THE FUTURE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT[20]

Before considering the case for self-government in British India, a few words may be said about the semi-independent Native States.

There is an interest attaching to these Native States which is twofold for the political observer. They present in the first place a picture, instructive if not entirely accurate, of the India of past days, and so serve in some measure as landmarks and records of the changes for good and evil our rule has caused. And secondly, they afford indications of the real capacity for self-government possessed by the indigenous races.

When one has seen a native court, with its old-world etiquettes, its ordered official hierarchies, and its fixed notions, one learns something, which no amount of reading could teach, about the tradition of paternal government long swept away in Madras and Bengal. One recognizes how much there was that was good in the past in the harmonious relations of governors and governed, in the personal connection of princes and peoples, in the tolerance which gave to each caste and creed its recognized position in the social family. One is surprised to find how naturally such adverse elements as the Hindu Brahmin and the Mohammedan nobleman lay down together under a system which precluded class rivalry, and how tolerant opinion was in all the practical details of life. One does not readily imagine from the mere teaching of history the reason which should place a Mussulman from Lucknow in command of the army of a Rajput prince, or a Hindu statesman in the position of vizier to a Nizam of the Deccan. Yet seeing, one understands these things, and one recognizes in them something of the natural law existing between “the creatures of the flood and field” which makes it impossible “their strife should last.” In the traditional life of ancient India there was an astonishing tolerance now changed to intolerance, an astonishing order in face of occasional disorder, and a large material contentment which neither war nor the other insecurities of life permanently affected. It is impossible, too, after having visited a native court, to maintain that the Indian natives are incapable of indigenous government. The fact which proves the contrary exists too palpably before one’s eyes. The late Sir Salar Jung was as distinctly a statesman as Lawrence or Dalhousie; and among the Mahrattas there are not a few diwans to be found in office capable of discharging almost any public function.

At the same time it is abundantly clear that in all that constitutes intellectual life the India of old days, as represented in the still independent States, was far more than a century behind the India of our day. Mental culture is at the lowest ebb in the capitals of the native princes. They possess neither schools on any large plan, nor public libraries, nor are books printed in them nor newspapers published. I was astonished to find how in the centre of busy intellectual India large flourishing towns were to be found completely isolated from all the world, absorbed in their own local affairs, and intellectually asleep. At certain of the native courts history is still represented by the reciter of oral traditions, letters by the court poet, and science by professors of astrology; while the general politics of the Empire hardly affect, even in a remote degree, the mass of the unlettered citizens. Last winter’s storm over Lord Ripon’s internal policy left the native States absolutely unmoved. There is both good and bad in this.

With regard to their material prosperity, as contrasted with British India, I can only speak of what I have seen. The territories of the native princes are for the most part not the most fertile tracts of India; and one cannot avoid a suspicion that their comparative poverty has been the cause of their continued immunity from annexation. Nearly the whole of the rich irrigated ricelands of the peninsula are now British territory; and the estates of the Nizam, and the two great Mahratta princes Holkar and Scindia, comprise a large amount of untilled jungle. These countries possess no seaports or navigable rivers, and their arable tracts are not of the first order of productiveness, while the Rajput princes are lords of districts almost wholly desert. It would be, therefore, misleading to compare the material wealth of the peasantry in any of these States with those of Bengal or the rich lands of the Madras coast, for the conditions of life in them are not the same. But, poor land compared with poor land, I think the comparison would not be unfavourable to the native States. I was certainly struck in passing from the British Deccan below Raichore into the Nizam’s Deccan with certain signs of better condition in the latter. Most of the Nizam’s villages contain something in the shape of a stone house belonging to the head man. The flocks of goats, alone found in the Madras Presidency, are replaced by flocks of sheep; and one sees here and there a farmer superintending his labourers on horseback, a sight the British Deccan never shows. In the few villages of the Nizam which I entered I found at least this advantage over the others, that there was no debt, while I was assured that the mortality during the great Deccan famine was far less severe in the Nizam’s than in her Majesty’s territory.

It must not, however, be supposed that in any of the native States the ancient economy of India has been preserved in its integrity. Free trade has not spared them more than the rest. Their traditional industries have equally been ruined, and they suffer equally from the salt monopoly; while in some of them the British system of assessing the land revenue at its utmost rate, and levying the taxes in coin, has been adopted to the advantage of the revenue and the disadvantage of the peasant. On the whole the agricultural condition of the Hyderabad territory seemed to me a little, a very little, better than that of its neighbour, the Madras Deccan, and I believe it is a fact that it is attracting immigrants from across the border. The Rajput State of Ulwar, where I also made some inquiries, was represented to me as being considerably more favourably assessed than British Rajputana.

The best administered districts of India would seem to be those where a native prince has had the good fortune to secure the co-operation of a really good English assessor, allowing him to assess the land, not with a view to immediately increased revenue, but the true profit of the people. Such are to be found in some of the Rajput principalities, where the agricultural class is probably happier, though living on a poor soil, than in any other part of India; for the assessor, freed from the necessity which besets him in British territory of raising a larger revenue than the district can quite afford, and having no personal interest to serve by severity, allows his kindlier instincts to prevail, and becomes—what he might be everywhere in India—a protector of the people. I trust that it is understood by this time that I am far from affirming that Englishmen are incapable of administering India to its profit. What I do say is that selfish interests and the interests of a selfish Government prevent them from so doing under the present system in British territory. Thus it is certain that the Berar province of Hyderabad under British administration has prospered exceedingly; and its prosperity affords precisely that exceptional instance which proves the general rule of impoverishment. What may probably be affirmed without any risk of error is, that the best administered districts of the native States are also the best administered of all India.

With regard to the town population, I found the few independent native capitals which I visited exhibiting signs of well-being in the inhabitants absent in places of the same calibre under British rule. With the exception of Bombay, which is exceptionally flourishing, the native quarter, even in the Presidency towns, has everywhere in British India a squalid look. The “Black Town” of Madras reminds one disagreeably of Westminster and the Seven Dials: and there is extreme native misery concealed behind the grandeur of the European houses in Calcutta. The inland cities are decidedly in decay. Lucknow and Delhi, once such famous capitals, are shrunk to mere shadows of their former selves; and there is a distrustful attitude about their inhabitants which a stranger cannot fail to notice. The faces of the inhabitants everywhere in Northern India are those of men conscious of a presence hostile to them, as in a conquered city. In the capitals of the native States, on the contrary, there is nothing of all this, and the change in the aspect of the natives, as one passes from British to native rule, is most noticeable. The Hyderabadis especially have a well-fed look not commonly found in the inland towns, and are quite the best dressed townsmen of India. There is a bustle and cheerfulness about this city, and a fearless attitude in the crowd, which is a relief to the traveller after the submissive silence of the British populations. Elephants, camels, horsemen—all is movement and life in Hyderabad; and as one passes along one realizes for the first time the idea of India as it was in the days when it was still the centre of the world’s wealth and magnificence. That these gay externals may conceal a background of poverty is possible—English officials affirm that they do so; but at least it is better thus than that there should be no gaiety at all, nor other evidence of well-being than in the bungalows of a foreign cantonment.

Nor is the cause of the better condition far to seek. Whatever revenue the native court may raise from the people is spent amongst the people. The money does not leave the country, but circulates there; and, even where the profusion is most irrational, something of the pleasure of the spending remains, and is shared in and enjoyed by all, down to the poorest. In British India the tamachas of governors-general and lieutenant-governors interest no one but the aides-de-camp and their friends; and a large portion of the revenue goes clean away every year, to the profit of other lands and other peoples.

Of the administration of justice in the native States I had no opportunity of forming an accurate opinion, but I am willing to believe that it is less satisfactory in these than in British India. The only advantage that I could distinctly recognize in compensation was, what I have already mentioned, the absence of the Civil Courts, which are so loudly complained of in the latter on account of the encouragement they give to usury. It is worth repeating that the only villages I found free from debt in India were in the Nizam’s territory. With this exception, it is probable that British justice is better everywhere than “native” justice, and there is certainly not the same check exercised in a native State by public opinion over the doings of magistrates and judges. In all this the native States are far behind the Imperial system, for the despotic form of rule is the only one recognized in any of them, Hindu or Mohammedan, and there is no machinery by which official injustice can be inquired into or controlled. The ideas of liberty are spreading slowly in India, and the native States are hardly yet touched by them.

Having said this much about the native States, in which there is as yet no clamour for reform, I will go on to the question, one quite apart from them, of British India proper.

Unless I have wholly failed to make my reasoning clear, readers of these essays will by this time have understood that, in answer to the question propounded at the outset of this inquiry—namely, whether the connection between England and India is of profit to the Indian people; and to the further question whether the Indian people regard it as of profit—I have come to conclusions on the whole favourable to that connection.

