THE GANGETIC PROVINCES OF BRITISH INDIA.[35]
Disguise it as we may, conquest to the conquered must ever be a bitter draught.
It is impossible for nations to be entirely disinterested. The rewards of the victors cannot be reaped without trenching upon the rights of the vanquished.
Three centuries have gone by since Machiavelli wrote, yet still does the Italian mutter his words, “Ad ognuno puzza questo barbaro dominio;” and all the material benefits which the peasantry of Lombardy often admit that they enjoy under their present masters, cannot abate the aversion of the people of that province to the Austrian rule.
There are more points of resemblance than we may like to confess between the position of Austria towards Italy, and that of England towards India. In both cases, the bulk of the conquered, especially the agricultural classes, have little to complain of, and are on the whole passively contented and reconciled to a yoke which, as far as they are concerned, presses, perhaps, but does not gall; in both cases, all of a higher order, all upon whom ambition can have any influence, must feel more or less discontented with a condition necessarily attended with a diminished chance of advancement, and a mortifying stagnation of hope. Both of the dominant powers ought to regard this frame of mind not as a fault, but as a moral malady, and to direct their best efforts to the cure of an affection naturally resulting from the depressed position of those brought by conquest under their sway.
What the sanative measures of Austria may have been, and into the causes of their failure, we need not stop to inquire, but may proceed at once to consider in how far we have, in this respect, acquitted ourselves of our obligations to those over whom we also rule mainly by the right of conquest and superior strength.
Not being gifted, like many of our contemporaries, with power to take in the totality of the gorgeous East at one comprehensive glance, we must examine our Indian empire in detail, and for the present confine our remarks to the Presidency of Bengal, with its appendage the Lieutenant-Governorship of Agra.
The guides whom we propose to follow in the prosecution of our inquiries into the state of these Gangetic provinces, their past and present condition, and their future prospects, are the authors enumerated at the foot of the page, each of whom may be regarded as a representative of one or other of the schools into which those interested in the work of Indian administration may now be said to be divided.
The history of our civil administration of the Gangetic portion of our Eastern territory divides itself into three distinct periods. The first, extending from the victories of Clive in 1757, to the commencement of Lord Cornwallis’s system in 1793, may be called the heroic and irregular; the second, dating from the year last mentioned, and continuing till the accession of Lord William Bentinck in 1829, may be designated the judicial and regular; and the third, stretching from that time to the present day, the anti-judicial and progressive period.
During the first of these periods, it is in vain to deny that gross abuses prevailed, and that many acts of oppression were committed by those very individuals among our own countrymen, whose heroism in the field and sagacity in council were the subjects of admiration to such natives as were brought into communication and contact with them.
A degree of intimacy thus subsisted between the European rulers and natives of higher rank, such as, in these days, is only to be found where the native has been by education assimilated in some degree to the Englishman.
It is stated by Mr F. H. Robinson, that men who had left India at that early period, could not believe those who, in after years, told them of the social estrangement prevailing in that country, and of the reluctance evinced, even by Mahommedans, to share a repast with a Christian.
Engaged, as the English of those early days were, in a struggle for political existence, their deportment towards natives of rank was influenced by the often-felt necessity of winning them over to their interests; and thus our national disposition to be contemptuously churlish towards those who differ from ourselves in language, complexion, and manner, was kept for a while in abeyance. At that period, therefore, we find traces of friendly personal feeling subsisting between Englishmen and natives, and expressed by the latter, even in the same breath with the most earnest protestations against the mal-administration of the country then in our hands. Striking instances of these conflicting feelings are exhibited in that most curious work entitledSyar-ul Mootekherin, which may be translated into a “Review of Modern Times,” or more literally, “Manners of the Moderns.” This history of the events attending the downfall of the Moghul and the rise of our own power in India, was written by a Mahommedan gentleman, of the name of Mir Gholan Hussein, whose descendants, if we are not misinformed, continued under our rule to hold possession of certain lands in the province of Behar, since lost to them in a manner likely to be chronicled among the events of the third of the three historic periods to which we have alluded.
If even at this distance of time it is painful to read the reproaches bestowed by the author on our internal administration, it is still consolatory to find one, to whom neither partiality nor flattery can be imputed, recording his unfeigned admiration of the personal conduct of many of our countrymen in those early days.
Of Warren Hastings the author writes with enthusiasm. He records all of that great man’s troubles with his council; and gives, if we remember right—for we have not been able to find a complete translation of the work in London—a circumstantial account of the duel with Francis, fought, according to English custom, withtummunchas(pistols), in abugishea(garden); and then after narrating the complete dispersion of the factious opposition by which he had been thwarted, he breaks out in a triumphant tone, with an exclamation like the following: “Now did the genius of Mr Hastings, like the sun bursting through a cloud, beam forth in all its splendour.” In describing an action fought in the vicinity of the city of Patna, in the year 1760, the native author dwells with delight upon the conduct of his friend Dr William Fullerton, who, in the midst of a retreat in the face of a victorious enemy, on an ammunition-cart breaking down, stopped unconcernedly, put it in order, and then bravely pursued his route, and “it must be acknowledged,” he adds, “that this nation’s presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all question.”
In abatement of these praises, he adds the following reflections: “If, to so many military qualifications, they knew how to join the art of government, no nation would be preferable to them, or prove worthier of command; but such is their little regard to the people of these kingdoms, and such their apathy and indifference for their welfare, that the people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress.”
Though this censure is in so far unfair, that all is, in Oriental fashion, imputed to the ruling power, without allowance for the circumstances of a period of troublous transition, it is evidently penned in an honest and friendly spirit; and evinces no repugnance whatever to the domination of the English, provided they would acquire some better knowledge of “the art of government.” In another passage he recounts how gallantly a Hindoo of high rank, Rajah Shitab Roy, co-operated with Captain Knox in attacking an immensely superior force, and how heartily, on returning to Patna, the English captain expressed his admiration of his Hindoo ally, exclaiming repeatedly, “This is a real Nawab; I never saw such a Nawab in my life.”
Soon afterwards the French officer with the force opposed to the English, the Chevalier Law, having been deserted by his men, remained by himself on the field of battle, when, bestriding one of his guns, “he awaited the moment of his death.” His surrender and courteous reception are dwelt on with evident delight; and, after stating how a rude question addressed to the Chevalier by a native chief was checked and rebuked by the English officer, he makes the following observation:—“This reprimand did much honour to the English; and it must be acknowledged, to the honour of these strangers, that as their conduct in war and in battle is worthy of admiration, so, on the other hand, nothing is more modest and more becoming than their behaviour to an enemy, whether in the heat of action or in the pride of success and victory.”
