It must be remembered, that with India within a day of England by telegraph, and within three weeks by steam, the old autocratic Governor-General has become impossible, and day by day the Secretary of State in London must become more and more the ruler of India. Were the Secretary of State appointed for a term of years, and made immovable except by a direct vote of the House of Commons, no fault could be found with the results of the inevitable change: as it is, however, a council of advice will hardly be sufficient to prevent gross blundering while we allow India to be ruled by no less than four Secretaries of State in a single year.
The chief considerations to be kept in view in the framing of a system of government for India are briefly these:—a sufficient separation of the two countries to prevent the clashing of the democratic and paternal systems, but, at the same time, a control over the Indian administration by the English people active enough to insure the progressive amelioration of the former; the minor points to be borne in mind are that in India we need less centralization, in London more permanence, and, in both, increased personal responsibility. All these requirements are satisfied by the plan proposed, if it be coupled with the separation of the English and Indian armies, the employment of natives in our service, and the creation of new governments for the Indus territories and Assam. Madras, Bombay, Bengal, Assam, the Central Provinces, Agra, the Indus, Oude, and Burmah would form the nine presidencies, the Viceroy having the supreme control over our officers in the native States, and not only should the governors of the last seven be placed upon the same footing with those of Madras and Bombay, but all the local governors should be assisted by a council of ministers who should necessarily be consulted, but whose advice should not be binding on the governors. The objections that are raised against councils do not apply to councils that are confined to the giving of advice, and the ministers are needed, if for no other purpose, at least to divide the labor of the Governor, for all our Indian officials are at present overworked.
This is not the place for the suggestion of improvements in the details of Indian government. The statement that all general observations upon India are necessarily absurd is not more true of moral, social, educational, and religious affairs than of mere governmental matters: “regulation system” and “non-regulation system;” “permanent settlement” and “thirty years’ settlement;” native participation in government, or exclusion of natives—each of these courses may be good in one part of India and bad in another. On the whole, however, it may be admitted that our Indian government is the best example of a well-administered despotism, on a large scale, existing in the world. Its one great fault is over-centralization; for, although our rule in India must needs be despotic, no reason can be shown why its despotism should be minute.
The greatest of the many changes in progress in the East is that India is being made—that a country is being created under that name where none has yet existed; and it is our railroads, our annexations, and above all our centralizing policy that are doing the work. There is reason to fear that this change will be hastened by the extension of our new codes to the former “non-regulation provinces,” and by government from at home, where India is looked upon as one nation, instead of from Calcutta, where it is known to be still composed of fifty; but so rapid is the change, that already the Calcutta people are as mistaken in attempting to laugh down our phrase “the people of India,” as we were during the mutiny when we believed that there was an “India” writhing in our clutches. Whether the India which is being thus rapidly built up by our own hands will be friendly to us, or the reverse, depends upon ourselves. The two principles upon which our administration of the country might be based have long since been weighed against each other by the English people, who, rejecting the principle of a holding of India for the acquisition of prestige and trade, have decided that we are to govern India in the interest of the people of Hindostan. We are now called on to deliberate once more, but this time upon the method by which our principle is to be worked out. That our administration is already perfect can hardly be contended so long as no officer not very high in our Indian service dares to call a native “friend.” The first of all our cares must be the social treatment of the people, for while by the Queen‘s proclamation the natives are our fellow-subjects, they are in practice not yet treated as our fellow-men.
CHAPTER XXI.
DEPENDENCIES.
WHEN, on my way home to England, I found myself off Mocha, with the Abyssinian highlands in sight, and still more when we were off Massowah, with the peaks of Talanta plainly visible, I began to recall the accounts which I had heard at Aden of the proposed British colony on the Abyssinian table-lands, out of which the home government has since been frightened. The question of the desirability or the reverse of such a colony raises points of interest on which it would be advisable that people at home should at once take up a line.
