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DUTIES OF ENGLAND TO INDIA.

From "Fraser's Magazine," December 1861.

́EVER was there a conquering nation which had more good to bestow on a conquered country, than England on India ; never was more of honour and strength to be earned than by bestowing our good freely. Their exuberant soil and climate, their magnificent rivers, forests, plains, and mountains, joined with industry and docility in their swarming millions, and high intelligence in their superior races, did not give to the Hindoos peace or material welfare, because they have neither political unity nor worthy political precedents. Precisely what they need, it is in our power to give them-first, modern science, European literature, and among their results a purified religion; next, commercial unity and easy intercourse; finally, political cohesion and stability. If under English rule their minds become enlightened, their industry productive, their national character elevated, and, in consequence of all this, their inclinations loyal, the material and moral advantage to ourselves will be incalculable. With such a possibility before us, how terrible is it to contemplate an opposite contingency-which is too probable, if we judge by mere experience that the future is pregnant with blood and fire, wasteful fury and exhaustion; and that one hundred and eighty millions of human beings who might be blessed by us and a blessing to us, will hate us more and more every ten years, will make insurrection whenever they dare, and drive us into tyranny through our fears; until India is a drain on our strength, a weakness and a disgrace, with disaster ultimately the greater the longer we hold the country. It is wholesome to open our eyes to the terrible fact, that in the last thirty years the English rule has become far more hated than it was previously, the English officials far less conciliating (the native newspapers say less competent since the suppression of Fort William College); and this, while in Europe all national freedom has become intenser, and in England generally the desire to establish and confirm the freedom of all our colonies and dependencies has in many ways strongly expressed

itself. We have not room here to enter deeply into the causes of this fact, which are probably complex: it suffices to point at phenomena which are on the surface.

In 1833, when the charter of the East Indian Company was to be renewed, the Ministry of the day announced two principles contained in the new charter to be so vital, that if the Company refused them the Ministry would advise Parliament to discard the Company. Of these vital principles, one was that native Indian subjects of the King were to be admitted on equal terms with British-born subjects to every office of State, except to be Governor-General or Commander-in-Chief. The other provided that Europeans should have full right to hold landed property. Lord Macaulay has published the ample and careful speech in which he expounded the policy of Lord Grey's Government; nothing can be nobler in promise, more pointed in avowal, more exciting to the hopes of intelligent Indians. Proportionate must have been the disappointment of precisely that part of the Indian community which is our natural ally, when it found this provision of the charter to be a dead letter; and that natives were excluded alike from the "covenanted" Civil Service, and from promotion in the army. Until lately it was possible for them to vent their reproaches on the Company, and to believe that the Crown would have been more faithful to its engagements. But it is evident that a deep distrust of the Crown also is now sinking into their minds. Sir Charles Wood has recently made an emphatic avowal, that the Government is not averse to appointing natives to the very highest places of the judicial bench; and how does the Indian Mirror comment on this ?

"Such appointments (it says) will win the plenary confidence of our countrymen in the justice of British rule. We are, however, sceptical as to the fulfilment of this measure in practice. Truly did Mr Scully remark in the House of Commons, that this power would be no more exercised, than that under the Act of 1829 to admit Roman Catholics to the English Cabinet; or, we should say,--perhaps no more than the solemn declarations of the Royal Proclamation of 1858 have been carried into effect!!"

The italics and punctuation are reproduced from the Indian writer. The words of the Royal Proclamation to which he refers are elsewhere alluded to as follows:

"It was expressly stated on a recent occasion, that 'All her Majesty's subjects, of whatever race or creed, should be freely and impartially

admitted to offices in her Majesty's service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity fully to discharge.' Our countrymen cannot help believing it to be a dead letter, inasmuch as they find an insuperable line of demarcation drawn between themselves and those of the dominant race in every department of Government service. The registrars of offices are almost invariably Eurasians or Europeans; though they are often deemed as mere puppets in the hands of their experienced native assistants."

It has been observed, that the improved morality and more earnest religion of the last thirty or forty years in England has sensibly increased the chasm between the Indians and ourselves; and we fear there is truth in this. The very vices of our countrymen, when they openly kept black mistresses, put them into domestic relations with the natives, and gave them a more intimate knowledge of all sides of their character. English nabobs of this class had sometimes even an enthusiastic confidence in the personal attachment and devoted faithfulness of the natives; and whatever severity of judgment might be called out by their domestic licentiousness is sadly silenced when one contemplates the miseries, the enormities, the demoralisations. innumerable, contingent on such a war as that of 1857-59. How much preaching of missionaries, how much public education, how much beneficial and conciliatory government, will be needed to wipe out the long train of evils hence entailed? Alas! it would seem that any amount of polygamic enormities and pagan irreligion in foreign and despotic rulers is a less evil to a conquered country, than their incapacity and their unconciliating demeanour. Surely our first duty and our first wisdom is, to determine that we will win the loyalty of the Hindoo millions, and have no more insurrections.

