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 negat