The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature / All volumes

VOLUME 1.
NEW YORK: JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER, 1883.


Speculation as to the political future is not a very fruitful occupation. In looking back to the prognostications of the wisest statesmen, it will be observed that they were as little able to foresee what was to come a generation or two after their death, as the merest dolt amongst their contemporaries. The Whigs at the beginning of the last century thought that the liberties of Europe would disappear if a prince of the House of Bourbon were securely fixed on the throne of Spain. The Tories in the last quarter of that century considered that if England lost her American provinces she would sink into the impotence of the Dutch Republic. The statesmen who assembled at the Congress of Vienna would have laughed any dreamer to scorn who should have suggested that in the lifetime of many of them Germany would become an empire in the hands of Prussia, France a well-organized and orderly republic, and the geographical expression of Italy vitalised into one of the great powers of Europe. Nevertheless, if politics is ever to approach the dignity of a science, it must justify a scientific character by its ability to predict events. The facts are too complicated, probably, ever to admit the application of exact deductive reasoning; and in the growth of civilised society new and unexpected forms are continually springing up. But though practical statesmen will not aim at results beyond the immediate future, it is impossible for men who pass their lives in the study of the difficult task of government to avoid speculations as to the future form of society to which national efforts should be directed. Some theory or other, therefore, is always present, consciously or unconsciously, to the mind of politicians.
With respect to British India it may be observed that very different views of policy prevail. Native writers in the Indian press view their exclusion from all the higher offices of Government, and the efforts of Manchester to transfer 800,000 l. per annum raised on cotton goods to increased taxation in India, as a policy based on mere selfishness; and a Russian journal, apparently in good faith, assured its readers the other day, that India pays into the British treasury an annual tribute of twenty to twenty-five millions sterling. On the other hand, some advanced thinkers amongst ourselves hold that India is a burden on our resources, and the cry of Perish India! so far as relates to its dependence on England, is considered to be not unsupported by sound reasoning. One of the ablest publicists of India, in a published letter to Sir George Campbell, has declared his conviction, after twenty years' experience in that country, that good government by the British in India is impossible.