As it has never been assumed that Englishmen can dwell permanently even upon high hills under the equator, the proposition for European colonization or settlement of tropical Africa may be easily dismissed, but that for the annexation of tropical countries for trade purposes remains. It has hitherto been accepted as a general principle regulating our intercourse with Eastern nations, that we have a moral right to force the dark-skinned races to treat us in the same fashion as that in which we are treated by our European neighbors. In practice we even now go much further than this, and inflict the blessings of Free Trade upon the reluctant Chinese and Japanese at the cannon‘s mouth. It is hard to find any law but that of might whereby to justify our dealings with Burmah, China, and Japan. We are apt to wrap ourselves up in our new-found national morality, and, throwing upon our fathers all the blame of the ill which has been done in India, to take to ourselves credit for the good; but it is obvious to any one who watches the conduct of our admirals, consuls, and traders in the China seas, that it is inevitable that China should fall to us as India fell, unless there should be a singular change in opinion at home, or unless, indeed, the Americans should be beforehand with us in the matter. To say this, is not to settle the disputed question of whether in the present improved state of feeling, and with the present control exercised over our Eastern officials by a disinterested press at home, and an interested but vigilant press in India and the Eastern ports, government of China by Britain might not be for the advantage of the Chinese and the world, but it is at least open to serious doubt whether it would be to the advantage of Great Britain. Our ruling classes are already at least sufficiently exposed to the corrupting influences of power for us to hesitate before we decide that the widening of the national mind consequent upon the acquisition of the government of China would outweigh the danger of a spread at home of love of absolute authority, and indifference to human happiness and life. The Americans, also, it is to be hoped, will pause before they expose republicanism to the shock that would be caused by the annexation of despotically-governed States. In defending the Japanese against our assaults, and those of the active but unsuccessful French, they may unhappily find, as we have often found, that protection and annexation are two words for the same thing.
Although the disadvantages are more evident than the advantages of the annexation for commercial purposes of such countries as Abyssinia, China, and Japan, the benefits are neither few nor hard to find. The abstract injustice of annexation cannot be said to exist in the cases of Afghanistan and Abyssinia, as the sentiment of nationality clearly has no existence there, and as the worst possible form of British government is better for the mass of the people than the best conceivable rule of an Abyssinian chief. The dangers of annexation in the weakening and corrupting of ourselves may not unfairly be set off against the blessings of annexation to the people, and the most serious question for consideration is that of whether dependencies can be said “to pay.” Social progress is necessary to trade, and we give to mankind the powerful security of self-interest that we will raise the condition of the people, and, by means of improved communications, open the door to civilization.
It may be objected to this statement that our exaggerated conscientiousness is the very reason why our dependencies commercially are failures, and why it is useless for us to be totaling up our loss and profits while we willfully throw away the advantages that our energy has placed in our hands. If India paid as well as Java, it may be shown, we should be receiving from the East 60 millions sterling a year for the support of our European officials in Hindostan, and the total revenue of India would be 200 or 250 millions, of which 80 millions would be clear profit for our use in England; in other words, Indian profits would relieve us from all taxation in England, and leave us a considerable and increasing margin toward the abolition of the debt. The Dutch, too, tell us that their system is more agreeable to the natives than our own clumsy though well-meant efforts for the improvement of their condition, which, although not true, is far too near the truth to allow us to rest in our complacency.
The Dutch system having been well weighed at home, and deliberately rejected by the English people as tending to the degradation of the natives, the question remains how far dependencies from which no profits are exacted may be advantageously retained for mere trade purposes. At this moment, our most flourishing dependencies do not bear so much as their fair share of the expenses of the empire:—Ceylon herself pays only the nominal and not the real cost of her defense, and Mauritius costs nominally £150,000 a year, and above half a million really in military expenses, of which the colony is ordered to pay £45,000 and grumbles much at paying it. India herself, although charged with a share of the non-effective expenses of our army, escapes scot-free in war-time, and it is to be remarked that the throwing upon her of a small portion of the cost of the Abyssinian war was defended upon every ground except the true one—namely, that as an integral part of the empire she ought to bear her share in imperial wars. It is true that, to make the constitutional doctrine hold, she also ought to be consulted, and that we have no possible machinery for consulting her—a consideration which of itself shows our Indian government in its true light.