My argument, in a few words, has been this: seeking the balance of good and evil, I have found, on the one hand, a vast economic disturbance, caused partly by the selfish commercial policy of the English Government, partly by the no less selfish expenditure of the English official class.

I have found the Indian peasantry poor, in some districts to starvation, deeply in debt, and without the means of improving their position; the wealth accumulated in a few great cities and in a few rich hands; the public revenue spent to a large extent abroad, and by an absentee Government. I have been unable to convince myself that the India of 1885 is not a poorer country, take it altogether, than it was a hundred years ago, when we first began to manage its finances. I believe, in common with all native economists, that its modern system of finance is unsound, that far too large a revenue is raised from the land, and that it is only maintained at its present high figure by drawing on what may be called the capital of the country, namely, the material welfare of the agricultural class—probably, too, the productive power of the soil. I find a large public debt, and foresee further financial difficulties.

Again, I find the ancient organization of society broken up, the interdependence of class and class disturbed, the simple customary law of the East replaced by a complicated jurisprudence imported from the West, increased powers given to the recovery of debt, and consequently increased facilities of litigation and usury. Also great centralization of power in the hands of officers daily more and more automatons and less and less interested in the special districts they administer. In a word, new machinery replacing, on many points disadvantageously, the old. I do not say that all these things are unprofitable, but they are not natural to the country, and are costly out of proportion to their effect of good. India has appeared to me at best in the light of a large estate which has been experimented on by a series of Scotch bailiffs, who have all gone away rich. Everything is very scientific, very trim, and very new, especially the bailiff’s own house; but the farms can only be worked now by skilled labourers and at enormous expense; while a huge capital has been sunk, and the accounts won’t bear looking into.

On the other side, I have found an end put to the internecine wars of former days, peace established, security for life given, and a settled order of things on which men can count. I have never heard a native of India underrate the advantage of this, nor of the corresponding enfranchisement of the mind from the bondage in which it used to lie. A certain atmosphere of political freedom is necessary for intellectual growth. Where men were liable to fine, imprisonment, and death for their opinions there could be no general advance of ideas, and the want of personal liberty had for centuries held India in mental chains. No one had dared to think more wisely than his fellows, or, doing so, had speedily been stopped by force from teaching it to others. But under English rule, with all its defects, thought has been free, and men who dared to think have kept their heads, so that a generation has sprung up to whom liberty of opinion has seemed natural, and with it has come courage. The Indians in the towns are now highly educated, write books, found newspapers, attend meetings, make tours of public lectures, think, speak, and argue fearlessly, and an immense revival of intellectual and moral energy has been the result. It is not a small thing, again, that the gross licence of the old princely courts has given place to a more healthy life—that crime in high places is no longer common; that sorcery, poisoning, domestic murder, and lives of senseless depravity are disappearing; that the burning of widows has been abolished, and child-marriage is now being agitated against. These things are distinct gains, which no candid Englishman, any more than do the candid natives, would dream of underrating. And, as I have said before, they supply that element of hope which contains in it a germ of redemption from all other evils. This is the “per contra” of gain to be set in the balance against India’s loss through England.

It would, therefore, be more than rash for Indian patriotism to condemn the English connection. Nor does it yet condemn it. There is hardly, I believe, an intelligent and single-minded man in the three Presidencies who would view with complacency the prospect of immediate separation for his country from the English Crown. To say nothing of dangers from without, there are dangers from within well recognized by all. The Indians are no single race; they profess no one creed, they speak no one language; highly civilized as portions of their society are, it contains within its borders portions wholly savage. There are tribes in all the hills still armed with spear and shield, and the bulk of the peaceful agricultural population is still in the rudest ignorance. The work of education is not yet complete, or the need of protection passed. All recognize this, and with it the necessity for India still of an armed Imperial rule. Were this withdrawn, it is certain at least that the present civilized political structure could not endure, and it is exceedingly doubtful whether any other could be found to take its place. I do not myself see in what way the issue of a rupture could be made profitable to the Indian nations, nor do I understand that the exchange from English to another foreign rule would improve their condition.

