oking a cigar through
it, and dropping the sparks, might have done the business in the dry
season. But, in very truth, we imagine that political arrangements were
answerable for this long failure in checkmating the king, and not at all
the cunning passage which carried only one inside passenger. The
Portuguese permitted the Kandyan natives to enter their army; and that one
fact gives us a short solution of the case. For, as Mr Bennett observes,
the principal features of these Kandyans are merely "human imitations of
their own indigenous leopards--treachery and ferocity," as the
circumstances may allow them to profit by one or the other. Sugarcandy,
however, appears to have given very little trouble to _us_; and, at all
events, it is ours now, together with all that is within its gates. It is
proper, however, to add, that since the conquest of this country in 1815,
there have been three rebellions, viz. in 1817-18, in 1834, and finally in
1842. This last comes pretty well home to our own times and concerns; so
that we naturally become curious as to the causes of such troubles. The
two last are said to have been inconsiderable in their extent. But the
earlier of the three, which broke out so soon after the conquest as 1817,
must, we conceive, have owed something to intrigues promoted on behalf of
the exiled king. His direct lineal descendants are excluded, as we have
said, from the island for ever; but his relatives, by whom we presume to
be meant his _cognati_ or kinspeople in the female line, not his _agnati_,
are allowed to live in Kandy, suffering only the slight restriction of
confinement to one street out of five, which compose this ancient
metropolis. Meantime, it is most instructive to hear the secret account of
those causes which set in motion this unprincipled rebellion. For it will
thus be seen how hopeless it is, under the present idolatrous superstition
of Ceylon, to think of any attachment in the people, by means of good
government, just laws, agriculture promoted, or commerce created. More
stress will be laid, by the Ceylonese, on our worshipping a carious tooth
two inches long, ascribed to the god Buddha, (but by some to an
ourang-outang,) than to every mode of equity, good faith, or kindness. It
seems that the Kandyans and we reciprocally misunderstood the ranks,
orders, precedencies, titular distinctions, and external honours attached
to them in our several nations. But none are so deaf as those that have n