These extracts, borrowed from the notes to the third volume of Mill’s History, might be supported by many other passages of a similar tendency in the native work itself; and all tend to prove that the social estrangement since prevailing between our countrymen and the native gentry has not had its origin in the religious scruples of the latter, or in any decided aversion on their part to a closer intercourse with the strangers to whom Providence has assigned the mastery over their land.
This view is confirmed, in as far as the Mahommedans are concerned, by what Mrs Colin Mackenzie tells us of the comments of the Afghan chiefs on the reluctance of their co-religionists in Hindostan to share a repast with their Christian rulers, and the absence of any fellowship between the two classes is traced by that lady to the very cause to which it is in our opinion also mainly to be ascribed; namely, to our peculiar and somewhat repulsive bearing towards all who differ from ourselves in tone of thought, in taste, or in manners.—With a scrupulous respect for the persons and property of those among whom we are thrown by the accidents of war, or trade, or travel, we too often manifest a great disregard for the feelings; and as insults rankle in the memory long after injuries are forgotten, we find that liberal expenditure and strict justice in our dealings cannot make us as popular as our rivals the French, even in countries where we paid for all, and they for nothing, that was supplied or taken. Now, it is well remarked by Mr Marshman, at p. 63 of his Reply to Mr Cobden, that “everything in and about our Eastern Empire is English, even to our imperfections;” and among them we need not be surprised to find an undue scorn of all that is foreign, heightened by the arrogance of conquest and the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to a dark complexion. This last is a more potent principle than in our present humour of theoretical philanthropy we may be disposed to admit; but it seems to be born with us, for it may be seen sometimes in English children at an age too young for prejudice, or even a perception of social distinctions.
It was said by “the Duke,” that there is no aristocracy like the aristocracy of colour; and all experience in lands where the races are brought into contact, proves the correctness of the aphorism.
During the first thirty years of our ascendancy in India, this most forbidding of our national characteristics was kept in check by the exigencies of our position; and the consequence was, that, notwithstanding all the corruption of the time, we were then individually more popular than we have ever been since. There was so little of what could be called European society then to be met with throughout the country, that Englishmen were drawn into some degree of intimacy with natives, in order to escape from the painful sense of total isolation and solitude. That this intercourse was favourable to morality in the highest sense of the term, is more than we can venture to affirm; each party too often acquired more of the faults than of the virtues of the other. But still, bad as the public and private life of Anglo-Indians was at that period, and however great the corruption that prevailed, these defects in those who ruled were perhaps more tolerable to the governed than the ill-mannered integrity of a succeeding generation.
The abuses had probably gone on increasing, and the palliating courtesy most likely diminishing, when a new era was ushered in by the arrival of the first Governor-General of superior rank, in the person of the Marquis Cornwallis.
We must refer our readers to Mr Kaye’s pages for a clear description of the state of the Bengal Presidency at the commencement of this the second of the three periods into which we have assumed that its history may be distributed. Our space will not allow of our entering into the controversy about the merits of the system then introduced by Lord Cornwallis and his coadjutors, but we gladly make room for the following picture of the state of the peasantry in Bengal, sketched as we are assured by an eyewitness, in the course of the year 1853.
“What strikes the eye most in any village, or set of villages, in a Bengal district, is the exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish plenty surrounding the Grihasta’s (cultivator’s) abode, the rich foliage, the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against anything like penury. Did any man ever go through a Bengalee village and find himself assailed by the cry of want or famine? Was he ever told that the Ryot and his family did not know where to turn for a meal, that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to bathe in, no employment for their active limbs? That villages are not neatly laid out like a model village in an English county; that things seem to go on, year by year, in the same slovenly fashion; that there are no local improvements, and no advances in civilisation, is all very true. But considering the wretched condition of some of the Irish peasantry, or even the Scotch, and the misery experienced by hundreds in the purlieus of our great cities at home, compared with the condition of the Ryots who know neither cold nor hunger, it is high time that the outcry about the extreme unhappiness of the Bengal Ryot should cease.”—(P. 194.)
It is cheering to read in the chapter of Mr Kaye’s work, from which the above extract is taken, the proofs that the labours of Cornwallis and his able coadjutors have not been fruitless, and that the peasantry of the part of India more immediately under their care, are not, as some have asserted, to this hour suffering from their blundering humanity.
It would indeed be most mortifying to think that regulations, pronounced at the time of their promulgation by Sir Wm. Jones and the best English lawyers in India (though, in the true spirit of professional pedantry, they would not allow them to be called laws), to be such as would do credit to any legislator of ancient or modern times, should really in operation have proved productive of little or no good.
The preambles to some of the first of these regulations are worthy of notice, even on the score of literary merit; and it is impossible to peruse them without feeling that they must have proceeded from highly cultivated minds, deeply impressed with the importance of the duty on which they were engaged.
It was the recorded opinion of the late Mr Courtenay Smith, of the Bengal Civil Service (a brother of the celebrated Sidney Smith, and, like him, a man of great wit and general talent, though unfortunately his good things were mostly expressed in Persian or Hindostanee, and are thus lost to the European world), that succeeding governments have always erred as they have departed from the principles of the Cornwallis code; and that it would have been well if they had confined their legislation to such few modifications of the regulations of 1793 as the slowly progressive changes of Oriental life might have really rendered necessary.
For very nearly thirty years the government of Bengal resisted the tempting facility of legislation incident to its position of entire and absolute power, and was content to rule upon the principles, and in general adherence to the forms, prescribed by those early enactments.
The benefits resulting from this system were to be seen in a yearly extending cultivation, a growing respect for rights of property, and the gradual rise in the minds of the people of an habitual reference to certain known laws, instead of to the caprice of a ruler, for their guidance in the more serious affairs of life.
The counterbalancing evils alleged against it were, the monopoly of all high offices by the covenanted servants of the East India Company; the accumulation of suits in the courts of civil justice—a result partly of that monopoly, and partly of the check imposed by our police on all simpler and ruder modes of arbitrement; and its tendency, by humouring the Asiatic aversion to change, to keep things stationary, and discountenance that progress without which there ought, in the opinion of many of our countrymen, to be no content on earth. Indeed, the very fact of the natives of Bengal being satisfied with such a system, would, we apprehend, be advanced as a reason for its abolition—a contented frame of mind, under their circumstances, being held to indicate a moral abasement, only to be corrected by the excitement of a little discontent. But, in truth, there was nothing in the Cornwallis system to preclude the introduction of necessary amendments.