And here we beg to interpose a protest against two classes of talkers, who, thinking themselves speculatively wise, do much practical mischief: indeed, we have met both forms of folly in one and the same man. The one class is most liberal in its proposals to lay down empire and sacrifice foolish ambitions. It tells us that India, if subject to Russia, would be worth far more to us in its commerce than now; that the country is not worth keeping, since we shall never reconcile the people to our rule; and it will always be to us a drain of men, a public anxiety, a periodical danger; while it exposes us to envy from all the Great Powers. It is therefore great nonsense (they say) to make a fuss about India, as if we were going to keep it on the

contrary, we ought to give it up to the people themselves, or to any civilised power that will take it. The other class of talkers has always the topic of races prominent, and supposes this to decide that the Executive of India must be at once despotic and foreign. Black races of men-those to whom hot climates are natural, are (we are told), inevitably inferior to the European race. Where the black and white meet, one or other must be absolutely master. The two are intrinsically uncongenial; no compromise is possible: they will crush us if we do not completely keep them down. All history, all experience (these reasoners assure us), make this certain; and if we do not learn it by the past, we shall learn it too painfully in the future. To give political rights to the Indians would be madness; to give them equal social rights would be good, if it could be done; but we know it cannot when the European is politically dominant. Full despotism must therefore on no account be relaxed, at least over the natives; nor must they share with us any high offices, executive or judicial. Whether non-official Englishmen are to have exceptional privileges, the race-mongers are not agreed.

We do not notice these theorists as though we imagined it possible that their doctrines could be received by any English statesman whatsoever, but because they tend to chill and damp exertion, to give an excuse for idleness, cowardice, dangerous delay, and violation of the public faith; when every public man would gladly put off, to the morrow and to his successors, the duties which are incumbent immediately. To those commercial economists who talk about peacefully laying aside our Indian Empire, it suffices to reply, that the thing is for a long time to come palpably impossible. The pride of England is as much a fact as the idolatry of Hindooism; and to subdue that pride by economical preachings is likely to be as long a task as to convert the Hindoos to Christianity. For aught that we can surely know, to have been expelled from India in 1857, might have been for our welfare; but that is not a practical question. The only peaceful mode of retiring from our imperial cares, is that which has been exhibited by us in Canada. It presupposes that the people gradually get more and more power, until, like a son who comes of age, the parental control is discontinued. We have to take at present the first steps of this course. We cannot take the last steps first, nor can we abruptly and recklessly resign our post. By violently conquering so many Indian dynasties—last,

and not least, Oudh and Delhi--we have incurred vast responsibilities. Even if England herself were willing, she has no right to throw back India into chaos; but is bound manfully to encounter the difficult problem, how to train and govern it wisely, and make her rule a blessing.

To the preachers of race-diversity, we reply, that those diversities reveal themselves plentifully and strongly in Europe as well as in the tropics. We have indeed but recently escaped from the dogma that used to be dinned into our ears, that " none but Teutons are capable of managing representative government." This, we believe, was the form in which the doctrine was imported from Germany; but there were those among us who, observing that despotism had invaded Germany as well as the rest of the Continent, proposed to modify the axiom into "none but Britons, &c." We know that some were struck with wonder when the discovery broke on them that the Hungarians with Tartar eyebrows (that "Scythian people," as the Germans call them) have managed their powerful municipal institutions for eight hundred years, and that under the greatest difficulties, as ably and successfully as any nation in historical record. Still more lately, it has been a wonderful revelation to race-mongers, that the people of Northern Italy are suited for political institutions. It is hard to understand how any one who has even the most superficial acquaintance with history, should be ignorant that the Spaniards and the Bohemians had excellent free institutions, and conducted them most successfully for centuries, until they were overpowered by the craft, perfidy, and widely-extended possessions of the House of Austria. Happily, in the last ten years inductive speculators have enlarged the dogma. It is now conceded, that not "Teutons," much less "Britons" only, were intended by the Lord of all Power for liberty, but all European races, at least while natives of temperate climates. The Irish were, till recently, a grave difficulty in the way of thus enlarging the proposition. We must all remember that a great writer (and philosopher) dared to pen the despairing sentences, that Ireland needed to be "regimented" under field taskmasters, and treated as a slave country; and that it would be a mercy to them and us if the whole land could lie for twenty-four hours under the waves of the Atlantic. Fifteen years-half a generation-has changed everything. No one any longer despairs that disloyal, insurrectionary, Papal Ireland wi! in another generation not only be as loyal to the English Crow..

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