The Indian Excise and Opium Acts were extended to Upper Burma in the latter half of 1888. The restrictions on the sale to Burmans of opium and intoxicants were maintained--and neither excise licence nor opium-shop was allowed in any place where the non-Burman population was not considerable. Yunnan opium, which had hitherto come in free, was subjected to a duty. The result was a great increase in the price of opium in Upper Burma and at the same time energetic smuggling; while it was believed, that so far as the restrictions against the sale of liquor or opium to Burmans were effectual, their efficacy was due, as in the King's time, more to the strength of the Buddhist religion than to the power of the British Government and the honesty of its magistrates. No further change was introduced while I was in Burma. An excitement, however, arose in England, and the societies who, belonging to one of the most intemperate races in the world, make it their vocation to preach temperance to the most abstemious and sober of nations, drove the Government of India to experiment on Burma. Since 1893 one device after another has been tried to prevent Burmans from getting opium. The results appear to have been that contraband opium has been driven to some extent from the market; that the consumption of Government opium which has paid duty has doubled; that hundreds of people are punished yearly, not a few on false charges, for offences against the Opium Act, many of them by imprisonment; that the use of cocaine and other drugs worse than opium has been substituted for it, and in spite of the police is growing. The following passage from a very excellent and accurate handbook of Burma by Sir J. George Scott, K.C.I.E. (Alexander Moring, Ltd., 1906) is worth quoting as the opinion of a man who knows the country well:--