The great reproach attaching to it was the insufficient employment of natives, and the exclusive occupation by the Civil Service of the higher judicial posts. Now, we hope to make it clear, by a brief explanation, that the correction of both of these evils might more easily have been effected under the Cornwallis system, than under that by which it has been superseded. There are, as we have remarked at the outset of this article, questions of difficult solution inseparable from conquest; among which, that of the degree of trust to be reposed in the conquered is perhaps the greatest.
Where attachment can hardly be presumed to exist, some reserve in the allotment of power appears to be dictated by prudence; and to fix the amount of influence annexed to an office to be filled by one of the subjugated, so as to render its importance and respectability compatible with the supremacy of the ruling race, is far from being so easy as those imagine who, in their reliance on certain general principles of supposed universal application, leave national feelings and prejudices out of account in making up their own little nostrums for the improvement of mankind.
Under the Cornwallis system, there was an office which, though then always filled by a member of the Civil Service, seemed, in the limitation as well as the importance of its duties, to be exactly suited for natives to hold. When the civil file of a district became overloaded with arrears, the government used to appoint an officer to be assistant or deputy judge. To him the regular judge of the district was empowered to refer any cases that he thought fit, though there his power ceased, as the appeal lay direct to the provincial court from the award of the deputy.
The deputy being made merely a referee without original jurisdiction, was a wise provision for keeping the primary judicial power in the hands of the officer charged with the preservation of the peace of the district, while importance and weight were given to the office of the deputy, by making the appeals from his decisions lie to the Provincial Court, and not to his local superior. A single little law of three lines, declaring natives of India to be eligible to the office of Deputy Judge, would, by throwing a number of respectable situations open to their aspirations, have provided for their advancement, without any disturbance of institutions to which the people of the country had become accustomed and reconciled. Again, as to the monopoly of higher judicial office by members of the Civil Service, the Cornwallis system, perhaps, provided a readier means of abating even this grievance than will be found in that by which it has been supplanted.
Nothing can be more extravagant than the scheme of sending out barristers from Westminster Hall, to undertake, without any intermediate training, the management of districts in Bengal and Hindostan. Sir William Jones himself, unintelligible as he was, on his first arrival, to the natives of India, would have failed if he had undertaken such a task. This visionary proposal has happily received itscoup de gracefrom Sir Edward Ryan, the late Chief Justice in Bengal, in his evidence before the Commons’ Committee; but it does not, in our opinion, follow that the aid of lawyers trained in England is therefore to be altogether discarded in providing for the administration of justice in India. Although the man fresh from England would be sadly bewildered if left by himself in a separate district, it does not follow that he should not, after some preparatory training, be able to co-operate vigorously with others. The horse will go well in double-harness, or in a team, who would upset a gig, and kick it to pieces.
If barristers chose to repair to Bengal, and, while there practising at the bar of the Supreme Court, would study the native languages, it appears to us that, on their proficiency being proved by an examination, they might have been advantageously admitted, under certain limitations as to number, into the now abolished Provincial Courts.
Had these experimental provisions in favour of natives of India, and barristers from England, been found to succeed, their eligibility to every grade in the judicial branch of the service might have been proclaimed, and the most plausible of all the complaints against our system of Indian government would thus have been removed. But improvement without change was not to the taste of those by whom the last of our three administrative periods was ushered in; and in further confirmation of Mr Marshman’s remark, already cited, on the parallelism of movement in England and in India, it was in the changeful years 1830 and 1831 that a revolution was effected in our system of internal administration, which has since given a colour and a bent to our whole policy in the East. In the course of those two years the magisterial power was detached from the office of the judge, and annexed to that of the collector; the Provincial Courts were abolished, their judicial duties being transferred to the district judges, and their ministerial functions of superintendence and control to commissioners, each with the police and revenue of about half a dozen districts under his charge.
Two Sudder, or courts of ultimate resort, were established, one at Calcutta, the other at Allahabad in upper India; but all real executive power centred in the magisterial revenue department, presided over by two Boards, located, like the Sudder Courts, at Calcutta and Allahabad.
One of the new provisions then introduced abolished the office of Register, or subordinate Judge, held by young civilians conjointly with that of Assistant to the Magistrate. This was a most serious change, for it abolished the very situation in which young civilians received their judicial training, and fitted themselves for the better eventual discharge of the higher duties of the judicature.
The Registers used to have the trial of civil suits for property, if not more than five hundred rupees (£50) in value. The abolitionists urged the injustice of letting raw youths experimentalise upon small suits, to the supposed detriment of poor suitors. There was a show of reason in this mode of arguing; but those who used it did not give due weight to the consideration that these youths were to become the dispensers of justice to all classes, and that it was better for the country to suffer a little from their blunders at the outset, than to have them at last advanced to the highest posts on the judgment-seat without any judicial training whatsoever. But, in fact, the whole argument was based upon a mere assumption. The young Registers certainly committed occasional blunders, as old Justices and Aldermen, if we are to believe the daily papers, constantly commit them in England; but, on the whole, their courts were generally popular and in good repute among the natives. The young civilian had often a pride in his own little court of record, liked to know that it was well thought of, and was sometimes pleased to find parties shaping their plaints so as to bring them within the limits of his cognisance.
They thus often acquired a personal regard for the people, whom it was their pride, as well as their duty, to protect—a feeling which has since, we fear, been too much weakened. The young civilians of the present day, though excellent men of business, and accomplished linguists, have seldom any individual feeling for the natives, whom they regard in a light for which no word occurs to us so happily expressive as the French term, “les administrés.” Thus it happened that the abolition of Registerships proved almost the death-blow to the Cornwallis system, and shook, not merely the framework, but the very principles of judicial administration throughout the country. It was followed up by a series of measures, all calculated to lower the judicial department of the service, and to prove to the natives that the protection of the law, promised in the still unrepealed regulations, was thenceforward to prove illusory, wherever it was required to shield them from the encroachments of any new scheme or theory finding favour for the moment with an executive government ruling avowedly upon principles of expediency, and seeking every occasion to shake off the trammels imposed upon its freedom of action by the cautious provisions of the Cornwallis code.
