7. And lastly, we are in danger of doing the same thing in the new province of Upper Burma unless we alter our policy. What is required for the removal of this evil is a complete reform. The feeble attempts at remedy so far have shown themselves to be useless. The first attempt at improvement was the closing of the greater part of the licensed shops in Lower Burma. A good deal has been made of that by the upholders and defenders of the present system. We are told that there is only one licensed opium house in Akyab, for instance. An eyewitness tells us that in forty-five minutes he visited fifty opium dens in that town of “only one licensed shop,” and he was told that there are in the district not less than one thousand places where opium is sold. That one house pays 158,000 rupees (about £10,533) annually for licence duty. The system of high licences has been tried, and the price has been put up, until in Rangoon the price of the drug is equal to its weight in silver, but this makes little or no difference. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the present Chief Commissioner of Burma, now proposes to make it penal to sell opium to Burmans in Lower Burma, as it is in Upper Burma, or for Burmans to be in possession of opium; but this is merely trifling with the evil. If it is ineffectual in Upper Burma, what good is it likely to accomplish in the Lower province, where so many have acquired the habit? These all stop short of an effectual dealing with the opium question; they will avail nothing so long as the drug is within reach. The real remedy, I submit, is entire prohibition, and many officials of Government, of standing and experience, concur in this view. Let our Indian Government give up entirely, except for medicinal purposes, this iniquitous and disreputable business of manufacturing and supplying opium, and get rid of the guilt of it. “Native opinion,” says Commissioner Aitchison, speaking of Burma, “is unanimously in favour of stopping the supply altogether, and no measures we could adopt would be so popular with all the respectable and law-abiding class of the population.” Lord Cross has recently said: “It is not practicable to close all opium shops and to stop opium consumption so long as opium is grown in British India and in the native states.” Quite so. No doubt we shall have to take up the accursed thing by the roots to do it effectually. We are told that the consequences of this course would be very dreadful, but we have been told this in the case of every reform ever yet proposed, and the statement has ceased to frighten us. If we had the cordial support of the whole of the “respectable and law-abiding class of the population,” no great harm could come of it. At any rate, the consequences could not then be worse than they are now. CHAPTER X. _THE FRONTIER MOUNTAIN RACES OF BURMA._