Why cannot we end it by prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquor throughout the country? If it be said that this would bear hardly upon the foreign residents, it may well be replied that the rights and liberties of foreigners ought not to prejudice those of the vast majority, the natives of the country; and if that were the law, and foreigners did not choose to put up with it, they would have their remedy. No one is compelled to live in Burma. The pity is, that England should so lag behind in the matter of temperance reform. The Empire is inevitably increasing, yet England, by continuing to cling to liquor as she does, fails in this respect to fit herself for properly carrying out her duty amongst the abstaining races that come within the sphere of our influence. The day is coming, as every one can see, when England’s own liquor question must be effectually dealt with, for the mind of the majority of the English people is rapidly ripening for it. But in the meantime, the very painful, anomalous and inconsistent position we occupy in Upper Burma—a Christian nation establishing liquor shops in every centre of population, against the strongly expressed wishes of “all classes of Burmans, monks and laity”—is a humiliating proof of the need there is for this reform to be hastened at home, so that it may be faithfully carried out abroad, and that too before it is too late. CHAPTER IX. _INTOXICANTS IN BURMA—THE OPIUM QUESTION._ If the case of Burma in respect of liquor is serious, that of opium is more so. It presents in a vivid manner some of the most frightful evils of the traffic in this drug, and it shows clearly the gross inconsistency of any Christian nation, especially when it is the ruling power, deliberately introducing and maintaining such an evil and profiting largely in the revenue by it, when it is eating the very vitals of the subject nation that has implored us again and again to remove it. The whole question of the opium policy of our Indian Government in the East is now prominently under the view of the nation. Parliament has already declared in the abstract that our opium policy is indefensible, and the conscience of the British public, never quite easy on the subject, is at present feeling keenly about it. It seems not unlikely that the consideration of Burma, our latest, and in some respects our worst development of the policy, may greatly aid in shaping the views of the public on this question, and may decide us, at the earliest possible moment, to wash our hands of the whole sad business.