The people soon found in their rulers under the new system a scrupulous discharge of all positive duties, combined with a diminished consideration for native prejudices, a neglect of many punctilios of etiquette, and a stern hostility to every exceptional privilege exempting an individual in any degree from the operation of the rules of general administration. This last-mentioned tendency showed itself particularly in the case of the rent-free tenures, which had for some ten years previously been undergoing revision.
These landed tenures were held under grants from former rulers, exempting the grantee and his heirs from all payment on the score of revenue, though sometimes, as in our own feudal tenures, imposing upon him obligations of suit and service in some form or other.
When the framers of the Cornwallis code, in 1793, determined on recognising the validity of every such tenure as was held under an authentic and sufficient grant, a provision was at the same time made for their being carefully recorded and registered.
This duty of registration was, however, either totally neglected or very imperfectly performed, and the consequence was, that by collusive extensions of their limits, and other means, such as it would be tedious to explain, the rent-free tenures were gradually eating into the rent-paying lands forming the main source of the revenues of the state. Careful revision, therefore, became necessary, and was in fact commenced so far back as the year 1819. The inquiry was intrusted to the officers of the revenue department; but for some time permission was left to those discontented with their award, to bring the question at issue between them and the Government before the regular courts of justice for final decision. This process proving too tardy, in about ten years afterwards a sort of exchequer court, called a Special Commission, was erected for the trial of appeals from the decisions of the revenue authorities on the validity of rent-free grants. This commission was filled by officers of the judicial branch of the service, and their proceedings, carried on in strict conformity with the practice of the courts of civil justice, gave no offence, and created no alarm, notwithstanding that extensive tracts were brought by their decisions under the liability of paying revenue to the state. But not long after the country had entered into the third period of its administration, the revenue authorities got impatient of all restraint, and sought to break through the impediments of judicial procedure and rules. The primary proceedings, being intrusted to young deputy-collectors, were carried on with a rapidity which rendered due investigation utterly impossible, and all real inquiry must have been deemed superfluous by juniors, who saw their superiors gravely pronounce, even in official documents, that the very existence of a rent-free tenure was an abuse, and ought to be abated.
We have said that the forgeries practised by some, and the extension of their privileges by others of the holders, rendered strict investigation of rent-free tenures an immediate necessity and a duty. Still, it was to be borne in mind, that our faith was pledged to the recognition of allgenuinegrants, and that, in the larger of these tenures, the fallen nobility and gentry of the land found their solace for the loss of power, place, station, hope of advancement, and all that gives a zest to the life of the upper classes in every part of the globe; while the smaller tenures of the kind constituted, in many instances, the sole support of well-descended but indigent families. There was something to move the compassion even of a universal philanthropist, in the thought of the humble individuals of both sexes to whom a sweeping resumption of all such tenures was in fact the extinction of almost every earthly hope. The Indian government itself, though at that period described by Mr F. H. Robinson (p. 12) as “a despotism administered upon radical principles,” became startled at the havoc which the zeal of its subordinates was committing among this class of sufferers, and interfered to mitigate the severity of their proceedings. Many of the “soft-hearted” seniors of the Civil Service rejoiced at a resolution which relieved them from an odious and painful duty. But thus reasons a strong-minded junior on what he regards as a feeble concession:—
“Unfortunately the long delay in making the investigations had established in their seats the fraudulent appropriators of the revenue; and when it came to be taken from them, the measure caused great change and apparent hardship to individuals in comfortable circumstances; hence arose a great cry of hardship and injustice. We were still most apt to view with sympathy the misfortunes of the higher classes; many soft-hearted officers of Government exclaimed against the sudden deprivation; and some of the seditious Europeans, who find their profit in professional attacks on Government, raised the cry much louder. But the worst of the storm had expended itself; a little firmness, a little voluntary beneficence to individual cases, and it would have ceased; and the temporary inconvenience to fraudulent individuals would have resulted in great permanent addition to the means of the state; but the Bengal Government is pusillanimous. Since Warren Hastings was persecuted in doing his duty, and Lord Cornwallis praised for sacrificing the interests of Government, and of the body of the people, it has always erred on the side of abandoning its rights to any sufficiently strong interested cry. It wavered about these resumptions. It let off first one kind of holding, then another, then all holdings under one hundred beegas (about seventy acres), whether one man possessed several such or not: life-tenures were granted where no right existed. Finally,allresumed lands were settled athalfrates in perpetuity, and the Board of Revenue intimated that they ‘would be happy to see all operations discontinued.’ The result therefore is, that the Government have incurred all the odium and abuse of the measure, have given the cry more colour by so much yielding, and in the end have got not half so much revenue as they ought to have had. There has been an addition of about £300,000 to the annual revenue, at an expense of £800,000.”[36]
According to Mr Campbell’s calculation, a stricter enforcement of the resumption laws might have doubled the above sum; but as only the smaller tenures were let off, it is scarcely possible that more than half as much again as was actually realised could have been wrung out of the remnants to which the Government so timidly, as he asserts, abandoned its rights. An addition, therefore, of about £450,000 to our annual income would have been all that we should have gained by a measure violating the most solemn pledge given to the people that everyVALIDgrant should be respected, reducing many families to ruin, and shaking the general confidence in our honesty and good faith. Though the passage cited is open to many objections on the score of arbitrary assumption and false reasoning, it is to its hardness of tone that we would chiefly draw our readers’ attention, as strongly confirmatory of the following remark, taken from Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet:—
“I have said enough, I think, to demonstrate that the disaffection which exists is traceable to the despotic character our administration has of late years assumed, simultaneously with its sedulous diffusion of liberal doctrines; to the unhappy dislike of natives, as natives, which has crept in among the servants of Government; to the many acts of abuse, oppression, and arbitrary misgovernment, arising as much from misguided zeal as from evil intention, which, on the part of the administrative officers, harass and vex the people.”—(P. 31).
We have already recorded our assent to Mr Marshman’s remark on the thoroughly English character of our Indian empire and its administration; but we have, moreover, to observe, that, in the application of new principles even of European growth, India often outstrips the mother country. That which in England is still theory has in India become practice. There are not wanting in England people to maintain that all grants of olden times ought to be forfeited, and their proceeds applied to the purposes of general government. If these people had their way, they would certainly resume the lands of the deans and chapters, probably those of the schools and colleges, and possibly such also as are devoted to the support of almshouses, and other charitable institutions scattered over the face of the country. These speculations in England evaporate in pamphlets, and cannot for a long time assume any more positive form than that of a speech in the House of Commons. But the following passage in Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet shows us how differently such matters are ordered in India:—
“The Government have systematically resumed, of late years, all religious endowments; an extensive inquiry has been going on into all endowments, grants, and pensions; and in almost every one in which the continuance of religious endowments has been recommended by subordinate revenue authorities, backed by the Board of Revenue, the fiat of confiscation has been issued by the Government.”—(P. 17).
