The wide-spread hatred of the English does not prove that they are bad rulers; it is merely the hatred that Easterns always bear their masters; yet masters the Hindoos will have. Even the enlightened natives do not look with longing toward a future of self-government, however distant. Most intelligent Hindoos would like to see the Russians drive us out of India, not that any of them think that the Russians would be better rulers or kinder men, but merely for the pleasure of seeing their traditional oppressors beaten. What, then, are we to do? The only justification for our presence in India is the education for freedom of the Indian races; but at this moment they will not have freedom as a gift, and many Indian statesmen declare that no amount of education will ever fit them for it. For a score of centuries the Hindoos have bribed and taken bribes, and corruption has eaten into the national character so deeply, that those who are the best of judges declare that it can never be washed out. The analogy of the rise of other races leads us to hope, however, that the lapse of time will be sufficient to raise the Hindoos as it has raised the Huns.
The ancients believed that the neighborhood of frost and snow was fatal to philosophy and to the arts; to the Carthaginians, Egyptians, and Phœnicians, the inhabitants of Gaul, of Germany, and of Britain were rude barbarians of the frozen North, that no conceivable lapse of time could convert into anything much better than talking bears—a piece of empiricism which has a close resemblance to our view of India. It is idle to point to the tropics and say that free communities do not exist within those limits: the map of the world will show that freedom exists only in the homes of the English race. France, the authoress of modern liberty, has failed as yet to learn how to retain the boon for which she is ever ready to shed her blood; Switzerland, a so-called free State, is the home of the worst of bigotry and intolerance; the Spanish republics are notoriously despotisms under democratic titles; America, Australia, Britain, the homes of our race, are as yet the only dwelling-spots of freedom.
There is much exaggeration in the cry that self-government, personal independence, and true manliness can exist only where the snow will lie upon the ground, that cringing slavishness and imbecile submission follow the palm-belt round the world. If freedom be good in one country, it is good in all, for there is nothing in its essence which should limit it in time or place: the only question that is open for debate is whether freedom—an admitted good—is a benefit which, if once conferred upon the inhabitants of the tropics, will be maintained by them against invasion from abroad and rebellion from within; if it be given bit by bit, each step being taken only when public opinion is fully prepared for its acceptance, there can be no fear that freedom will ever be resigned without a struggle. We should know that Sikhs, Kandians, Scindians, Marattas, have fought bravely enough for national independence to make it plain that they will struggle to the death for liberty as soon as they can be made to see its worth. It will take years to efface the stain of a couple of hundred years of slavery in the negroes of America, and it may take scores of years to heal the deeper sores of Hindostan; but history teaches us to believe that the time will come when the Indians will be fit for freedom.
Whether the future advent of a better day for India be a fact or a dream, our presence in the country is justifiable. Were we to quit India, we must leave her to Russia or to herself. If to Russia, the political shrewdness and commercial blindness of the Northern Power would combine to make our pocket suffer by loss of money as much as would our dignity by so plain a confession of our impotence; while the unhappy Indians would discover that there exists a European nation capable of surpassing Eastern tyrants in corruption by as much as it already exceeds them in dull weight of leaden cruelty and oppression. If to herself, unextinguishable anarchy would involve our Eastern trade and India‘s happiness in a hideous and lasting ruin.
If we are to keep the country, we must consider gravely whether it be possible properly to administer its affairs upon the present system—whether, for instance, the best supreme government for an Eastern empire be a body composed of a chief invariably removed from office just as he begins to understand his duty, and a council of worn-out Indian officers, the whole being placed in the remotest corner of Western Europe, for the sake of removing the government from the “pernicious influence of local prejudice.”
India is at this moment governed by the Indian Council at Westminster, who are responsible to nobody. The Secretary of State is responsible to Parliament for a policy which he cannot control, and the Viceroy is a head-clerk.
India can be governed in two ways; either in India or in London. Under the former plan, we should leave the bureaucracy in India independent, preserving merely some slight control at home—a control which should, of course, be purely parliamentary and English; under the other plan—which is that to which it is to be hoped the people of England will command their representatives to adhere—India would be governed from London by the English nation, in the interests of humanity and civilization. Under either system, the Indian Council in London would be valuable as an advising body; but it does not follow, because the Council can advise, that therefore they can govern, and to delegate executive power to such a board is on the face of it absurd.
Whatever the powers to be granted to the Indian Council, it is clear that the members should hold office for the space of only a few years. So rapid is the change that is now making a nation out of what was ten years ago but a continent inhabited by an agglomeration of distinct tribes, that no Anglo-Indian who has left India for ten years is competent even to advise the rulers, much less himself to share in the ruling, of Hindostan. The objection to the government of India by the Secretary of State is, that the tenant of the office changes frequently, and is generally ignorant of native feelings and of Indian affairs. The difficulty, however, which attends the introduction of a successful plan for the government of India from London is far from being irremovable, while the objection to the paternal government of India by a Viceroy is that it would be wholly opposed to our constitutional theories, unfitted to introduce into our Indian system those democratic principles which we have for ten years been striving to implant, and even in the long run dangerous to our liberties at home.
One reason why the Indian officials cry out against government from St. James‘s Park is, because they deprecate interference with the Viceroy; but were the Council abolished, except as a consultative body, and the Indian Secretaryship of State made a permanent appointment, it is probable that the Viceroy would be relieved from that continual and minute interference with his acts which at present degrades his office in native eyes. The Viceroy would be left considerable power, and certainly greater power than he has at present, by the Secretary of State;—that which is essential is merely, that the power of control, and responsible control, should lie in London. The Viceroy would, in practice, exercise the executive functions, under the control of a Secretary of State, advised by an experienced Council and responsible to Parliament, and we should possess a system under which there would be that conjunction of personal responsibility and of skilled advice which is absolutely required for the good government of India.
To a scheme which involves the government of India from at home, it may be objected that India cannot be so well understood in London as in Calcutta. So far from this being the case, there is but little doubt among those who best know the India of to-day, that while men in Calcutta understand the wants of the Bengalee, and men in Lahore the feelings of the Sikh, India, as a whole, is far better understood in England than in any presidency town.