The priesthood in Burmah is arranged into a regular hierarchy.  The highest functionary is a kind of archbishop, who presides over all the other priests in the empire, and appoints the presidents of the monasteries.  He resides at the imperial court, where he has a high rank, and is considered one of the greatest men in the kingdom.  Below him are various ranks of priests, each having his appointed sphere and appropriate duties, and all supported by the so-called voluntary contributions of the people.  The number of priests is exceedingly great, and their sway over the minds of the people almost unlimited.

“But great and potent as the priests of Buddh are,” says a writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review, “there is a kind of sacred personage still greater than the highest of them, and next in rank to the sovereign; this is no other than that diseased animal, the White Elephant, far more highly venerated here than in Siam.  The creature is supposed by the Burmans to lodge within its carcass a blessed soul of some human being, which has arrived at the last stage of the many millions of transmigrations it was doomed to undergo, and which, when it escapes, will be absorbed into the essence of the Deity.”  This most sacred personage has a regular cabinet composed of a prime minister, secretary of state, transmitter of intelligence, &c., possesses estates in various parts of the country, and receives handsome presents from foreign ambassadors.  His residence is contiguous to the royal palace, and connected with it by a long open gallery, at the further end of which a curtain of black velvet embossed with gold, conceals his august person from vulgar eyes.  His dwelling is a lofty hall splendidly gilded, and supported by sixty-four pillars, to four of which he is chained with massive silver chains.  His bed is a thick mattress, covered with blue cloth, over which is a softer one of crimson silk.  His trappings are magnificent, being gold, studded with diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and other precious stones; his betel-box, spittoon, and the vessel out of which he feeds, are of gold inlaid with precious stones.  His attendants, according to Hamilton, from whom we take a part of this description, amount to over a thousand persons.

“Buddhism in its moral precepts is perhaps the best religion ever invented by man.  The difficulty is, its entire basis is false.  It is a religion of Atheism.  Instead of a Heavenly Father forgiving sin, and filial service from a pure heart, as the effect of love—­it presents nothing to love, for its Deity is dead; nothing as the ultimate object of action but self; and nothing for man’s highest and holiest ambition but annihilation.”

“Their doctrine of merit, leaves no place for holiness, and destroys gratitude either to God or man.”  It also ministers to the grossest pride, for the very fact of his being now a man, assures the Buddhist that in numberless former unremembered transmigrations, he must have acquired incalculable merit, or he would not now occupy so distinguished a rank in the scale of being.