Again, there are many in England who would gladly reduce the landed possessions of great proprietors, like the Duke of Buccleuch and others, to more moderate dimensions; but they hardly venture to put forth speculations upon a measure which, in India, has been carried into positive and extensive execution.
The fourth chapter of Mr Kaye’s work contains a clear and admirable account of the recent settlement of the provinces of the Upper Ganges, in the course of which the reader will meet with the following passage:—
“There was a class of large landed proprietors, known as Talookdars, the territorial aristocracy of the country. The settlement officers seem to have treated these men as usurpers and monopolists, and to have sought every opportunity of reducing their tenures. It was not denied that such reduction was, on the whole, desirable, inasmuch as these large tenures interfered with the rights of the village proprietors. But the reduction was undertaken in too precipitate and arbitrary a manner; and the Court of Directors acknowledged that it had caused great practical embarrassment to Government, against whom numerous suits were instituted in the civil courts by the ousted talookdars, and many decided in their favour.”—(P. 265).
The redress afforded by these decisions of the civil courts has not, we fear, been sufficient to avert the ruin of such members of the “territorial aristocracy” as had the hardihood to withhold their adhesion to a scheme for their own extinction. The principle of that scheme was to grant, in the form of a per-centage on the revenue realised from the village communities of what had been his domain, a pension to the talookdar who was willing, for such a consideration, to give up all the other advantages of his hereditary position. Many of these men, or their immediate predecessors, had rendered us great service in the war by which we acquired the country; but they stood in the way of a favourite scheme, and before its irresistible advance they were compelled to retire. The provision made for their future wants may have been a liberal one; but how would the Duke of Buccleuch or the Marquess of Westminster like to be thus pensioned off?
The truth had better be frankly avowed; the object aimed at is, to get rid of the old territorial aristocracy altogether,—indeed, it is so stated by Mr Campbell in the following sentences:—
“It is, I think, a remarkable distinction between the manners of the natives and ours, and one which much affects our dealings with them, that there does not exist that difference of tone between the higher and lower classes—the distinction, in fact, of a gentleman. The lower classes are to the full as good and intelligent as with us; indeed, they are much more versed in the affairs of life, plead their causes better, make more intelligent witnesses, and have many virtues.
“But these good qualities are not in the same proportion in the higher classes; they cannot bear prosperity; it causes them to degenerate, especially if they are born to greatness. The only efficient men of rank (with, of course, a few exceptions) are those who have risen to greatness. The lowest of the people, if fate raise him to be an emperor, makes himself quite at home in his new situation, and shows an aptitude of manner and conduct unknown to Europeans similarly situated; but his son is altogether degenerate. Hence the impossibility of adapting to anything useful most of the higher classes found by us, and for all fresh requirements it is necessary tocreatea fresh class. From the acuteness and aptness to learn of the inferior classes, this can be done as is done in other countries.”—(Pp. 63, 64).
We fully subscribe to all that is here said in commendation of the lower classes of our Indian subjects, but we demur to the author’s very disparaging estimate of the capacity of the higher orders. Doubtless there are, or rather were, many dull men of rank on the banks of the Ganges; but are there none on those of the Thames?—no squires of cramped and confused notions, no fortunate inheritors of wealth content to wallow through life in utter disregard of the duties attaching to property, while fiercely jealous of its rights? It would be a sad day for our own landed aristocracy if Mr Campbell were to obtain sway in England, and try to rule that country upon the principles of which he approves in the East. But if he could, would our peasantry bepermanentlybettered by a change tending towards a destruction of all the gradations of society? If the reply to this query should be in the affirmative, we may contemplate with unalloyed satisfaction the progress of a system the description and defence of which is the main object of Mr Campbell’s work; but if we feel any hesitation as to the future effects of such a change in England, then, human nature being much the same in every clime, we ought to have some misgivings as to its eventual results in the East. We sayeventual, because theimmediatefruits of the measures described by Mr Campbell have, we are assured by him, and have heard from other quarters, been satisfactory and cheering. But is it probable that a whole nation should rest satisfied for ever in this state of flat and tame sufficiency? and can we wonder to find alongside of Mr Campbell’s picture of what ought to be the feelings towards the English of the present day on the banks of the Ganges, Mr F. H. Robinson’s gloomy account of what, in his opinion, those feelings really are? Having been compelled, as a member of the Board of Revenue, to make a communication to an old retired officer of Gardiner’s Irregular Horse, and to a Mussulman of rank, calculated to hurt the feelings of both, Mr Robinson thus describes what followed:—
“I shall never forget the looks of mortification, anger, and at first of incredulity, with which this announcement was received by both, nor the bitter irony with which the old Russuldar remarked, that no doubt the wisdom of thenew-gentlemen(Sahiblogue, so they designate the English) had shown them the folly and ignorance of the gentlemen of the old time, on whom it had pleased God, nevertheless, to bestow the government of India.”—(P. 17).
Mr Robinson goes too far when he taxes the rulers of the present day with dislike to the natives generally; but it is evident, from Mr Campbell’s own admission, that there is a strong prepossession in the minds of the young men of his school against all natives with any pretensions to rank. This feeling extending to those beyond the limits of our own dominions, has stamped on our foreign policy the character of our internal administration, and found its full development in the late Afghan war. Thirty or forty years ago, when natives, if excluded from office, were more often admitted to familiar intercourse with their European rulers, a mere regard for our own character in the eyes of our subjects would have withheld us from making an unprovoked attack upon an unoffending neighbour, and thus incurring a certain loss of reputation for a very uncertain amount of gain. This view of the case does not of course even occur to Mr Campbell as one likely to be taken by any reasonable being, and he sums up his account of the Afghan war with the following remarks, suggestive to our minds of little beyond a most earnest hope that the future advancement, doubtless in store for one of his abilities, may lead him far away from meddling with matters either political or military:—
“Such it was—a grievous military catastrophe and misfortune to us, both then and in our subsequent relations with the country; but in no way attributable to our policy, from which no such result necessarily or probably flowed. To the policy is due the expense, but not the disaster.”—(P. 136).
