There have been times, even in our own country, when certain crimes of violence, such as garotting, and certain forms of murder, have spread so as to cause almost a panic, and have needed special measures both as to detection and punishment. We are far more liable to such things in India. Take, for instance, that strange phase of crime known as “thuggee,” which prevailed to a fearful extent years ago in India, and to which, in respect of each being _an epidemic form of crime_, dacoity in Burma has sometimes been compared. Thuggee was a thoroughly organised system of robbery and murder, carried out with great secrecy by an association of men banded together for the purpose, and who did it not by open assault but by stealthy approaches, and, strangest of all, with religious motives. The verdict of civilised society was that the extermination of the thugs was not only a justifiable thing to be done, but the solemn duty of the Government, notwithstanding the religious motives, and special officers of Government were deputed for that purpose, and the system was finally stamped out. So with dacoity. If men will be brutal, will set all law, human and divine, at defiance, will make human life cheap and property unsafe, and keep the whole country in terror and confusion, to the detriment of all peace and progress, if, in short, they will come to no terms, but deliberately elect to assume the character of wild beasts preying on society, then all reasonable men will feel constrained sorrowfully to admit that a civilised Government has no alternative but to treat them as such, and hunt them down; always however remembering that, as it is in the divine, so in the human administration, justice should be tempered with mercy; and wherever there is room to hope for better things, the criminal should have another chance, a provision which our Government, as I have shown, has not neglected. CHAPTER VI. _BRITISH INFLUENCE IN THE SHAN STATES._ The previous chapter dealt with the pacification of Upper Burma proper, that tract of country which England has annexed, and in which we have assumed the full responsibility of government. In this chapter we have to consider our relations with certain states and tribes on our frontiers, which are not British territory, but for whose well-being and good behaviour we hold ourselves to some extent responsible, in proportion as our influence among them is more or less direct. As soon as our first difficulties in the pacification and administration of Upper Burma were to some extent overcome, our Government had to turn its attention to the doings of the many barbarous and semi-barbarous tribes and races in the regions immediately adjacent to Burma.