The crying need of India is economy, and for this the decentralization of finance is the only cure. Each province should have its own budget and its own civil lists, which should be voted annually by the Council of the province. Its civil service should be its own, its police its own, and its public works its own, without any right of interference from Calcutta, or any confusion of provincial with Imperial accounts. At present, from the vastness of the country ruled, and the variety of Imperial services which have their seat at Calcutta or Simla, waste and jobbery receive no adequate check. Places are multiplied, men without local knowledge are employed, and the accounts are confused. Supervision by those who bear the burdens of taxation under such a system is all but impossible, and no one knows precisely how and why the expenses charged in the general budget are incurred. But, were the provincial accounts held strictly separate, and subjected to the inquisition of a local assembly composed of men who, as natives of the province, would know the needs and capabilities of the province, none of the present abuses would have a chance of surviving. With the best will in the world, the heads of departments at Calcutta cannot really control the details of expenditure in Madras or the Punjaub, and as a matter of fact there is everywhere enormous waste and enormous jobbery.
I should like, therefore, to see each province of India entirely self-managed as regards all civil matters, raising its own revenue in its own way, providing for its own needs of internal order, public works, and administration of all kinds, and controlled by the constant supervision of its own provincial assembly. In this way it would be possible to differentiate at once between the various provinces as to their special needs and the composition of their special services. In some the expenditure, and with it the taxation, might be at the outset reduced by the employment almost entirely of native servants; in others the substitution of native for English service would have to be more gradual. In some, large public works might be profitably afforded; in others, economy would have to be the rule. In all there would be an incentive to reduce unnecessary expenditure, seeing that the burden of providing for it would fall directly on the province.
On the other hand it is clear that, as long as India remains under the protection of England, certain charges on the revenue and certain executive and legislative functions would have to remain Imperial. These would be, first, charges and responsibilities in respect of the army and navy; secondly, the diplomatic relations; thirdly, the general debt; and fourthly, the customs.
With regard to the army, there can be no doubt that the charge should be an Imperial one, for though Southern India has little need of troops to preserve order within her borders, she enjoys, in common with the North, that immunity from invasion which the army alone can guarantee, and she should have an equal share of the burden of its cost. To adopt a system of provincial armies would, in my view of the case, be both a mistake of economy, and an injustice to those provinces which lie upon the frontier, as well as a considerable danger from the rivalries they might engender: a mistake of economy, inasmuch as the higher commands would be multiplied, and the less warlike provinces would at an equal cost provide inferior material to the general strength of the empire; an injustice, inasmuch as the North-Western provinces would have to bear nearly the entire burden of defence. Strongly, therefore, as I advocate decentralization in all matters of civil administration, I as strongly advocate centralization in matters military. The Imperial army, according to my ideas, should be under the sole control of the Viceroy, officered, I think, by Englishmen, and composed of the best fighting material to be obtained in India, irrespective of prejudice in favour of this or that recruiting ground. It is manifestly the first condition of an army that it should be efficient, and the second that it should be without political colour, and on both grounds I am inclined to think that Englishmen would prove more useful servants to India in a military capacity than any native class of officers could be. Much as I believe in Indian capacity for civil duties, I accept it as a fact that Englishmen make better commanders of troops, and are worth more even in proportion to their superior pay; while there is no question that they would be exempt, as native officers would not, from religious and caste influences, and thus more reliable as impartial executors of Imperial orders. The Indian Sepoy army, then, as I would see it, should be as distinctly Imperial and English as the civil services should be provincial and native. In saying this I am stating my private opinion only; I believe that native opinion is in favour of native military service. But, as I understand India, the time has not come for that. When India is a nation it will be time enough to think of a national army.
The diplomatic relations, again, of India must of necessity remain Imperial, and their management vested solely in the Viceroy. Indian diplomacy, as at present managed, is a complicated and costly thing; but in the India of the future we may hope this will be much simplified. Two cardinal points of policy might with advantage be observed: the first, to keep wholly apart from foreign intrigues and foreign wars; the second, to keep rigid faith with the still independent native princes within the border. Of foreign wars India has long had enough, and more than enough. The Chinese, the Persian, the Afghan, the Abyssinian, the Egyptian, and now the Soudanese, all these India has been forced to take part in, solely against her interest and her will. Apart from their money loss, there is in these wars a loss of dignity, which the Indian people are beginning to resent. Those who have been educated in the humane literature of Europe find it humiliating that they, a conquered people, should be used as the instrument for conquering others. What quarrel had India with the unfortunate Egyptians? What quarrel has she with the unfortunate Arabs? The educated Indians resent it bitterly, too, that India is made to pay the cost. But these things need no comment. They are but a part of that absolute selfishness which has been the principle of all our past relations with India, and in the new birth of India these too must be changed. The diplomatic relations with the native States have been a tissue of fraud and aggression. In the policy of the future, aggression must be abandoned. There is but one true policy towards the native States; and that is, by giving them the spectacle of a British India more happy than their own to invite their inhabitants to share its advantages. Who can doubt that were India self-governed, prosperous, and happy, the old native principalities would one by one spontaneously be merged in it.
