It was no mere question of a “buffer” state. It formed a weighty part of his great and pacific project for safeguarding the “gates” of our Indian Empire. Of the three main approaches then open to Russia—entitled in her own interests to use them, as he always admitted—the south-eastern limits of Afghanistan command the long high-road which leads to the distant north-western borders and the “gate” of Herat. Moreover, they dominate one of the important trade routes to Northern India. The remote side of the Indus can thus be used as a protection against the remoter side of the Oxus. At the same time, Disraeli subsidised the Afghans, and when their Ameer, under Russian influence, insulted our envoy, treated them at first “like spoiled children.” His aim was—as always in his whole policy—a compact independence. “Both in the East and West,” he observed, “our object is to have prosperous, happy, and contented neighbours. But these are things which cannot be done in a day. You cannot settle them as you would pay a morning visit.” He was building the foundations for a lasting peace. At any rate, the rectified frontier, which as he pointed out could be held by five thousand men, while a “haphazard” frontier demanded twenty times that number, is unimpugned. Nor should those who speak of a smoothed Ameer and an unruffled Cabul, after Kandahar was evacuated, forget that, since Merv has become Russian, the old dynastic intrigues and tribe feuds may, one day, readily recur at Cabul, fresh opportunities encourage Russia, and a reoccupation of this cancelled coign of vantage become imperative. “The science of politics,” as Macaulay well says, “is an experimental science.” Disraeli excelled most statesmen in his intuitive grasp of Indian affairs. Peel himself, shortly before his death, prophesied that Disraeli, “when his hour struck,” would be “Governor-General of India.”
The same principles, as will appear, prompted the masterly and masterful Treaty of Berlin. The same, caused him to exclaim of Russia, whose designs he had thwarted in India and foiled at Constantinople, in memorable language, that in Asia there was “room enough” for her and for us; yet that, though in the face of possible conflict, she was entitled to equip her expedition of courtesy to “cool the hoofs of its horses in the waters of the Oxus,” she must be induced to withdraw it by our own counter-preventions. But what I wish here particularly to illustrate is, the psychological point of respect for and reckoning with the habits, wants, and traditions of other or alien civilisations. It rested on an idea familiar to his youth, and which he thus expressed in a soliloquy of Alroy: “Universal empire must not be founded on sectarian principles and exclusive rights.... Something must be done to bind the conquered to our conquering fortunes.”
It was signally evinced in his treatment—his exceptional treatment when Opposition leader—of the Indian Mutiny. At that time Disraeli alone seemed to grasp the significance of the outbreak in its initial stage, which was viewed as a mere military rebellion, and regarded as lightly, and with as little reason, as the beginnings of the Boer War.
“It is remarkable,” he urged, before the crisis became recognised, “how insignificant incidents at the first blush have appeared which have proved to be pregnant with momentous consequences. A street riot in Boston and at Paris, turned out to be the two great revolutions of modern times. Who would have supposed when we first heard of the rude visit of a Russian sailor from a port in the Black Sea to Constantinople, that we were on the eve of a critical war and the solution of the most difficult of modern problems?” It was, he contended, a national revolt, not a military mutiny. In our policy of the immediate past we had forcibly destroyed native authority for the sole object of increasing revenue. “In spite of the law of adoption, which was the very corner-stone of Hindoo society, when a native prince died without natural heirs, though a son had been adopted as a successor, the Government of India annexed his dominions. Sattara, Berar, Jeitpore, Sumbulpore, Jhansi, were monuments of ‘nefarious’ acquisition. And Oude, of ‘a wholesale system of spoliation,’ for it had been annexed even without the pretext of a lawful failure of heirs.”
We had also disturbed the settlement of property by “a new system of government.” He analysed the popular law of adoption as the basis of Hindoo property, and as contrasted with its misuse in the hands of princes as a source of succession. He gave many instances, distinguishing each. “What man was safe, what feudatory, what freeholder who had not a child of his own loins, was safe throughout India?... The Government determined to exact all it could, not only from princes, but from the people.” The exemptions from the land tax—“the whole taxation of the State”—had, under pretences, been continually taken away. The resumption of estates in Bengal alone had yielded the Government half a million of revenue; in Bombay alone £370,000 a year. Moreover, hereditary pensions had been commuted into personal annuities. These disturbances had naturally fomented these discontents.
We had, moreover, tampered with the Hindoo religion. “... I think a very great error exists as to the assumed prejudice of Hindoos with regard to what is called missionary enterprise. The fact is that ... the Indian population generally, with the exception of the Mussulmans, are educated in a manner which peculiarly disposes them to theological inquiries.... They are a most ancient race; they have a mass of tradition on these subjects; a complete Indian education is to a great degree religious; their laws, their tenure of land depend upon religion; and there is no race in the world better armed at all points for theological discussion.... Add to this, that they can always fall back upon an educated priesthood prepared to supply them with arguments and illustrations.... But what the Hindoo does regard with suspicion is the union of missionary enterprise with the political power of the Government. With that power he associates only one idea, violence.... It appears to me that the legislative council of India has, under the new principle, been constantly nibbling at the religious system of the natives.” It had tried to adapt Western systems to Oriental habits. In its theoretical system of national education the “sacred Scriptures had suddenly appeared in the schools; and you cannot persuade the Hindoos that those holy books have appeared there without the concurrence and the secret sanction of the Government.” Systematic female education, again, had been commanded—a most unwise step, considering “the peculiar ideas entertained by Hindoos with regard to women.” But two acts had even more contributed to the ferment of native feeling. The first, that no man who changed his religion should be deprived of his inheritance. That struck at the main purpose of property in India, which consists in being a sacred trust for religious objects. The second, that a Hindoo widow might marry again, “which is looked upon by all as an outrage on their faith,” uncalled for, and fraught with alarm.
But the main blunder had been the annexation of Oude without excuse, and executed in such a manner that for the first time the Mahometan princes felt that they had an identity of interest with the Indian rajahs. “... You see how the plot thickens.... Men of different races and different religions ... traditionary feuds and long and enduring prejudices with all the elements to produce segregation, become united—Hindoos, Mahrattas, Mahommedans—secretly feeling a common interest and a common cause.” Princes and proprietors are against you. “Estates as well as musnuds are in danger. You have an active society spread all over India, alarming the ryot, the peasant, respecting his religious faith. Never mind on this head what were your intentions; the question is, what were their thoughts—what their inferences?” And a further aggravation had resulted. The Oude sepoy, who was a yeoman, had recruited the Bengal army. “Robbed of his country and deprived of his privileges, he schemed and plotted, and sent mysterious symbols from village to village, which prepared the native mind,” agitated by princes deposed, religion insulted, soldiery discontented, for an occasion and pretext “to overthrow the British yoke.” “The Mutiny was no more a sudden impulse, than the income tax was a sudden impulse. It was the result of careful combinations, vigilant and well-organised, on the watch for opportunity.... I will not go into the question of the new cartridges.... I do not suppose any one ... will believe that because the cartridges were believed to be, or were pretended to be believed to be, greased with pig’s or cow’s fat, that was the cause of this insurrection. The decline and fall of empires are not affairs of greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate causes and by an accumulation of adequate causes.”
And now what remedies would meet such emergencies? Force, it was agreed, must now be employed. The force proposed was inadequate. “There should be an advance from Calcutta through Bengal, and an expedition up the Indus. The Militia should be called out. An Empire, not a Cabinet, was in danger.”
“... But to my mind that is not all that we ought to look to. Even if we do vindicate our authority with complete success—revenge the insults that we have received, rebuild the power that has been destroyed ... although we will assert with the highest hand our authority, although we will not rest until our unquestioned supremacy and predominance are acknowledged, ... it is not merely as avengers that we appear. I think that the great body of the population of that country ought to know that there is for them a future of hope. I think we ought to temper justice with mercy—justice the most severe with mercy the most indulgent.... Neither internal nor external peace can in India,” he urged, “be secured by British troops alone. There must be no more annexation, no more conquest.... It is totally impossible that you can ever govern 150,000,000 of men in India by merely European agency. You must meet that difficulty boldly and completely.... You ought at once ... to tell the people of India that the relation between them and their real ruler and sovereign, Queen Victoria, shall be drawn nearer. You must act upon the opinion of India on that subject immediately; and you can only act upon the opinion of Eastern nations through their imagination. You ought to have a Royal Commission sent by the Queen from this country to India immediately, to inquire into the grievances of the various classes of that population. You ought to issue a royal proclamation to the people of India, declaring that the Queen of England is not a sovereign who will countenance the violation of treaties ... that she ... will respect their laws, their usages, their customs, and, above all, their religion. Do this, and do this not in a corner, but in a mode and manner which will attract universal attention, and excite the general hope of Hindostan in the Queen’s name and with the Queen’s authority. If that be done, simultaneously with the arrival of your forces, you may depend upon it that your military advance will be facilitated, and, I believe, your ultimate success insured.”
I have abstracted this significant speech, which took three hours to deliver, because it shows how his mind grasped such situations, and how his imagination played all around them. In the same way, in 1856, he deprecated the violent interference of Sir J. Bowring (a former secretary of the Peace Society) with the Chinese, and insisted that they were “the nation of etiquette,” and were not to be coerced by “a brutal freedom of manners.” “If you are not,” he then prophetically protested, “cautious and careful of your conduct now in dealing with China, you will find that you are likely not to extend commerce, but to excite the jealousy of powerful states, and to involve yourselves in hostilities with nations not inferior to yourselves....”