At the same time I recognize that it is impossible the present condition of things should remain unchanged for more than a very few years. For reasons which I have stated, the actual organization of Anglo-Indian government has become hateful to the natives of India, and however much their reason may be on the side of patience, there is a daily increasing danger of its being overpowered by a passionate sentiment evoked by some chance outbreak. Nor do I believe that it will be again possible for England to master a military revolt, which would this time have the sympathy of the whole people. Moreover, even if we should suppose this fear exaggerated and the evil day of revolt put off, there is yet the certainty of a Government by force becoming yearly more costly and more difficult to carry on. It is a mistake to suppose that India has ever yet been governed merely by the English sword. The consent of the people has always underlain the exercise of our power, and were this generally withdrawn it could not be maintained an hour. At present the Indian populations accept English rule as, on the whole, a thing good for them, and give it their support. But they do not like it, and were they once convinced that there was no intention on the part of the English people to do them better justice and give them greater liberty than they have now, they might without actual revolt make all government impossible. It cannot be too emphatically stated that our Indian administration exists on the goodwill of the native employÉs.

What then, in effect, should that reform be, and towards what ultimate goal should reformers look in shaping their desires and leading the newly awakened thought of India towards a practical end? While I was at Calcutta I attended a series of meetings at which this question was put in all its branches, and at which delegates from all parts of India discussed it fully; and in what I am now going to say I can therefore give, with more or less accuracy, the native Indian view of Indian needs. Many matters of social importance were debated there, many suggestions made of improvements in this and that department of the administration, and the financial and economic difficulties found their separate exponents; but it was easy to remark that, while all looked forward to the realization of their special hopes, none seemed to consider it possible that any real change would be effected as long as what may be called the constitution of the Indian Government remained what it now is. The burden of every argument was, “No reform is possible for us until the Indian Government is itself reformed. It is too conservative, too selfish, too alien to the thoughts and needs of India, to effect anything as at present constituted; and just as in England reformers at the beginning of this century looked first to a reform of Parliament, so must Indian reformers now look first to a reform of the governing body of the country.” Constitutional changes are needed as an initial step towards improvement; and it is the strong opinion of all that nothing short of this will either satisfy Indian hopes or ward off Indian troubles.

The Indian Government as at present constituted is a legacy from days when the advantage of the natives of India was not even in name the first object with its rulers. Its direct ancestor, the East India Company, was a foreign trade corporation which had got possession of the land, and treated it as a property to be managed for the exclusive advantage of its members, either in the form of interest on the Company’s capital, or of lucrative employment for relatives and friends of the shareholders. The advantage of the natives was not considered, except in so far as their prosperity affected that of the Company; and in early days there was no pretence even of this. India was a rich country, and for many years was held to be an inexhaustible mine of wealth, and was treated without scruple as such. Nor was it till the trial of Warren Hastings that any great scandal arose or any serious check was put to the greediness of all concerned. The directors in London, and their servants in the three Presidencies, had a common object of making money, and the only differences between them were as to the division of profits, while all alike grew rich.

The government of the country was then vested in a Board of Directors sitting at the India House, and delegating their executive powers to a civil service of which they themselves had in most instances been originally members, and whose traditions and instincts they preserved. It was a bureaucracy pure and simple, the most absolute, the closest, and the freest of control that the world has ever seen; for, unlike the bureaucracies of Europe, it was subject neither to the will of a sovereign nor to public opinion in any form. Its selfishness was checked only by the individual good feeling of its members, and any good effected by it to others than these was due to a certain traditional largeness of idea as to the true interests of the Company. It was only on the occasion of the renewal of the Company’s charter that any interference could be looked for from the English Parliament and public; and so it continued until the Mutiny.

In 1858, however, the Company as a Company came to an end. The Board of Directors was abolished, dividends ceased to be paid to owners of Indian stock, and the Government of India was transferred nominally to the English Crown. At that time there was a great talk of reforming the system of administration, and it was publicly announced that India should for the future be governed in no other interest than its own. A royal proclamation gave the natives of British India their full status as British subjects; they were no longer to be disqualified for any function of public trust, and no favour was to be shown to English rather than to native interests in the Imperial policy. The programme was an excellent one, and was received in India with enthusiasm, and caused a real outburst of loyalty to the English Crown which has hardly yet subsided. Its only fault, indeed, has been that it has never been carried out, and that while the Indians have waited patiently the plan has been defeated in detail by vested interests too strong for the vacillating intentions either of the Government which designed the change, or of any that have succeeded it. In spite of all official announcements and statements of policy, and royal proclamations, the principle of Indian government remains what it has always been—that is to say, government in the interests of English trade and English adventure. The more liberal design has faded out of sight.

