The condition of the province was bad from a police point of view. The people had enjoyed excellent harvests and good prices. Yet there was a constant recurrence of crime, and the police quite failed to cope with it. The excitement of the last year or two had been too much for the younger Burmans. They could not settle down again, and the spirit of loot and adventure rather than any real patriotism led to numerous gang robberies, and sometimes to foolish outbreaks, of which men from Upper Burma were sometimes the instigators. Even within a short distance of Rangoon an Upper Burman, related, it was said, to the Minbu leader, Ôktama, raised the Golden Umbrella and called for followers. Some hundreds obeyed the call, but at the first sight of the police they began to disperse. A party of Karens, led by a British police officer, came up with some of them, killed and wounded several, captured others, and made an end of the rising. The Karens in Lower Burma were loyal and generally staunch, especially the Christian Karens. The American Baptist missionaries have done an inestimable service to the Karen race. They understand thoroughly how to educate--in the true sense of the word--a tribe that has been despised and trodden down for some generations. The missionary has made himself not only the pastor but also the chief of his people, and in those troubled times he organized them under their catechists, taught them discipline and obedience, and made them useful and orderly members of society, industrious, self-respecting, and independent. The Government of Burma owes a debt to the American Baptist Mission which should not be forgotten. On receipt of this letter from the Government of India, reports from Commissioners and from the head of the police had been called for. Their answers were now before me. The Inspector-General of Police in Lower Burma was the late Mr. Jameson, an officer of ability and long experience. He frankly admitted that the police administration had failed in suppressing organized brigandage. "So far," he wrote, "from the crime of dacoity having been eradicated by British administration, each year more dacoities are committed than in the one preceding." He attributed this failure to defects in the judicial courts, especially the Court of Revision and Appeal, which resulted in making punishment very uncertain and sentences capricious; to the absence of any law establishing a village organization and responsibility; and to the number of arms in the hands of the peasantry, who received them for their self-defence against dacoits, but gave them or lost them to the robbers. The result was, Mr. Jameson asserted, that after thirty-five years of British rule the country "was in a more disturbed state than after the second war."