At his farewell interview Bogle said that Warren Hastings would send letters to the Lama by his own servants, upon which the Lama said: "I wish the Governor will not at present send an Englishman. You know what difficulties I had about your coming into the country, and how I had to struggle with the jealousy of the Gesub Rimpoche (the Regent) and the people at Lhasa. Even now they are uneasy at my having kept you so long. I could wish, therefore, that the Governor would rather send a Hindu. I am in hopes my letter to the Regent will have a good effect in removing his jealousy, and I expect in a year or two that the government of this country will be in the Dalai Lama’s hands, when I will inform the Governor, and he may then send an Englishman to me and to the Dalai Lama."
The Tashi Lama repeated his concern at Bogle’s departure and the satisfaction he had received in being informed of the customs of Europe. He spoke all this, in and with a look very different from the studied compliments of Hindustan. “I never could reconcile myself,” continues Bogle, “to taking a last leave of anybody; and what from the Lama’s pleasant and amiable character, what from the many favours and civilities he had shown me, I could not help being particularly affected. He observed it, and in order to cheer me mentioned his hopes of seeing me again.”
Of Bogle’s own warm-hearted and affectionate feelings to the people of Tibet there can be no question. On the eve of his departure he wrote in a letter to his sister: “Farewell, ye honest and simple people! May ye long enjoy the happiness which is denied to more polished nations; and while they are engaged in the endless pursuits of avarice and ambition, defended by your barren mountains, may ye continue to live in peace and contentment, and know no wants but those of nature.”
At the close of Bogle’s Mission we may review its results. He was sent by Warren Hastings to establish relationship and intercourse of trade with the Tibetans. How far did he succeed in carrying out that object?
It is sufficiently clear that, as regards personal relationship, he was eminently successful, and that was about as much as he could have expected to establish at the start. As we have already seen, Warren Hastings never expected any very striking result from the first communication. He wished to lay the _foundation_ for neighbourly intercourse, and in this much he succeeded. He had had experience enough of Asiatics in other quarters to be aware that they are very naturally suspicious of a European Power, then by some apparently irresistible process gradually expanding over smaller Asiatic peoples. As the instance of the Gurkha Raja’s letter showed, there are few Asiatic rulers who, if they have the _power_ to subdue a weaker neighbour, will not as a perfectly natural course proceed to bring that neighbour under subjection. This is looked upon by most Asiatics as a quite normal and inevitable proceeding. Naturally, therefore, the Tibetans would assume that it would only be a matter of time before the English Governor of Bengal would attack Tibet. He had the power to subdue the country; he would therefore subdue it. In the first instance he would, of course, send up an agent to spy out the land, to see what it was worth, and to find out the best way into it; and such an agent doubtless Bogle was, in their opinion. It was inevitable, therefore, that Bogle should be viewed with suspicion, and that the Tibetans should not, at the first jump off, throw their country freely open to trade. How much wiser, in their opinion, would be the views of some shrewd old counsellor who said: “Keep the English at a distance; don’t let one into our country; stay behind our mountain barrier and have nothing whatever to do with anyone beyond it. This is the ‘ancient custom.’ Do not let us depart from it. Let us be civil to this Bogle now he is here, lest we offend his powerful master, but for God’s sake let us get rid of him as soon as we can, and put every polite difficulty we know of in the way of any other Englishman coming amongst us.”