into the rough popular form, which renders them applicable to practice. They resent the vulgarizing of thoughts which they designed for choice spirits. The many-voiced sound of popular movements fills them with alarm, and they tremble for the ark of civilization when it falls into the hands of those who have not been trained in the schools of hesitation and compromise. This attitude is very common in France at present. France has obtained the liberty for which all its higher spirits longed during the gilded degradation of the second empire; but the younger representatives of intellectual culture in France now turn away from politics and indulge in political pessimism. An admirable remonstrance was lately addressed by a deputy of the Chamber, M. Dionys Ordinaire, to those superfine politicians who, by flouting the popular aspirations, and holding themselves apart from the general movement, do much to increase the intellectual deterioration in politics which they profess to deplore. We quote a few sentences from his lively raillery of the superior persons of France: Pour ma part, j'ai beau regarder autour de moi et interroger cette fin de siècle (si fin de siècle il y a), je ne vois rien qui justifie ces lugubres tendances. Car quel motif sérieux de déspoir ont ces désespérés ? Est ce que notre troisième républic est pour eux une geôle? Est-ce qu'elle ne leur ouvre le jour que par un soupirail? Quelles avenues ferme-t-elle à leurs aspirations et à leur génie, s'ils en ont? Ils ont la presse libre, les réunions, toutes les tribunes libres. Jamais carrière plus vaste n'a été ouverte à de nobles ambitions. Nous avons une démocratie jeune, ardente, intempérante même dans ses ardeurs, mais sincère, mais naïve, mais amoureuse, quoi qu'on dise, de toutes les belles choses et prête à récompenser largement toutes les bonnes volontés. . . . Quels motifs avez-vous donc alors de vous décourager et de rester oisifs dans le mouvement de la grande fourmilière? Etes-vous anémiques? Prenez du fer. Etes-vous faibles des bras et des reins ? Faites de l'escrime. Etes-vous fatigués du cerveau ? Prenez des douches. Mais cessez de geindre et de décourager par vos lamentations la chiourme et les passagers, comme faisait ce grand veau de Panurge pendant la tempête. Ramez! Ramez ! The political pessimism of a certain class of writers of our time is due, in part, at least, to their inability or their reluctance to recognize the ruling power of God in the history of the world. The old philosophers of history-the writers who, from Augustine to Bossuet, treated of history in a religious. spirit-made many blunders which the more scientific study of history has corrected. Their large discourse on the designs of Providence in history came often perilously near to presumption. But it had this advantage, that it kept alive faith in a guiding providence of the nations, and nourished the hope of a favourable issue to the trials and struggles of mankind. Historians now concern themselves exclusively with sequence of events, and with the effect which one series of events had in producing another. They have discovered that evolution is the law of history as well as of nature. To this discovery there is no reasonable objection, at all events, if ethical laws are not denied their part in effecting the process of evolution. But it cannot but have a lowering effect upon the ideals of men, on their hopefulness for the future of the race, if dead laws and the play of blind impulses are the only forces recognized by historical writers when they discourse upon the history of mankind or when they prospect its future. JOHN GIBB. 6 ART. IV. Our Stake in India. 'EVERY Schoolboy,' says Macaulay, in his essay on Clive, 'knows who imprisoned Montezuma and strangled Atahualpa; but every one does not know who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Surajah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman.' It was only one of the many ways in which the great Anglo-Indian essayist satirized the dense ignorance on Indian affairs which he knew to prevail in his time. And the condition of things is little better now. 'Members of Parliament of the present generation,' says Lord Randolph Churchill, consider Indian affairs to be either beneath their attention or above their comprehension.' And the new electorate and the new Parliament, what of them? It may frankly be assumed that with them the case is even worse. If King Demos was lately proclaimed to know as little of home politics as he did of the Greek Testament, how can he be expected to master the complex land systems of territories as large as the whole of Europe, Russia excepted; to study the wants and wishes of people speaking 110 different languages, and numbering one-seventh of the population of the entire globe? What does he know, what do the majority of newly-fledged politicians know, of the incidence of Indian taxation, the pressure of the salt tax, the merits of the opium trade, the unequal balance of trade, the depreciation of the rupee, the four-cornered duel between zemindar, middleman, cultivating ryot, and the gombeen man, the system within system and web within web in which the whole land system of India is enveloped? The political constitution of the country alone is a marvellous compromise between native custom and laws imposed by conquest. Each one of the provincial governments would tax the energies of a parliament less clogged and better informed than that of Westminster. To most of us the native States are lands from whose bourns no information returns. The controversy on the Ilbert Bill cast a furtive light on the administration of civil and criminal justice; but once controversy ceased, interest in the matter, such as it was, immediately died out. The productive capacity of India is as little known as on the first day of the seventeenth century, when the charter of the East Indian Company was granted. The same applies to forests, factories, mines, education, and a host of other matters material and moral. This is not the fault of the British people. Chance, blended with fraud, enterprise aided by conquest, have placed us in possession of an Empire justly described as the brightest jewel in the British Crown. A rough diamond, casually picked up, up to the present it has more or less been left to take care of itself. The English people were too busy fighting