Mr Campbell has evidently not made very minute inquiry into the facts of the war, or he would never have hazarded the assertion contained in the following passage, that Sir George Pollock literally paid his way through the Khyber Pass:—
“Through the Western mountains only has India been invaded; for beyond them are all the great nations of Central India, and they are penetrable to enemies through one or two difficult passes. But these passes are so narrow, difficult, and easily defended, thatit is believedthat no army, from Alexander’s down to General Pollock’s, has ever passed without bribing the mountain tribes. In the face of regular troops and an organised defence, all the armies in the world could not force an entrance; but in the absence of such a defence, experience proves that the local tribes are always accessible to moderate bribes.”—(P. 27).
The absolute impracticability of any mountain barrier is, we believe, disputed; but, without offering any opinion on that point, we are happy to have it in our power to correct the mistake into which the author has fallen, in supposing that it was by bribing that Sir George Pollock carried his army through the Khyber Pass. It is true that, in the anxious time preceding our army’s movement from Peshawar, negotiations had been entered into with the local tribes; but we have the most unquestionable authority for asserting that, before the march towards Cabool began, the sum advanced to their chiefs, being 20,000 rupees or £2000, was demanded back from them by the political agent on the frontier, and actually repaid; so that the mountaineers had not only the clearest warning of the British general’s intention, but the strongest possible inducement to oppose him, as they did to the utmost of their power.
But our chief motive for alluding to the Afghan war is, that we may show how the spirit of the two schools, under which, according to our theory, those engaged in the work of Indian government may now be classed, showed itself even in the direction of our armies in the field. Sir George Pollock was there the representative of what would be called by us the considerate and moderate, by Mr Campbell the soft-hearted and over-cautious school; while Sir William Nott was at the head of that which, going straight to its object, tramples under foot, without compunction, every consideration that might hamper its freedom of movement. We select but a few instances in proof of our position, choosing such as, from their notoriety, can be cited without injury or offence.
As the two avenging armies, the one from Candahar on the south, the other from Peshawar on the east, drew nigh to Cabool, a powerful party, consisting chiefly of the Kuzzilbashes or Persians, who had never taken part against us, prayed earnestly that the citadel, the Bala Hissar, might be spared to serve as a place of refuge to themselves amid the troubles likely to ensue on our again evacuating the country.
This prayer General Nott would have rejected, and in so doing would have gained the applause of every member of that school by which concession to the feelings of natives in opposition to the requirements of expediency, or the sternest justice, is regarded as a proof of weakness. With this prayer General Pollock complied; and to his doing so may the safety of the ladies and other prisoners, in whose fate the whole civilised world took so deep an interest, be ascribed; for it was through the co-operation of those thus conciliated that the Afghan chief, charged with the custody of the captives, was won over to assist in their escape. General Nott was fortunately the inferior in rank; for had he commanded in chief, we have his own words for the fact, that he would have destroyed the Bala Hissar and the City of Cabool, and marched on with the least possible delay to Jellabad, of course leaving the poor captives to their fate; or, in words which, from the manner of their insertion in the pages of the historian, it is to be feared he must have used, “throwing them overboard.”—(Kaye’sHistory of the Afghan War, vol. i. pp. 617, 631).
Incomplete indeed, to use Mr Kaye’s words, would any victory have been, if these brave men and tender women, who had so well endured a long and fearful captivity, had been left behind; and it is well to reflect that we were saved from this reproach by the ascendancy of the milder principles of rule in the mind of the officer upon whom the chief command at this moment, we may almost say providentially, devolved.
Many more instances are recorded, in the chapter just quoted, of the influence of a contrary spirit on the closing events of the Afghan war; but we must pass on to what happened in Scinde, where the anti-judicial principle may be said to have reached its climax.
The following is Mr Campbell’s short and flippant account of that transaction, reminding us in one passage of a letter from the Empress Catherine to one of her French correspondents, wherein she congratulated herself “qu’il n’y a pas d’honneur à garder avec les Turcs”:—
“But though we withdrew from Cabool, our military experiences were not yet over. On invading Afghanistan by the Bolan Pass, Scinde became a base of our operations, and troops were there cantoned. When our misfortunes occurred, it was supposed that the Beloch chiefs would have liked to have turned against us, but dared not—did not.
“Major-General Sir C. Napier then commanded a division in Bombay; he was a good soldier, of a keen, energetic temperament, but somewhat quarrelsome disposition; had at one proud period of his life been in temporary charge of a petty island in the Mediterranean, but was, I believe, deposed by his superior—most unwisely, as he considered; and he had ever since added to his military ardour a still greater thirst for civil power—as it often happens that we prefer to the talents which nature has given us those which she has denied us. He was appointed to the command in Scinde; and Lord Ellenborough, an admirer of heroes, subsequently invested him with political powers. He soon quarrelled with the chiefs, and came to blows with them. Their followers were brave, but undisciplined, and they had no efficient artillery. An active soldier was opposed to them; he easily overcame them, declared the territory annexed, and was made Governor of Scinde.”
Now, the Beloch chiefs had no other right to the territory than the sword;and we, having the better sword, were perfectly justified in taking it from them if we chose, without reference to the particular quarrel between Sir Charles and the chiefs, the merits of which have been so keenly disputed, and on which I need not enter. But the questionwas one of expediency; and this premature occupation of Scinde was not so much a crime as a blunder,—for this very simple reason, that Scinde did not pay, but, on the contrary, was a very heavy burden, by which the Indian Government has been several millions sterling out of pocket.
“The Ameers had amassed, in their own way, considerable property and treasure, which the general obtained for the army. He was thus rewarded by an unprecedented prize-money, and with the government of Scinde, while Bengal paid the costs of the government he had gained. Scinde was so great a loss, for this reason—that it was not, like other acquisitions, in the midst of, or contiguous to, our territories, but was at that time altogether detached and separated by the sea, the desert, and the independent Punjab; while on the fourth side it was exposed to the predatory Beloches of the neighbouring hills. Consequently, every soldier employed there was cut off from India, and was an expense solely due to Scinde; and while a great many soldiers were required to keep it, it produced a very small revenue to pay them. It is, in truth, very like Egypt—that is, it is the fertile valley of a river running through a barren country, where no rain falls. But there is this difference—first, that while no broader, it is not so long, nor has the fine delta which constitutes the most valuable portion of Egypt; second, that while Egypt is free from external predatory invasion, Scinde is exceedingly exposed to it; and, thirdly, that while Egypt has a European market for its grain, Scinde has not. Altogether, the conquest was, at the time, as concerns India, much as if we had taken the valley of the Euphrates.
