It was proposed, therefore, to issue a proclamation to all villages believed to be in league with the dacoits, informing them that unless the men belonging to the village who were out dacoiting surrendered within a fixed time, all their relations and sympathisers would be ordered to leave the village and would be removed to some distant place out of reach of communication. At first the people thought this was a mere threat, and little notice was taken of it. When they found that it was to be enforced, and that the relations and friends were actually being deported, the effect was magical. Concurrently with this action the dacoit gangs were hunted incessantly from jungle to jungle and village to village, and severe fines were imposed on villages which harboured the outlaws or withheld information regarding their movements. The results were better than I had dared to hope. Many dacoits surrendered in order to save their people from being removed. The villagers came forward with information, and put police and soldiers on to the tracks of the gangs. Small parties of dacoits could no longer move about without danger of being attacked and captured by the people they had preyed upon so long. Whole bodies of men came in and surrendered with their arms. At the end of 1888 few members of the Sagaing gangs were at large, and the district was reduced to order. In Ava the success was similar; and the districts of Yeu Shwèbo and the Lower Chindwin had likewise benefited from Colonel Symons's labours. The credit of devising this system is due to Colonel Raikes. I hesitated at first to go as far as he advised. There were obvious reasons against moving people in this manner; but, if it was easy to see objections to it, it was very difficult to devise a milder measure that would be successful. It proved the most effective weapon in our battery for the restoration of peace and order. The people, of course, felt the pressure of these coercive measures. It was intended that they should feel it. One of the most notorious leaders in the Sagaing Division, Min O, after his capture, declared the fining under the Village Regulation had ruined him, because the villagers, finding themselves unable to meet both the Government demands and his, and finding that the Government could enforce payment while he no longer could, turned upon him and refused to give him asylum. The moving and grouping of villages made it difficult for the gangs to get food, and compelled them to disband or surrender. The _Gazetteer of Burma_, in the article on Sagaing (vol. ii., p. 188), published in 1908, records that "the strict observance of the Village Regulation ... gradually led to the pacification of the country. By the end of 1888 no less than twenty-six dacoit leaders, including Shwè Yan, had been killed and twenty-six captured, and most of their followers had come in and were disarmed. Since that time the district has given no trouble." FOOTNOTE: