Despotic as an Indian Viceroy is, there are even in India certain Constitutional checks on his authority, as, for instance, the Members of Council, the Vernacular and the English press. How was it, the reader may ask, that these constitutional checks were evaded; for it cannot be that they all concurred in such a policy as I have described in the foregoing pages? The principal means of evasion was secrecy. The negotiations with Shere Ali were kept sedulously hidden from the public knowledge, and their nature was only to be dimly inferred from the devout and philanthropic orations of the Viceroy himself. The same course was adopted with respect to the North-West famine; and but for the accident of Mr. Knight's visit to Agra, the truth would have remained hidden to this day. But Lord Lytton did not trust to secrecy alone. The vernacular press was gagged by a Press Act, which was hurried through Council, and made a law in the course of a few hours. The English press could not be gagged precisely in this fashion, but it was very ingeniously drugged through the agency of a curious functionary, styled the Press Commissioner. When Mr. Stanhope was questioned in the House regarding the special duties of this nondescript official, he replied that he had been appointed to superintend the working of the Vernacular Press Act. Actually, he was in operation for several months before that Act had come into existence, and never has had any duties in connection with it. The Press Commissioner is attached to the personal staff of the Viceroy, and may be regarded as a kind of official bard, whose duty it is to chant the praises of his master, and advertise his political wares. The description of Lord Lytton as a "specially-gifted Viceroy" is believed in India to have proceeded from the affectionate imagination of the Press Commissioner. But, besides this, he is a channel of communication between the Government of India and the Indian press. When he was first called into existence, India was informed that a new era was about to begin, in the relations between the press and the Government. The Government, anxious that its policy should be fully discussed by an intelligent press, had appointed a Press Commissioner, whose duty it would be to keep editors supplied with accurate information, from the very fountain-head, of all that Government was doing, or intended to do. It is unnecessary to say that the Press Commissioner has done nothing of the kind. The greater part of the matter he communicates to the press is simply worthless, and wholly devoid of interest to any sane person. If anything of importance occurs which the Government desires to keep secret, but which it fears will leak out, the Press Commissioner communicates the matter to the editors "confidentially," and then it is understood that they are in honour bound not to allude to the subject in their papers. At distant intervals, however, the Press Commissioner, of necessity, allows some interesting scraps of information to escape from him; and it is by means of these that the English press is drugged. Any newspaper which offends the Government by criticism of too harsh a character is liable to have the supply of such morsels suspended until it gives evidence of amendment. And as there is in India, among the readers of newspapers, quite an insatiable craving for these morsels of official gossip, it would be extremely prejudicial to the circulation of a newspaper if they no longer appeared in its columns. The vengeance of Lord Lytton and the Press Commissioner has already fallen upon one journal. The Calcutta Statesman, having poured ridicule on this Press Commissioner, has been deprived of his ministrations. In brief, the Press Commissionership is simply an agency for bribing the English Press, which costs the Indian taxpayer the sum annually of £5000. But the most effective check on the arbitrary authority of the Governor-General is furnished by his Council. These are selected as men of long Indian experience, in order to aid the Governor-General with their advice and special knowledge. The last Governor-General who set at nought the advice and remonstrances of his Council was Lord Auckland, when he plunged into the disastrous war in Afghanistan. Lord Lytton, who in other respects has so carefully trod in the footsteps of his predecessor, did not fail to imitate him in this. His frontier policy was carried out in spite of the opposition of the three most experienced members of his Council; his repeal of the Cotton Duties in the face of their unanimous opposition, with the single exception of Sir John Strachey. Thus it is that, under Lord Lytton, British rule in India has become a tawdry and fantastic system of personal rule. It might perhaps do well enough if an Empire could be governed by means of ceremonies, speeches, and elegantly written despatches—"fables in prose," they might very fitly be called. But an Empire cannot be so governed, and the result of the experiment has been an amount of human suffering appalling to contemplate. The Indian air is "full of farewells for the dying and mournings for the dead," and the path of the Government can be traced in broken pledges and dead men's bones. These bones are as dragon's teeth, which Lord Lytton is sowing broadcast all over India and Afghanistan, and they will assuredly be changed into armed men if the hand of the sower be not promptly stayed.
"Nothing," writes Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, one of the Indian Members of Council, "would have induced me to have been a party to the imposition of restrictions on the press, if I could have foreseen that within a year of the passing of the Vernacular Press Act the Government of India would be embarked on a course which, in my opinion, is as unwise and ill-timed as it is destructive of the reputation for justice upon which the prestige and political supremacy of the British Government in India so greatly depend. And here I must remark that the slight value which in some influential quarters is now attached to the popularity of our rule with our native subjects, has for some time past struck me as a source of grave political danger. The British Empire in India was not established by a policy of ignoring popular sentiment, and of stigmatizing all views and opinions which are opposed to certain favourite theories, as the views and opinions of foolish people. Nor will our rule be long maintained if such a policy is persisted in."
Robert D. Osborn.
ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY.
T HE question which I propose to consider in this paper is how far the beauty of blossoms can be accounted for by the utility of this beauty to the plant producing them. It is manifestly only one particular case of a larger inquiry whether the beauty which Nature exhibits can be accounted for by its utility.
These questions connect themselves with some of the highest points of the philosophy of the universe. Is the system of the universe intellectual, or is it purely material? Is there an ordering mind, or is there merely blind and struggling matter? Are there final causes as well as material causes, or are there material causes only?
These questions have been asked and answered in opposite senses, from the first dawn of philosophy to the present hour; and during all that period of time the battle has been raging—and has spread, too, over the whole realm of Nature. Scarcely any branch of natural science exists which has not furnished materials for at least a skirmish; so that it requires an experienced and impartial eye to be able rightly to understand the true fortunes of the contest over the whole field of battle. True it is, that for every man the question between the two theories has to be decided by somewhat simpler considerations than any such survey. Something in every man seems inevitably to determine him towards either the intellectual or the material theory of things.
The existence of beauty in the world is a very remarkable fact. On the theory of a Divine and beneficent Creator, this fact has seemed no difficulty; but the theory of a mere blind fermentation of matter gives no account of it, except as a mere accident, which, on the doctrine of chances, should be perhaps a very rare and unusual accident. Hence the existence of beauty has from of old been a favourite theme of the theistic believers. "Let them know how much better the Lord of them is," says the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, speaking of the works of Nature, "for the first Author of beauty hath created them ... for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen."[1] The same familiar view has lately been presented by the Duke of Argyll in his "Reign of Law":[2]—