ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

any

ministry; I believe that his abilities and industry have hitherto gone far to justify that boldness; I believe him to be actuated by just and generous feelings towards the people of India; I hail with especial satisfaction, as an earnest of the policy of the present administration towards India, the appointment of Sir C. Trevelyan to the Government of Madras. Nor would I for a moment deny the importance of of those questions of domestic or foreign policy which are alleged; quite the contrary. But I say it is precisely the importance of those questions which makes our Indian policy, and the condition of our Indian empire, more important still. India disaffected is a palsy of England's right side; India in rebellion is a devouring ulcer in her flank. For months now our best troops and our ablest general have been thousands of miles away. Months must yet elapse before one European soldier-even of the tried 78th-reaches England from India. The 50,000 men whom 1857 sent thither,—the 30,000 or so who have followed them in 1858-have in great part melted away already. Recruiting for the Indian service must yet go on; the boys whom the recruiting sergeant is now picking up out of our vast courts and alleys will yet many of them perish like flies under the fierce Indian sun, in petty obscure partisan skirmishes with those who have been soldiers and will have to be hunted down as robbers, in the storming of small mudforts and fortified villages. Meanwhile, who at home is not conscious of feelings of vague distrust as to the future, latent in the minds even of the loudest declaimers for peace? The armed despotism of Louis Napoleon weighs upon Europe. His warlike pre

parations he no longer even takes the trouble to conceal. Even if we suppose his personal intentions towards us to be friendly, currents which he cannot control will always bring him round to a direction of opposition towards us. Freedom and despotism cannot stand long side by side. Freedom, however peaceable, is a standing warning against despotism; despotism, for very life, must be a perpetual threat against freedom. Few amongst us perhaps, during the Regina Coeli and Charles-Georges complications, could get rid of an uneasy suspicion that we were sacrificing the weak to the strong, pandering to a secret fear of a too-powerful ally, losing the opportunity of a mighty protest in favour of right. And the trial of M. de Montalembert, for the offence of having dared to speak well of England -even now that it has been sought to be wiped out by a hasty pardon-was an insult flung in the teeth not of England's Government, but of every individual Englishman. Our nation was lowered through his condemnation, by the police courts of a prince who yet called himself our ally. A score is thus being run up, which sooner or later, I fear, must be settled in blood. And M. de Montalambert himself has warned us as to the "common fund of animosity" existing against England on the Continent, as to the need of keeping up her military strength.

[ocr errors]

It is the condition of India that has made this state of things possible. With a happy, prosperous, and loyal India, England may safely bid defiance to the world. With Saxon thews and sinews in the West, and faithful Mussulman or Sikh sabres in the East, ready to be flung over the Indian Ocean, she would take Euro

I

pean despotism in front and rear. And therefore I claim that nothing should tempt us to overlook the need of that large and distant empire, which is now, in reality, paralyzing our military strength, and must, sooner or later, tell weightily upon our financial resources. Therefore say, that whilst any interval of rest and security is given to us at home, we should apply ourselves resolutely to the understanding of India's condition, to the setting it right as far as is humanly possible. Therefore I claim attention for fragments of contemporary history, relating to states in India of which many may never have heard before, or have heard with as little of vivid personal interest as they might have heard of the moon's mountains. In the problem, whether India, now and in future, is to be to us a hindrance or a help, a source of strength or a source of weakness, every English household is concerned, little as we may think it.

And the problem is one, be assured, which gathers interest as we enter more deeply into it. What more striking spectacle does this world afford than that of the oldest civilization in the world grappled by the newest?-of a heathenism, more ancient than that of which our school-books teach us, nay, apparently the fountain-head of that, placed face to face with Christianity? what stranger sight than that of the new everywhere permeating the old in resistless currents, driving away the false, and yet in the very process bringing out many a precious truth that is mixed up with it? To the seeing eye, the condition of India is as it were a synchronous picture of human development, all history, so to speak, made visible at once.

I need hardly say that I am no political partizan. I deemed Lord Palmerston prematurely hurled from power; I looked for a time to his re-instalment; I still deem his India bill to have been by far the preferable one of the three measures brought forward upon that subject, one of which has passed into law. And whilst heartily approving of the late Proclamation of the Queen's Government, and believing that every nerve should be strained by all well-wishers to India to carry it loyally and generously into effect,that no punishment scarcely can be too great for those officials who should dare to disregard it or tamper with it,-I reserve to myself the fullest freedom of judgment as to the general policy of a Cabinet, for some members of which I have feelings of unfeigned respect,—but of thorough distrust towards one or two others.

I have, in this work, used proper names far more freely than I could have wished. But where I found them appended to state papers it seemed to me that it would have been affectation to avoid them. I have at least the satisfaction of thinking that I never have had the slightest communication with any of the gentlemen whose proceedings I have been led to criticize, and do not know one of them by sight; and therefore, that not a tinge of personal feeling can have influenced my judgments. There are those who may deem that the canvassing the past acts of the Indian government or of its officials can only have for its effect to embitter the minds of the natives against British rule, at a time when it seems most desirable that animosities should be allowed to subside. My answer is, that I believe the minds of the natives are embittered against many

features of British rule; that animosities have been excited, which cannot subside by merely being overlooked. And all my experience hitherto has shewn me, that where a man does deem himself aggrieved, the two very worst things possible are, 1st.-to omit or refuse inquiring into his grievances, 2nd.-not to recognize them to the fullest extent where they are real. That such a grievance as the Inam Commission, for instance, is a real one, I cannot affect to doubt; and the longer it is left subsisting and unnoticed, I am convinced, the more harm will result. Of the folly in process of committal of forcing it upon the Madras Presidency it is difficult to speak in measured terms.

There remains for me but to add, that for the use of the greater part of the materials from which this book is written, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. J. Dickinson, jun., Hon. Secretary to the India Reform Society.

Lincoln's Inn, January 31, 1859.

NOTE.-I find I have committed a grave error in my XIVth Letter, in speaking of the State of Dhar as restored. It is true that during the last session Lord Stanley, in answer to a question from Mr. J. B. Smith, stated that it was "the intention of the Government to disallow the policy of annexation as regards the territory of Dhar," and that the occupation of that territory was provisional only, "subject as to its duration to further explanation which we hope to receive; "* nor is there, I believe, any reason to doubt that instructions for restoration were sent out accordingly. But

Hansard's Debates, vol. 159 (3rd Series), pp. 1919-20.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »