II.
PASSING NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.
(October, 1857.)
An English historian—one amongst many—of our British India, having never happened to visit any part of that vast region, nor, indeed, any part of the East, founded upon that accident a claim to a very favourable distinction. It was, Mr. Mill argued, desirable—it was a splendid advantage—NOT to have seen India. This advantage he singly, amongst a crowd of coming rivals and precursors, might modestly plead; and to that extent he pretended to a precedency amongst all his competitors.
The whole claim, and the arguments which supported it, wore the aspect of a paradox; and a paradox it certainly was—but not, therefore, a falsehood. A paradox, as I have many times explained, or proposition contradicting the doxa or public opinion, not only may be true, but often has been the leading truth in capital struggles of opinion. Not only the true doctrine, but also, in some branches of science, the very fundamental doctrine, that which at this day furnishes a foundation to all the rest, originally came forward as a violent and revolting, paradox.[62] It is possible enough, therefore, that the Indian historiographer may have been right, and not merely speciously ingenious. It is something of a parallel case, which we may all have known through the candid admissions of the Duke of Wellington, that the battle of Waterloo might by possibility have been reported as satisfactorily, on the 18th of June, 1815, from the centre of London smoke, as from the centre of that Belgian smoke which sat in heavy clouds throughout the day upon the field of battle. Now and then, it is true, these Belgian clouds drew up in solemn draperies, and revealed the great tragic spectacle lying behind them for a brief interval. But they closed up again, and what the spectator saw through these fugitive openings would have availed him little indeed, unless in so far as it was extended and interpreted by information issuing from the British staff. But this information would have been not less material and effectual towards a history of the mighty battle, if furnished to a man sitting in a London drawing-room, than if furnished to a reporter watching as an eye-witness at Hougoumont.
This one Waterloo illustration, if thoughtfully applied, might yield a justification for the paradoxical historian. Much more, therefore, might it yield a justification for us at home, who, sitting at ten thousand miles' distance, take upon us to better the Indian reports written on the spot, to correct their errors of haste, or to improve them by showing the inferences which they authorise. We, who write upon the awful scenes of India at far-distant stations, do not so truly enjoy unequal advantages, as we enjoy varying and dissimilar advantages.
According to the old proverb, the bystander sees more of the game than those who share too closely in its passions. And assuredly, if it were asked, what it is that we who write upon Indian news aspire to effect, I may reply frankly, that, if but by a single suggestion any one of us should add something to the illumination of the great sepoy conspiracy—whether as to its ultimate purpose, or as to its machinery, or as to its wailing hopes, or if but by the merest trifle any one of us should take away something from the load of anxious terrors haunting the minds of all who have relations in India—that man will have earned his right to occupy the public ear. For my own part, I will not lose myself at present, when so much darkness prevails on many leading questions, in any views too large and theoretic for our present condition of light. And that I may not be tempted into doing so, I will proceed without regard to any systematic order, taking up, exactly as chance or preponderant interest may offer them, any urgent questions of the hour, before the progress of events may antiquate them, or time may exhale their flavour. This desultory and moody want of order has its attractions for many a state of nervous distraction. Every tenth reader may happen to share in the distraction, so far as it has an Indian origin. The same deadly anxiety on behalf of female relatives, separated from their male protectors in the centre of a howling wilderness, now dedicated as an altar to the dark Hindoo goddess of murder, may, in the reader also, as well as in the writer on Indian news, periodically be called on to submit to the insurmountable aggravation of delay. In such a case, what is good for one may be good for another. The same inexpressible terrors, so long as Nena Sahibs and other miscreant sons of hell are roaming through the infinite darkness, may prompt the same fretfulness of spirit; the same deadly irritation and restlessness, which cannot but sharpen the vision of fear, will sharpen also that of watching hope, and will continually read elements of consolation or trust in that which to the uninterested eye offers only a barren blank.
EUROPEANS.
I am not sorry that the first topic, which chance brings uppermost, is one which overflows with the wrath of inexhaustible disgust. What fiend of foolishness has suggested to our absurd kinsmen in the East, through the last sixty years, to generalise themselves under the name of Europeans? As if they were ashamed of their British connections, and precisely at that moment when they are leaving England, they begin to assume continental airs; when bidding farewell to Europe, they begin to style themselves Europeans, as if it were a greater thing to take up a visionary connection with the Continent, than to found a true and indestructible nobility upon their relationship to the one immortal island of this planet. There is no known spot of earth which has exerted upon the rest of the planet one-thousandth part of the influence which this noble island has exercised over the human race—exercised through the noblest organs; and yet, behold! these coxcombs of our own blood have no sooner landed on Indian soil, than they are anxious to disclaim the connection. Such at least is the apparent construction of their usage. But mark the illogical consequences which follow. A noble British regiment suddenly, and for no rational purpose, receives a new baptism, and becomes a European regiment. The apologist for this folly will say, that a British regiment does not necessarily exclude Germans, for instance. But I answer that it does. The British Government have, during this very month of September, 1857, declared at Frankfort (in answer to obstinate applications from puppies who fancy that we cannot tame our rebels without their assistance), 'that the British army, by its constitution, does not admit foreigners.' But suppose that accidents of aristocratic patronage have now and then privately introduced a few Germans or Swedes into a very few regiments, surely this accident, improbable already, was not more probable when the regiment was going away for twenty years (the old term of expatriation) to a half-year's distance from the Rhine and the Danube. The Germanism of the regiment might altogether evaporate in the East, but could not possibly increase. Next, observe this; if we must lose our nationality, and transmute ourselves into Europeans, for the very admirable reason that we were going away to climates far remote from Germany, then, at least, we ought not to call our native troops sepoys, but Asiatics. In this way only will there be any logical parity of antithesis. Scripturally, we are the children of Japheth; and, as all Asiatics are the sons of Shem, then we shall be able to mortify their conceit, by calling to their knowledge our biblical prophecy, that the sons of Japheth shall sit down in the tents of Shem. But, thirdly, even thus we should find ourselves in a dismal chaos of incoherences; for what is to become of 'Jack'? Must our sailors be re-baptised? Must Jack also be a European? Think of Admiral Seymour reporting to the Admiralty as a leader of Europeans! and exulting in having circumvented Yeh by Her Majesty's European crews! And then, lastly, come the Marines: must they also qualify for children of Europe? Was there ever such outrageous folly? One is sure, in the fine picturesque words of Chaucer, that, 'for very filth and shame,' neither admiral nor the youngest middy would disgrace himself by such ridiculous finery from the rag-fair of cosmopolitan swindling. The real origin of so savage an absurdity is this:—Amongst the commercial bodies of the three presidencies in all the leading cities, it became a matter of difficulty often to describe special individuals in any way legally operative. Your wish was to distinguish him from the native merchant or banker; but to do this by calling him a British merchant, &c., was possibly not true, and legally, therefore, not safe. He might be a Dane, a Russian, or a Frenchman; he was described, therefore, in a more generalising way, as a European. But a case so narrow as that—a case for pawnbrokers and old clothesmen—ought not to regulate the usage of great nations. Grand and spirit-stirring (especially in a land far distant from home) are the recollections of towns or provinces connected with men's nativities. And poisonous to all such ancestral inspirations are the rascally devices of shroffs and money-changers.