Mr. Jonas Batcham looked at his host with a humorous twinkle. “Don’t you try it on,” said he.
Although Mr. Batcham found it advisable to shed so much of the light of his countenance upon the Brownes, as I have said, it was native India that he came to see and report upon. And to this end he had read one or two of the most recent publications on the subject, works produced, that is to say, by our very most recent visitors, smoking from the London press before their authors’ names were dry in the Bombay hotel register. These volumes had given Mr. Batcham comprehensive ideas of native India, and he knew that between Cape Comorin and Peshawur were lying two hundred and fifty million people urgently in need of his benevolent interference. They were of different races, religions, customs, and languages—Mr. Batcham had expected to find that and had equipped himself for it by learning the names of almost all of them. He was acquainted with several of their gods, he knew that Ganesh had an elephant’s head, that Kali loved the blood of goats, and that Krishna was the source of all things. He was aware also that it was not proper to speak of Mohammedan rajahs or Hindoo sheiks, and he had informed himself upon the subject of Eastern polygamy. Mr. Batcham was a person of intelligence who did not travel without preparing his mind, and though according to his own modest statement there was still a great deal that he didn’t know about India, it was open to an appreciative person to doubt this. In one direction Mr. Batcham had prepared his mind with particular care, so that the very slightest impression could not fail to be deep and permanent—in the direction of the wrongs, the sufferings, the grievances under British rule, of his two hundred and fifty million fellow-subjects in India. Upon this point Mr. Batcham was tender and susceptible to a degree that contrasted singularly with his attitude towards the rest of the world, which had never found reason to consider him a philanthropist. This solicitude about his Indian brethren was the more touching perhaps on that account, and the more remarkable because it found only cause for grief and remorse in the condition of native India. Any trifling benefits that have accrued to the people through British administration—one thinks of public works, sanitation, education, courts of justice, and so forth—Mr. Batcham either depreciated or ignored. We had done so little, so “terribly little,” as Mr. Batcham put it, compared with what we might have done, and of that little so much had been done badly! Daily Mr. Batcham discovered more things that had been neglected, and more things that had been done badly. He looked for them carefully, and whenever he found one he wept audibly and made a note of it. Time would fail me, as the preacher says, to recount all the iniquities that came under Mr. Batcham’s observation during the weeks he spent in India, and I am unworthy to describe the energy and self-forgetfulness with which he threw himself into the task of “investigating” them, always with the most copious notes. There was the fact that both opium and country spirit were sold to the innocent Hindu, not only with Government cognisance but actually under Government regulations, the outrage to every Briton’s conscience being that revenues were derived therefrom. The Government fattened, in Mr. Batcham’s graphic figure, upon the physical misery and moral degradation of its helpless wards. Mr. Batcham searched his mind in vain to find a parallel to this, strange as it may seem in connection with his accurate acquaintance with the amount of excise paid by his brother philanthropists in British beer. The position of the Government of India was monstrously unique. If Mr. Batcham were the Government of India, he would scorn to fill the treasury with the returns of vice. Mr. Batcham would tax nothing but virtue and the pay of Government servants. And though Mr. Batcham was not the Government of India, was he not entitled from his seat in the British House of Commons and the depth of his righteous indignation, to call the Government of India to account? For what else then did Jonas Batcham, M. P., one of the largest manufacturers in the north of England, with little time to spare, undertake this arduous and expensive journey to the East? Oh, there were many things that grieved him, Mr. Batcham, many things to which he felt compelled to take exception, of which he felt compelled to make a note. He was grieved at the attitude of the Government towards the native press in the matter of seditious and disloyal editorials, scattered by thousands under shelter of the vernacular amongst an ignorant and fanatic population. Mr. Batcham did not wish to see this practice discouraged. The liberty of the press Mr. Batcham considered the foundation stone of the liberty of the subject—let the people raise their voice. Grieved also was Mr. Batcham at the cold shoulder turned by Government to the Indian Congress—that noble embodiment of the struggles and aspirations of a subject people. Mr. Batcham thought that all native movements, movements that marked progress and emancipation, should be warmly encouraged. The suspicion of intrigue was an absurd one, and this was not merely a matter of opinion with Mr. Batcham. He had it from a native gentleman prominently connected with the Congress. Mr. Batcham had brought a letter of introduction to the native gentleman—Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee—and Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee had given him such an “inside” view of the methods and aims of the Congress as gratified Mr. Batcham exceedingly. Mr. Batcham found Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee the soul of hospitality, very appreciative of Mr. Batcham’s illustrious position, anxious to gratify Mr. Batcham’s intelligent curiosity by every means in his power, and brimming over with loyalty and enthusiasm for the institutions which Mr. Batcham represented. And when Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee declared, in admirably fluent English, that the Congress was inspired by the single thought of aiding and upholding, so far as lay in its humble power, the administration of the British Government—to which every member felt himself personally and incalculably indebted—Mr. Batcham rejoined audibly, begged Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee to believe that he was proud to be his fellow-subject, friend, brother, and made a copious note of it.