their own party battles, perfecting their own Constitution, developing their own internal condition, to concern themselves much about the Hindoo. The Indian Mutiny broke the lethargic spell, but only for a moment. As soon as the fresh compact of 1858 was proclaimed, substituting the Crown for the old East India Company, India again receded from public view, and from that day till the year of grace 1886, save by occasional desultory inquiries, we have let the Secretary of State for India for the time being, the India Council, the Council of the Governor-General, and the Councils of Madras and Bombay, do how and what they would. The annual budget statement year by year was perfunctorily drawled out to yawning, empty benches. A few Indian colonels aired half-a-dozen hobbies touching mere personal matters of detail, and Indian affairs for one year more, as far as the British legislator was concerned, were consigned to the realms of oblivion. A change, and a satisfactory one, is perceptible on the Indian horizon. The Appeal from the People of India to the Electors of Great Britain and Ireland,' issued before the General Election, burst like a meteor on the political firmament. So little was it expected, that Mr. John Morley, a few days previously, at Cambridge, deprecated an inquiry into Indian affairs. He would be no party to the placing of the 'Governor-General in Council, the Indian Army, the Residents and High Courts, in the witness-box or the dock.' English rulers in India were, he said, like men cultivating land on the slopes of a volcano, or a captain steering a steamship in the fogs of Newfoundland, and nothing was more wanton, gratuitous, and reckless than to provoke all these forces into action.' Had the appeal been issued before that speech, in all probability that speech would never have been delivered. The able, fearless, uncompromising champion of freedom all the world over would never thwart the aspirations of the Indian people. The moral of the way he did so in this instance is not a little instructive. Lord Randolph Churchill had made a great speech on India on the 6th of August. In that speech he attacked the thriftless, thoughtless policy of Lord Ripon in not providing for a rainy day.' He had looked carefully and dispassionately into his policy, and could not see one redeeming feature in it.' Could Mr. Morley stand such an attack on what virtually was the Radical policy in India? He showed that he could not, and, in showing it, incidentally, and no doubt unintentionally, proved the great danger of dragging the Indian Question at the coat-tail of political parties here in England. Lord Randolph Churchill said that, whether in office or out of it, he would support a motion for a general inquiry into Indian affairs; he was prepared to bridge the gap which separates the Englishman and the Hindoo, to rule India according to Indian ideas, so far as it could safely be done, with statesmanlike sagacity looking deep into the volcanic forces slumbering beneath. Not advocating, however, sitting on the safety-valve till the explosion would come, but rather the devising of ameliorative measures whereby the Hindoos would be admitted to a share in the management of their own affairs. That was essentially a Radical programme, but it was rejected by Radicals because it was not formulated by a Radical. Had the author been a Radical, the Tory Democrat who proposed it would possibly have opposed it. So were Irish affairs managed for years the battle-cry of Whig and Tory. To-day the fruits are seen in the solid Irish Parliamentary phalanx ready to plant the standard of Irish liberty, if need be, on the ruins of British civilization. Do we wish a similar phase of the Indian Question? Do we wish the upheaval of teeming millions taught by the press, the post office, telegraph, and all the other educational agencies that have lifted the Hindoo into a political factor? The whole question of an inquiry really turns on this point. Mr. Nor do we assume that there will be any objection. Morley will probably have repented, and the party of Lord Ripon-the greatest friend India has ever had-will assuredly not grudge India the benefits of an impartial parliamentary inquiry. In one sense it is not surprising that an inquiry should be looked at coldly in some quarters, because the chances of practical results from such a process are remote. In not distant days to appoint a Commission was to shelve the question. But even assuming the best possible intentions in regard to this Indian inquiry, we have to look at the proportions of the task, its complexity, the unravelling of tradition and custom and law, the deep roots which vested rights and monopoly have taken, and the many other barriers of purely native growth. Still, as for good or evil the British citizen, through the British Parliament, is called upon to rule India, it is only right to make an honest attempt, at least, to learn how it has been, and how it shall be done. That is all an inquiry will do. It will shape general tendencies, set forces at work which will some day bear fruit, brush aside some cobwebs from the machinery, render less sharp here and there the pinch of oppression, throw in an ameliorative sop. But to think that it will give a new brand machine which for ever will work the Indian problem without a hitch, is sheer and dangerous illusion. The question as a whole resolves itself into two great headings-the questions of defence and the question of reform. The former chiefly touches us; the latter also indirectly, but it primarily constitutes the great concern of the Indian people. Of the latter first. What are the claims of India? They are set forth at length in the Appeal to the British People' already alluded to. To put them categorically, they ask1. Á Commission of Inquiry into Indian affairs. 2. The right of each Presidency and Province to manage its own affairs according to the enterprise and intelligence of the respective peoples. 3. A changed Military Policy whereby the extreme costliness of Indian military administration may be reduced. 4. A comprehensive settlement of the Land Question. 5. Equitable Civil Service reform, removing native barriers. 6. Removal of the unequal distribution of Home charges and the disastrous balance of trade against India. 7. Abolition of Industrial Monopolies. 8. Better provision against Famines. |