With regard to the Debt, much as we may regret that it was ever incurred, it must remain, I fear, in our new India a charge on the Imperial Government. Its annual interest, like the cost of war and diplomacy, should be apportioned as a fixed charge to each province in proportion to that province’s wealth, except in so far as it relates to the guarantees of railways, which might be made a charge on the provinces served by them. It should, however, be a cardinal point of policy that no further debt should be incurred and no further guarantees given for Imperial works. The provinces henceforth should be charged with all works of communication, irrigation, and improvement, the utility of which they will best appreciate.
Remain the Customs. These too must remain an Imperial matter; and it may be hoped that when, in the future, India’s interest, not England’s, comes to be considered in her government, they may be made to return a fair profit to balance some of the Imperial charges. To India free trade has proved no blessing, and a return to import duties is a first principle of sound finance, which self-governing India will undoubtedly insist on. The majority, I believe, of our English colonies see their advantage in these, and so will India, unless, indeed, some fair equivalent be given. As it is, all the profit is on England’s side, on India’s all the loss.
Such, very briefly and imperfectly given, is my scheme of self-government for India. That it is one possible—I do not say easy—to realize few will doubt who have marked the wonderful success achieved in a case not very dissimilar nearer our own shores. The Empire of Austria, within the recollection of men of the present generation, was a bureaucratic despotism of the harshest and least sympathetic kind. It had got within its rule, by conquest or inheritance, a half score of nations, owning no ties of birth or language, and united only by a common hatred of their oppressors. The Austrian official of 1847 was a byword of arrogance and self-sufficient pride, and while vaunting to the world the virtues of his own method of rule, was preparing the way for a general revolt against the Empire. Few who watched the history of those days believed that Austria was not doomed to perish, and none that she was destined to achieve the love of her people. Yet we have lived to see this. We have lived to see the Hungarians reconciled, and the very Poles who in their despair had filled Europe for fifty years with their denunciations, thanking Austria for her share in their ruin. If this has been possible through the gift of self-government, all things are possible; and India by the same means of honest government, each province for itself, may become happy and thankful, as the Austrian nations have. One principle keeps these together without force, their loyalty to the wearer of the Imperial crown; and fortunately this is a principle we have in India already framed to our hand. There is no question that the Indian populations are possessed with a strong feeling of personal attachment for her Majesty the Queen, and while they grow yearly more and more estranged from their Anglo-Indian masters they yearly look with more and more hope to England and to her who sits upon the English throne. This is a sentiment of the utmost value, and one which may yet prove the salvation of the Indian Empire, in spite of all the Anglo-Indians can do to wreck it. I look to it in the future as the true bond of union which shall retain for us India, not as our inheritance, for it will not be ours to possess, but as a co-heir to our good fortunes. India will not then be lost to England, but will remain to us a far greater glory than now, because it will have become a monument of what we shall have been able to achieve for the benefit of others, not merely for ourselves.
I dare not, however, dwell too much upon this prospect. I know the huge perils which surround the birth of every new thing in the political world, and I know the unscrupulous rage of vested interests threatened. The interests of the Anglo-Indians stand stoutly in our way, and the interests of an ever more hungry commerce and an ever more pitiless finance. Commerce and finance find their gain in the present system. Manchester must be appeased before India can hope to live, and to stop suddenly the career of Indian extravagance would injure trade in many a North of England town. Debt in India unfortunately means dividends in Lombard Street; and so I dare not hope. I am tempted rather to quote as only too likely to prove true certain desponding words which I once heard uttered by General Gordon when, speaking of the prospect of reform in India, he told me, “You may do what you will. It will be of no use. India will never be reformed until there has been there a new revolt.” But what will that revolt be, and how will it leave our power of reformation?[21]