“Half a dozen years later, when we advanced over the plain of the Indus, and annexed the Punjab, we must have arranged to control Scinde too, directly or indirectly, as might be done cheapest; but during those intermediate years it was a gratuitous loss, and the chief cause of the late derangement of our Indian finances.”—(Pp. 137–139).
The better sword gives the better title! When such is the doctrine maintained, even by a man of the pen, we cannot wonder at its finding a ready expositor in the man of the sword.
But, in truth, Mr Campbell’s sword plea, having the merit of honesty and openness, is by far the best that has been advanced; and yet, as he shows, it is only available in support of the right, and not of the policy, of the measure. After-events, he observes, alluding to the conquest of the Punjab, have given a value to Scinde, which in itself it did not possess; but he has omitted to remark that the one event very probably grew out of the other. The Sikhs, who not only had refrained, like the Ameers, from molesting, but had even assisted us in our recent difficulties, had some reason for apprehending that, in due time, the policy pursued in Scinde would be extended to their own more inviting country; while, as if to remove an obstacle to an apparently desired misunderstanding, Sir George Clerk was promoted to the nominally higher post of lieutenant-governor of Agra, and an officer, his very opposite in every quality excepting earnest zeal and undaunted courage, was appointed to be his political successor at Lahore.
Though he is little disposed to state any case too favourably for the party opposed to us, this peculiarity in our relations with the Sikhs, immediately before their invasion of our territory, is frankly admitted by Mr Campbell. After mentioning various military movements calculated to give them alarm, he describes a political difficulty as to certain lands belonging to the Sikh state, lying on our side of the Sutledge, which he says had been so managed by two successive political agents, Sir Claude Wade and Sir George Clerk, that through their personal influence “it had so happened that our wishes were generally attended to.” He thus concludes:—
“Sir George Clerk having been promoted, new men were put in charge of our frontier relations, and seem to have assumed as a right what had heretofore been yielded to a good understanding. In 1845 Major Broadfoot was political agent. He was a man of great talent and immense energy, but of a rather overbearing habit. In difficult and delicate times he certainly did not conciliate the Sikhs.... Altogether, I believe the fact to be, that had Sir George Clerk remained in charge of our political relations, the Sikhs would not have attacked us at the time they did; it might have been delayed: but still it was well that they came when they did.”—(Pp. 142, 143.)
The annexation of the Punjab followed hard on the conquest of Scinde, and both events may be regarded as sequels to the Afghan expedition, and this again as but a fuller development of the anti-judicial school, which, since the downfall of the Cornwallis system, has held almost undisputed sway on the banks of the Ganges.
When a government essentially despotic, like that of British India, spontaneously engages to adhere to the rules of judicial procedure in dealing with its own subjects, a pledge is thereby given to neighbouring states that towards them also its conduct will be regulated on principles of justice and moderation.
We admit that the ruling power may thus sometimes create obstructions to its own progress along the path of improvement; but it seems probable that such self-imposed restraints should more frequently operate (to borrow a term from the railway) as “breaks” to save it from precipitately rushing into acts of rashness or injustice.
History confirms these conclusions, and shows the practical result to have been precisely whata priorireasoning would have led us to expect.
Five great wars were waged in India during the second or judicial period of its administration—that is, from 1793 to 1830. These were—the Mysore war in 1799, the Mahratta war in 1803, the Nepaul war in 1814, the Pindaree war in 1817, and the Burmese war in 1825. There is not one of these against which even a plausible charge of injustice can be maintained by our bitterest foreign foes, or most quick-sighted censorious countrymen.
The acuteness of Mr Cobden himself would be at fault if he were to try to make out a case against the authors of any one of these wars, to satisfy a single sensible man beyond the circle of the “Peace Society.”
But how is it with the wars which have occurred since, wandering from judicial ways, the rulers of Gangetic India have pursued whatever course for the moment found favour in their own eyes, with little or no reference to the feelings of their subjects, and with hardly a show of deference to the laws enacted by their predecessors?
The Afghan war of 1838, the Scinde affair of 1843, the Gwalior campaign of 1844, have each in their turn, especially the two first-named, been made the subject of comments neither captious nor fastidious, but resting on indisputable evidence, and supported by reasoning such as pre-formed prejudice alone can resist. The two wars in the Punjab come under the category of the just and necessary; and Lord Hardinge’s generous use of the privileges of victory, at the close of the first of these hard-fought conflicts, did much to re-establish our character for justice and moderation. But still these wars are, we fear, coupled in the minds of the people of India with those out of which they sprang, and share in the reproach attaching, in their estimation, to the invasion of Afghanistan and the conquest of Scinde.
We have now reached a point where we may stop to consider the several merits of the works on our list at the head of this article. Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet is written in a frank conversational style, indicative of his earnest sincerity and his real sympathy with the people of the Upper Ganges, among whom his official life has been spent. We could wish occasionally that his language was a little more measured, for there are passages to startle some of his readers, and so to impair the general effect of his otherwise interesting pamphlet.
Of the style, as well as the matter, of Mr Campbell’s more elaborate work, hardness is the chief characteristic. Indeed, he seems to discard all ornament from the one, and all sentiment from the other, and to aim at nothing beyond correctness as to his facts, and positiveness as to his deductions. In this he fully succeeds. His volume is a repertory of useful facts, and his conclusions can never be misapprehended. Some of Mr Campbell’s descriptions also are amusing; and we insert, as a specimen of his lighter style, the following sketch of the day of a magistrate and collector in Upper India, that functionary whose labours are so little known to any but those of his own service, or the people among whom he lives. After enumerating many out-of-door duties despatched in the course of an early morning’s ride, the description thus proceeds:—
“At breakfast comes the post and the packet of official letters. The commissioner demands explanation on this matter, and transmits a paper of instructions on that; the judge calls for cases which have been appealed; the secretary to Government wants some statistical information; the inspector of prisons fears that the prisoners are growing too fat; the commander of the 105th regiment begs to state that his regiment will halt at certain places on certain days, and that he requires a certain quantity of flour, grain, hay, and eggs; Mr Snooks, the indigo-planter, who is in a state of chronic warfare with his next neighbour, has submitted his grievances in six folio sheets, indifferent English, and a bold hand, and demands instant redress, failing which he threatens the magistrate with Government, the supreme court, an aspersion of his character as a gentleman, a Parliamentary impeachment, a letter to the newspapers, and several other things besides. After breakfast he despatches his public letters, writes reports, examines returns, &c.
