how it was that such a state of corruption lasted for a year, let
alone for many years.
The answer is this: However bad the government may have been, it had
the qualities of its defects. If it did not do much to help the people,
it did little to hinder them. To a great extent it left them alone to
manage their own affairs in their own way. Burma in those days was like
a great untended garden, full of weeds, full of flowers too, each plant
striving after its own way, gradually evolving into higher forms. Now
sometimes it seems to me to be like an old Dutch garden, with the paths
very straight, very clean swept, with the trees clipped into curious
shapes of bird and beast, tortured out of all knowledge, and many of the
flowers mown down. The Burmese government left its people alone; that
was one great virtue. And, again, any government, however good, however
bad, is but a small factor in the life of a people; it comes far below
many other things in importance. A short rainfall for a year is more
disastrous than a mad king; a plague is worse than fifty grasping
governors; social rottenness is incomparably more dangerous than the
rottenest government.
And in Burma it was only the supreme government, the high officials,
that were very bad. It was only the management of state affairs that was
feeble and corrupt; all the rest was very good. The land laws, the
self-government, the social condition of the people, were admirable. It
was so good that the rotten central government made but little
difference to the people, and it would probably have lasted for a long
while if not attacked from outside. A greater power came and upset the
government of the king, and established itself in his place; and I may
here say that the idea that the feebleness or wrong-doing of the Burmese
government was the cause of the downfall is a mistake. If the Burmese
government had been the best that ever existed, the annexation would
have happened just the same. It was a political necessity for us.
The central government of a country is, as I have said, not a matter of
much importance. It has very little influence in the evolution of the
soul of a people. It is always a great deal worse than the people
themselves--a hundred years behind them in civilization, a thousand
years behind them in morality. Men will do in the name of government
acts which, if performed in a private capacity, would cover them with
shame before men, and would land them in a gaol or worse. The name of
government is a cloak for the worst passions of manhood. It is not an
interesting study, the government of mankind.
A government is no part of the soul of the people, but is a mere
excrescence; and so I have but little to say about this of Burma, beyond
this curious fact--that religion had no part in it. Surely this is a
very remarkable thing, that a religion having the hold upon its
followers that Buddhism has upon the Burmese has never attempted to
grasp the supreme authority and use it to its ends.
It is not quite an explanation to say that Buddhism is not concerned
with such things; that its very spirit is against the assumption of any
worldly power and authority; that it is a negation of the value of these
things. Something of this sort might be said of other religions, and yet
they have all striven to use the temporal power.
I do not know what the explanation is, unless it be that the Burmese
believe their religion and other people do not. However that may be,
there is no doubt of the fact. Religion had nothing whatever--absolutely
nothing in any way at all--to do with government. There are no
exceptions. What has led people to think sometimes that there were
exceptions is the fact that the king confirmed the Thathanabaing--the
head of the community of monks--after he had been elected by his
fellow-monks. The reason of this was as follows: All ecclesiastical
matters--I use the word 'ecclesiastical' because I can find no
other--were outside the jurisdiction of civil limits. By
'ecclesiastical' I mean such matters as referred to the ownership and
habitation of monasteries, the building of pagodas and places of prayer,
the discipline of the monkhood. Such questions were decided by
ecclesiastical courts under the Thathanabaing.
Now, it was necessary sometimes, as may be understood, to enforce these
decrees, and for that reason to apply to civil power. Therefore there
must be a head of the monks acknowledged by the civil power as head, to
make such applications as might be necessary in this, and perhaps some
other such circumstances.
It became, therefore, the custom for the king to acknowledge by order
the elect of the monks as Thathanabaing for all such purposes. That was
all. The king did not appoint him at all.
Any such idea as a monk interfering in the affairs of state, or
expressing an opinion on war or law or finance, would appear to the
Burmese a negation of their faith. They were never led away by the idea
that good might come of such interference. This terrible snare has never
caught their feet. They hold that a man's first duty is to his own soul.