MR. JONAS BATCHAM, M. P.
Naturally, under these circumstances, Mr. Batcham would find a very severe grief in the relations existing between European and native society here, and naturally he could not find words to express his indignation at the insolent and indifferent front of his fellow countrymen towards the people of India. “All,” said Mr. Batcham, “on account of a brown skin!” He could not understand it—no, he could not understand it! But if Mr. Batcham could not understand it, he could do what lay in his power as a person of generous sympathies and high moral tone to alleviate it, and he threw himself into the task. Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee gave him no invitation which he did not accept, offered him no opportunity which he did not profit by. He drove with Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee, he accompanied him to the races, to the native theatre, to the English theatre, to the Kalighat, to the Botanical Gardens, to various interesting religious and family festivals among Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee’s immediate social circle; also, on occasions upon which the Brownes made immoderate thanksgiving, he dined with this Indian gentleman and his emancipated wife, who was allowed to appear in public, where she smiled a great deal and said nothing whatever. Mrs. Debendra Lal Banerjee had not been very long emancipated, however, and it was in complimenting his Indian friend upon having so charming a lady to be his companion and helpmeet, as Mr. Batcham put it, that he observed the first and only slight chill—it is impossible for Indian gentlemen to freeze—in Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee’s responses. If Mr. Batcham could have known how Mrs. Debendra Lal Banerjee was pinched for that compliment!
I suppose that the entertainment and education of Mr. Jonas Batcham, M. P., could hardly have cost Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee less than four or five hundred rupees when he added it up, but if he had the least desire to see disaffection and sedition properly encouraged among his countrymen, or took the smallest satisfaction in the aggravated annoyance and embarrassment of the Government of India by Her Majesty’s most loyal Opposition, he must have felt that he had done much to further these things, and considered the money well invested. Mr. Jonas Batcham, the incredulous, certainly left his hands so brimful of native hypothecations that it would have been impossible to lodge another lie in him anywhere. Urbane, impressively self-satisfied, and well oiled for work, Mr. Jonas Batcham, M. P., being towed homeward down the river Hooghly, was a sight which must have brought tears of pious thanksgiving to the eyes of his amiable native friend upon the wharf. Nor was Mr. Debendra Lal Banerjee without his private reward. Mr. Batcham, in departing, clasped him figuratively to his capacious bosom, and told him movingly that if ever he came to England the Batchams would hasten collectively to do likewise. Mr. Batcham’s wife and family and friends would await that event with an impatience which Mr. Banerjee must make as brief as possible. Nothing would give Mr. Batcham greater pleasure than to receive Mr. Banerjee in his home and show him over his “works,” or perhaps—jocularly—to take him to a sitting of the House to hear his humble servant badger the Secretary of State. And Mr. Banerjee responded suitably that simply to hear the eloquent addresses of his honourable friend would be amply sufficient to induce him to undertake the journey, and that to witness the domestic happiness of this honourable friend would be only too much joy—he was unworthy. And they parted in mutual dolours. I anticipate, however, Mr. Batcham is not gone yet.
CHAPTER XVI.
I HAVE not yet mentioned the one matter of all the grievous matters that came under his observation in India, about which Mr. Batcham was particularly grieved. So bitterly, so loudly, and so persistently did he grieve about this, that one might almost have thought he came out for the purpose, absurd as it may seem. I cannot do better than describe it in Mr. Batcham’s own terms as “the grinding of the faces of the poor, through our culpable neglect in failing to provide India with the humane limitations of a Factories Act.” For years past English labour had been thus happily conditioned, and who could measure the benefit to the toiling millions on whose behalf the law had been made! It was incalculable. As a matter of fact the only result of its operation, which could be computed with accuracy, was to be found in the out-turn of the mills. There Mr. Batcham knew to a yard how valuable the Factories Act was to the operatives; but this was not a view of the question upon which he dwelt much in India. While he was with us indeed all practical considerations were swallowed up, for Mr. Batcham, in the contemplation of the profundity of our iniquity in allowing the factories of this country pretty much to manage their own affairs. He did not even permit himself to consider that the enormous product of Indian looms, together with the cheapness of the cost of production, was having a prejudicial effect upon the market. He certainly never mentioned it. His business was with the poor, the down-trodden, the victims of the rapacity of the capitalist, as much among her Majesty’s subjects on India’s coral strand as in the crowded tenements of Manchester or Birmingham. His duty towards these unfortunates was plain, and heaven forbid that he should think of anything but his duty!
And so Mr. Batcham lamented high and low over the woes of the unprotected factory “hand” in India. He began his lament as soon as ever he was informed—though he knew it before—that protection did not exist; on the face of it, oppression must then be rampant. He himself was in the trade, he knew the temptations of the capitalist, and he would not go so far as to say that, if a wise and just law did not prevent him, the exigencies of the market would never lead him to be—inconsiderate—toward his employés. Reflect then upon the result of almost unlimited power in the hands of the Indian manufacturer!