The explanation of so great a failure I believe is this. When the sovereign power was transferred from the Company to the Crown, it was considered convenient to preserve as far as possible the existing machinery of administration. The East India Company had formed a civil service composed of its own English nominees, whose interests had gradually become part and parcel of the general interest of the concern; and they had obtained rights under covenant which secured them in employment, each for his term of years, and afterwards in pension. These rights the English Government now recognized, and the same covenant was entered into with them as had formerly been granted by the Company, and thus a vested interest in administration was perpetuated which has ever since impeded the course of liberal development.

The only real change introduced in 1858 was to substitute appointment by examination for appointment by nomination; but the composition of the service has remained practically the same, and the English covenanted civilian is still, as he was in the days of the Company, the practical owner of India. His position is that of member of a corporation, irremovable, irresponsible, and amenable to no authority but that of his fellow-members. In him is vested all administrative powers, the disposal of all revenue, and the appointment to all subordinate posts. He is, in fact, the Government, and a Government of the most absolute kind.

But the covenanted Civil Service is also a wholly conservative body. Composed though it may be admitted to be in large part of excellent and honest men—men who do their duty, and sometimes more than their duty—it has nevertheless the necessary vice of all corporations. Its first law is its own interests; its second only those of the Indian people. Nor is it casting a reflection on its members to state this. There has never been found yet a body of men anxious to benefit the world at large at the expense of its own pocket; and the Indian Civil Service, which is no exception to the rule, sees in all reform an economy of its pay, a curtailment of its privileges, and a restriction of its field of adventure. Such a service is of its very nature intolerant of economy and intolerant of change.

When, therefore, I say, in common with all native reformers, that the first reform of all in India must be a reform of its covenanted Civil Service, I am advocating primarily the removal of an obstruction. But the covenanted service is also at the present day an anachronism and an entirely needless expense. Fifty, and forty, and even twenty-five years ago, it may have been necessary to contract on extravagant terms and for life with Englishmen of education, in order to obtain their services in so remote a country as India then was. Such men a generation since were comparatively rare, and the India House, and after it the India Office, may have been right in establishing a special privileged service for its needs, and in granting the covenants it made with them. But modern times have altered all this, and now the supply of capacity is so great that quite as good an article can be obtained without any covenant at all. The commercial companies have all long ago abandoned the old idea, and get their servants for India now as for other parts of the world, in the open market; nor do they find the quality inferior because they enter into no lifelong engagements with them. And so also the Indian Government must do in times to come if it is to keep its head financially above water. It is altogether absurd at the present day to contract with men on the basis of their right to be employed and pensioned at extravagant rates as long as they live. It is not done in the English diplomatic service, whose duties are somewhat similar, nor in any other civil service that I know of. I feel certain that as good Englishmen could be obtained now at a third of the pay, and without any further covenant than the usual one of employment during good behaviour, as are now at the present rates and under the present conditions. If not, it would be far better to dispense with English service altogether, except in the highest grades, and employ natives of the country at the lower rates, which would still be high rates to them. The excessive employment of Englishmen has been a growth of comparatively recent date, and is working harm in every way.

Instead of the covenanted Civil Service, therefore, there would be an uncovenanted service obtained in the open market, and endowed with no more special privileges than our services at home. The members of this would then be under control and, in a true sense of the word, the servants of the State. Now they are its masters.

That they are its masters has been abundantly proved by the success of their efforts to thwart Lord Ripon’s policy during the last three years. Lord Ripon came out to India on the full tide of the Midlothian victory, and quite in earnest about carrying out Midlothian ideas; nor has he faltered since. But the net result of his viceroyalty has been almost nil. Every measure that he has brought forward has been defeated in detail; and so powerful has the Civil Service been that they have forced the Home Government into an abandonment, step by step, of all its Indian policy. This they have effected in part by open opposition, in part by covert encouragement of the English lay element, in part by working through the English press. When I arrived in India I found Lord Ripon like a schoolboy who has started in a race with his fellows and who has run loyally ahead, unaware as yet that these have stopped, and that all the world is laughing at his useless zeal. The Anglo-Indian bureaucracy had shown itself his master in spite of Midlothian.