Never think that you can do good to others at the same time as you
injure yourself, and the greatest good for your own heart is to learn
that beyond all this turmoil and fret there is the Great Peace--so great
that we can hardly understand it, and to reach it you must fit yourself
for it. The monk is he who is attempting to reach it, and he knows that
he cannot do that by attempting to rule his fellow-man; that is probably
the very worst thing he could do. And therefore the monkhood, powerful
as they were, left all politics alone. I have never been able to hear of
a single instance in which they even expressed an opinion either as a
body or as individuals on any state matter.
It is true that, if a governor oppressed his people, the monks would
remonstrate with him, or even, in the last extremity, with the king;
they would plead with the king for clemency to conquered peoples, to
rebels, to criminals; their voice was always on the side of mercy. As
far as urging the greatest of all virtues upon governors and rulers
alike, they may be said to have interfered with politics; but this is
not what is usually understood by religion interfering in things of
state. It seems to me we usually mean the reverse of this, for we are of
late beginning to regard it with horror. The Burmese have always done
so. They would think it a denial of all religion.
And so the only things worth noting about the government of the Burmese
were its exceeding badness, and its disconnection with religion. That it
would have been a much stronger government had it been able to enlist on
its side all the power of the monkhood, none can doubt. It might even
have been a better government; of that I am not sure. But that such a
union would have meant the utter destruction of the religion, the
debasing of the very soul of the people, no one who has tried to
understand that soul can doubt. And a soul is worth very many
governments.
But when you left the central government, and came down to the
management of local affairs, there was a great change. You came straight
down from the king and governor to the village and its headman. There
were no lords, no squires, nor ecclesiastical power wielding authority
over the people.
Each village was to a very great extent a self-governing community
composed of men free in every way. The whole country was divided into
villages, sometimes containing one or two hamlets at a little distance
from each other--offshoots from the parent stem. The towns, too, were
divided into quarters, and each quarter had its headman. These men held
their appointment-orders from the king as a matter of form, but they
were chosen by their fellow-villagers as a matter of fact. Partly this
headship was hereditary, not from father to son, but it might be from
brother to brother, and so on. It was not usually a very coveted
appointment, for the responsibility and trouble were considerable, and
the pay small. It was 10 per cent. on the tax collections. And with this
official as their head, the villagers managed nearly all their affairs.
Their taxes, for instance, they assessed and collected themselves. The
governor merely informed the headman that he was to produce ten rupees
per house from his village. The villagers then appointed assessors from
among themselves, and decided how much each household should pay. Thus a
coolie might pay but four rupees, and a rice-merchant as much as fifty
or sixty. The assessment was levied according to the means of the
villagers. So well was this done, that complaints against the decisions
of the assessors were almost unknown--I might, I think, safely say were
absolutely unknown. The assessment was made publicly, and each man was
heard in his own defence before being assessed. Then the money was
collected. If by any chance, such as death, any family could not pay,
the deficiency was made good by the other villagers in proportion. When
the money was got in it was paid to the governor.
Crime such as gang-robbery, murder, and so on, had to be reported to the
governor, and he arrested the criminals if he felt inclined, and knew
who they were, and was able to do it. Generally something was in the
way, and it could not be done. All lesser crime was dealt with in the
village itself, not only dealt with when it occurred, but to a great
extent prevented from occurring. You see, in a village anyone knows
everyone, and detection is usually easy. If a man became a nuisance to a
village, he was expelled. I have often heard old Burmans talking about
this, and comparing these times with those. In those times all big
crimes were unpunished, and there was but little petty crime. Now all
big criminals are relentlessly hunted down by the police; and the
inevitable weakening of the village system has led to a large increase
of petty crime, and certain breaches of morality and good conduct. I
remember talking to a man not long ago--a man who had been a headman in
the king's time, but was not so now. We were chatting of various
subjects, and he told me he had no children; they were dead.
'When were you married?' I asked, just for something to say, and he
said when he was thirty-two.
'Isn't that rather old to be just married?' I asked. 'I thought you
Burmans often married at eighteen and twenty. What made you wait so
long?'
