Another very conspicuous feature in their daily life was the unselfishness inculcated by their religion. In India the representatives of the “lords of creation,” both Hindu and Mohammedan, were exacting to a degree, first satisfying their own hunger, and then allowing wife and children to regale themselves with the “residue of the remainder,” the former being generally chastised, often killed, if the food were not prepared exactly to her lord’s liking, or ready the moment he returned home. Among the Burmese, however, father, mother, and children would share alike; and even if only one cigar were forthcoming, it would be passed round for every member of the family to take a few whiffs. The moral code of Hinduism was at a far lower level than that of the other religion. Almsgiving, to priests in the absence of beggars, was much more general in Burmah. As in every community, and under every form of religion, there were the good, bad, and indifferent. They were more unanimously guided by one light than any other nation I ever knew, and their religion, for all its exaggerated asceticism, partook more of the practical than that of many a professed Christian. They could, it is true, boast a number of past-masters in the gentle art of appropriating other folks’ goods, yet during the whole of my stay in their country I never lost a single article, though many of the dwellings in which I resided had not even a single door! Scarcely, however, had I returned to India when I missed a bag of rupees and my watch and chain. Other crimes _were_ equally uncommon among them. I think my position enabled me to judge of this; and I cannot recall a single instance of necessity for _post-mortem_ on a victim of violence or poison; whereas in India not a day passed without one, and their multiplicity rendered life a burden. Corpses, masses of corruption that had run the gauntlet of a hundred miles of hot sun, were brought at all times to one’s private dwelling—one met them on the road—everywhere! Nothing appeared to give such exquisite delight to some of our civil authorities as having plenty of dead bodies brought forth from every nook and corner to be examined and reported on, and if dead bodies were by some rare _mischance_ not forthcoming, they would exhume a few bones, which were then decently shunted from pillar to post as evidence of a murder some score of years old! This absence of outrage, agrarian or otherwise, speaks trumpet-tongued for the morality of the Burmese, their respect for religious observance, and the teachings of their priests. Such wholesale acts of murder as Thuggee and infanticide found no place in their ethics; nor does the senseless practice of Suttee seem ever to have occurred to them.