CO882-(1-2) — Page 61

Eastern Me VI

4

CONFIDENTIAL.

CEYLO N.

REBELLION.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 882

1

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- | COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

84.

1817 1820 1823

1834

1843

1848

IN all its main features there is a remarkable identity between the Rebellion of 1848 and the previous conspiracies and insurrections by which the Kandyan country has been from time to time dis- turbed, since our conquest of it thirty-five years ago. Within that period there have been six treason- able movements, or an average of one in every six years; open rebellion thrice (in 1817, 1829, 1848); and three conspiracies detected before their explo- sion in 1820, 1834, 1843; besides treasonable plots which gave rise to arrests in 1816, 1819, 1820, 1824, 1880, and 1842.

Not only the rapid succession, but the identity of action and system in all these movements, prove to a demonstration that they are but periodical mani- festations of one abiding and continuous feeling in the minds of the Kandyan people—impatience

of British supremacy- and a determination to restore a native Kandyan sovereignty.

It is a self-delusion, in looking for the causes of such simultaneous and periodical movements

See State Trial, 1834, pp. 97, 45, amongst a whole race, to search out minute annoy- ances, or to fancy that a rebellion was concerted in 1834 on the ground, as was pretended, that seats in the jury-box were provided of the same height for high caste and low caste men; or that a tax upon dogs caused the revolt of 1848.

Parliamentary Proceedings; * aiso Parliamentary Proceedings, p. 10.

The cause of all these commotions since 1815 is to be found in the circumstance, that the act of the Kandyan chiefs and people in 1815, in inviting us to assume the government of their country, was not a sincere transfer on their part, but a device, by which they expected,-first, to obtain our aid to drive out their own tyrant; and next, to get rid of us in turn, and secure the sovereignty for one of themselves.-(See Minute of Sir R. Brownrigg, quoted, in State Trial, 1834, Appendix, p. 107.)

• Besides it was not the act of the entire nation, or the whole body of chiefs; but, as Sir R. Brownrigg says in his Proclamation

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