And he told me that in his village men were not allowed to marry till
they were about thirty. 'Great harm comes,' he said, 'of allowing boys
and girls to make foolish marriages when they are too young. It was
never allowed in my village.'
'And if a young man fell in love with a girl?' I asked.
'He was told to leave her alone.'
'And if he didn't?'
'If he didn't, he was put in the stocks for one day or two days, and if
that was no good, he was banished from the village.'
A monk complained to me of the bad habits of the young men in villages.
'Could government do nothing?' he asked. They used shameful words, and
they would shout as they passed his monastery, and disturb the lads at
their lessons and the girls at the well. They were not well-behaved. In
the Burmese time they would have been punished for all this--made to
draw so many buckets of water for the school-gardens, or do some
road-making, or even be put in the stocks. Now the headman was afraid to
do anything, for fear of the great government. It was very bad for the
young men, he said.
All villages were not alike, of course, in their enforcement of good
manners and good morals, but, still, in every village they were enforced
more or less. The opinion of the people was very decided, and made
itself felt, and the influence of the monastery without the gate was
strong upon the people.
Yet the monks never interfered with village affairs. As they abstained
from state government, so they did from local government. You never
could imagine a Buddhist monk being a magistrate for his village, taking
any part at all in municipal affairs. The same reasons that held them
from affairs of the state held them from affairs of the commune. I need
not repeat them. The monastery was outside the village, and the monk
outside the community. I do not think he was ever consulted about any
village matters. I know that, though I have many and many a time asked
monks for their opinion to aid me in deciding little village disputes, I
have never got an answer out of them. 'These are not our affairs,' they
will answer always. 'Go to the people; they will tell you what you
want.' Their influence is by example and precept, by teaching the laws
of the great teacher, by living a life blameless before men, by
preparing their souls for rest. It is a general influence, never a
particular one. If anyone came to the monk for counsel, the monk would
only repeat to him the sacred teaching, and leave him to apply it.
So each village managed its own affairs, untroubled by squire or priest,
very little troubled by the state. That within their little means they
did it well, no one can doubt. They taxed themselves without friction,
they built their own monastery schools by voluntary effort, they
maintained a very high, a very simple, code of morals, entirely of their
own initiative.
All this has passed, or is passing away. The king has gone to a
banishment far across the sea, the ministers are either banished or
powerless for good or evil. It will never rise again, this government of
the king, which was so bad in all it did, and only good in what it left
alone. It will never rise again. The people are now part of the British
Empire, subjects of the Queen. What may be in store for them in the far
future no one can tell, only we may be sure that the past can return no
more. And the local government is passing away, too. It cannot exist
with a strong government such as ours. For good or for evil, in a few
years it, too, will be gone.
But, after all, these are but forms; the soul is far within. In the soul
there will be no change. No one can imagine even in the far future any
monk of the Buddha desiring temporal power or interfering in any way
with the government of the people. That is why I have written this
chapter, to show how Buddhism holds itself towards the government. With
us, we are accustomed to ecclesiastics trying to manage affairs of
state, or attempting to grasp the secular power. It is in accordance
with our ideals that they should do so. Our religious phraseology is
full of such terms as lord and king and ruler and servant. Buddhism
knows nothing of any of them. In our religion we are subject to the
authority of deacons and priests and bishops and archbishops, and so on
up to the Almighty Himself. But in Buddhism every man is free--free,
subject to the inevitable laws of righteousness. There is no hierarchy
in Buddhism: it is a religion of absolute freedom. No one can damn you
except yourself; no one can save you except yourself. Governments cannot
do it, and therefore it would be useless to try and capture the reins of
government, even if you did not destroy your own soul in so doing.
Buddhism does not believe that you can save a man by force.
As Buddhism was, so it is, so it will remain. By its very nature it
abhors all semblance of authority. It has proved that, under temptation
such as no other religion has felt, and resisted; it is a religion of
each man's own soul, not of governments and powers.