But if the covenanted Civil Service is an obstructive and burdensome legacy from the defunct Company, so too is the constitution of the Indian Government in London. In 1858, when the Company came to an end, the India House was replaced by the India Office, and the Board of Directors by the Indian Council: a change which was doubtless intended to signify much, but which in practice has come to signify hardly anything at all. The India Office represents of necessity the traditions of the past, and the Council, which was designed to check it, has proved a more conservative and acquiescent body than even the old Board of Directors, its prototype and model. The reason of this is obvious. The Council, composed as it is almost exclusively of retired civil or military servants, views Indian matters from the point of view only of the Anglo-Indian service. It is even less amenable than this is to the influence of new ideas, and is more completely out of touch with modern native thought. Its experience is always that of a generation back, not of the present day, and it refuses, more persistently even than the younger generation in active service, to admit the idea of change.

Thus the Secretary of State, who is dependent on this blind guide, is in no other position at home than is the Viceroy in India. Ignorant, as a rule, of all things Indian, and dependent for advice on the India Office and his Anglo-Indian Council, he never gets at the truth of things, and blunders blindly on as they direct. It is almost impossible for him, however robust his will, to hold his own as a reformer.

The reforms, therefore, at home and in India which native opinion most strongly and immediately demands are, as regards India, that the active Civil Service should be remodelled, by the abolition of all covenants for lifelong employment, and by the liberal infusion of native blood into the non-covenanted service. It is proposed that as vacancies occur a certain proportion—say a third or a fourth—should be reserved exclusively for men of Indian birth, and that thus by degrees the whole Civil Service, with the exception of the highest posts, should become indigenous. Also, as regards the Government at home, that the Secretary of State for India should have the advice of native as well as Anglo-Indian retired officials on his Council in London. Until this is done they consider that the Government of India will continue to be carried on in the dark, and thus that reform will remain as hitherto, abortive.

It is obvious, however, that such initial changes are a first step only in the direction of reforms infinitely more important. What India really asks for as the goal of her ambitions is self-government—that is to say, that not merely executive but legislative and financial power should be vested in the native hands. At present the legislative authority of each Presidency resides in the Governor in Council, and there is no system whatsoever of popular representation, even of the most limited kind. The Councils are composed wholly of nominees, and, except in very small measure, of English official nominees, and their functions are limited to consultation and advice, for they are without any real power of initiative or even of veto. In each of these Councils a few natives have been given places, but they are in no sense representatives of the people, being, on the contrary, nominees of the Government, chosen specially for their subservience to the ideas of the Governor of the day; and their independence is effectually debarred by the further check that their appointment is for three years only, and reversible at the end of such period by the simple will of the Governor. All the other members—and they form the large majority—are English civil or military officers, who look to appointments on the Councils as the prizes of their service, and who usually represent the quintescence of official ideas. Lord Ripon, indeed, took pains to get together men of a liberal sort in his own supreme Council; but as a rule those who enjoy this position are anxious only to secure reappointment at the end of their three years’ term. Thus, instead of representing the ideas current among the native classes from which they spring, they serve merely as an echo or chorus to the Governor, or to the permanent officials who sway the Governor. This is not a healthy condition of things. The remedy should be, as a first condition, that the native councillors should be elected by the various classes of the community, and that their tenure of office should be made independent of the Governor’s pleasure. I am convinced that the system would work with good results; and if also the number of councillors were increased and their powers of debate and interpellation enlarged, an excellent basis would be laid for what all Indian reformers look to as the ideal of their hopes, provincial parliaments. That India is unfit for local parliamentary institutions of at least a rudimentary kind I cannot at all admit. Indeed it seems to me that few people would profit more rapidly from a public discussion of public affairs than the temperate conservative Hindus. For a while, indeed, it would doubtless be necessary to retain a large English element in their councils, but the Indian mind educates itself with great rapidity, and in another generation they might probably without danger be entrusted with the sole care of their own domestic legislation, and the sole control of their finances.

At the same time, I would not be understood as advocating for India anything in the shape of an Imperial parliament. Empires and parliaments to my mind have very little in common with each other; and India is far too vast a continent, and inhabited by races far too heterogeneous, to make amalgamation in a single assembly possible for representatives elected on any conceivable system. Possibly in the dim future some such thing might be, but not in the lifetime of any one now living, and any attempts of the sort at present would find for themselves the inevitable fate of the Tower of Babel. The Imperial power should, on the contrary, if it is to be effective, remain in the hands of a single man; and instead of weakening the Viceroy’s authority I would rather see it strengthened. But with the provinces and for all provincial affairs, self-government is a growing necessity, and the present age is quite capable of witnessing it in practice.

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]