“During this time he has probably a succession of demi-officials from the neighbouring cantonments. There is a great complaint that the villagers have utterly, without provocation, broken the heads of the cavalry grass-cutters, and the grass-cutters are sent to be looked at. He goes out to look at them, but no sooner appears than a shout announces that the villagers are waiting in a body, with a slightly different version of the story, to demand justice against the grass-cutters, who have invaded their grass-preserves, despoiled their villages, and were with difficulty prevented from murdering the inhabitants. So the case is sent to the joint magistrate. But there are more notes; some want camels, some carts, and all apply to the magistrate; then there may be natives of rank and condition, who come to pay a serious formal kind of visit, and generally want something; or a chatty native official who has plenty to say for himself.
“All this despatched, he orders his carriage or umbrella, and goes to cutcherry—his regular court. Here he finds a sufficiency of business; there are police, and revenue, and miscellaneous cases of all sorts, appeals from the orders of his subordinates, charges of corruption or misconduct against native officials. All petitions from all persons are received daily in a box, read, and orders duly passed. Those setting forth good grounds of complaint are filed under proper headings; others are rejected, for written reason assigned. After sunset, comes his evening, which is probably like his morning ride, mixed up with official and demi-official affairs, and only at dark does the wearied magistrate retire to dinner and to private life.”—(Pp. 248–249).
Mr Kaye’s essay recommends itself by the same easy flow of language as made hisHistory of the Afghan Warsuch agreeable reading. His plan does not admit of his giving more than a series of sketches; but his outlines are so clear, and his selection of topics to fill up with is so happy, that we can safely recommend his volume to any one who, without leisure or inclination for more minute study of the subject, may still wish to obtain some general idea of the administration of our vast Eastern empire. In a note at page 661, Mr Kaye informs us, that in the summer of 1852 the Duke of Newcastle told the Haileybury students that, during a recent tour in the Tyrol, he had met an intelligent Austrian general who, in the course of conversation on our national resources, said that he could understand all the elements of our greatness except our Anglo-Indian empire, andthathe could not understand. The vast amount of administrative wisdom which the good government of such an empire demanded, baffled his comprehension.
The Austrian general, perhaps, would not have readily assented to the explanation of the marvel given by the young French naturalist, Victor Jaquemont, who, in a letter dated from the confines of Tartary, in August 1830, thus writes to a relative in Paris: “The ideas entertained in France about this country are absurd; the governing talents of the English are immense; ours, on the contrary, are very mediocre; and we believe the former to be embarrassed when we see them in circumstances in which our awkwardness would be completely at a stand-still.”—(English translation of Victor Jaquemont’s Letters, vol. i. p. 169).
The lady whose three volumes come next under our notice is certainly one of the most intelligent travellers of her sex who has visited India since the days when Maria Graham, afterwards Lady Callcott, amused her readers in England, and enraged many of her female acquaintances in India, by describing the latter as generally “under-bred and overdressed.”
It is curious to observe how little change the lapse of forty years seems to have made in the outward peculiarities of Anglo-Indian drawing-room life, and how much in unison the two fair authors are in their remarks on their own countrymen.
Mrs Colin Mackenzie, however, has enjoyed opportunities which her predecessor could not command, of observing the private and domestic side of Oriental life, and has evinced a wonderful aptitude in turning these opportunities to the best account. The great charm of her work is that it admits us within the Purdah, and lets us see what is hidden from all European masculine eyes,—the interior, namely, of an Asiatic household.
It is pleasing to read an English lady’s lively account of her own friendly intercourse with families of another faith, upon whom her industrious energy, quickened and regulated by a zeal for her own religion, openly avowed and studiously exhibited as her main motive of action, cannot, we imagine, have failed to produce a deep and lasting impression. We trust that Mrs Mackenzie’s example may be followed by many of our countrywomen; for the information in which, of all others, the English functionaries in the East are most deficient—that regarding natives in their private and domestic sphere—is precisely what our ladies alone have the power to acquire and impart. Mrs Mackenzie, it is true, mingled chiefly with the Afghans, who are a more attractive race than the people of India.
The Afghans, also, must have felt inclined to open their hearts to the wife of one who, both as a soldier in the field, and afterwards as a captive in their hands, had commanded the sincere respect of those among whom he was thrown. But though all cannot have her advantages, there is no lady whose husband holds office in India, who, if she makes herself acquainted with the languages of the country, will not find native women of rank and respectability ready to cultivate her acquaintance, and thus afford her the means of solving some of those problems of the native character which elude all the researches of our best-informed public functionaries. Having said thus much in praise of Mrs Mackenzie’s book, we cannot but censure most strongly the attempt at spicing her work with gossipping tales calculated to wound the feelings of private individuals among her own countrymen, and even of the officers of her husband’s own service, with whose characters she deals with a most unsparing degree of reproachful raillery, designating individuals as Colonel A., Major B., or Captain C. of the — Regiment, stationed at such a place, so that there cannot be a doubt as to whom the anecdotes, which are always to the discredit of the parties, refer.
The difficulty of commenting on a posthumous work is much enhanced when the author happens to have been, like the late Sir Charles Napier, one whose errors of the pen are more than redeemed by a career of long and glorious services. Still, though this consideration may soften, it ought not to silence criticism, for errors never more require correction than when heralded by an illustrious name. An additional reason for not passing over the last work of so distinguished a man is, that it contains many admirable remarks on the Native army, well deserving to be detached from the mass of other matter in which they are imbedded. The contents of the book may be classed under three heads: Censure of individuals; censure of public bodies; suggestive remarks on the civil and military administration of India.
On whatever comes under the first of these heads, our strictures shall be brief.
We find in the list of those censured, the names of so many of the best and ablest men who have taken part in Indian affairs, either at home or in the East, that we feel loth to give any additional publicity to what we have read with pain, and would gladly forget. Public bodies being fair targets to shoot at, the censures coming under the second head are open to no objection excepting such as may arise from their not standing the test of close examination. The Court of Directors, the Supreme Council of India, the whole body of the Civil Service (with one or two exceptions), the Political Agents, the Military Board in Calcutta, and the Board of Administration in the Punjab, follow each other like arraigned criminals in the black scroll of the author’s antipathies. To notice all that is advanced against those included in this catalogue would be impossible, for a few lines may contain assertions which it would fill a folio to discuss. Of the East India Company, the instrument through which India has been providentially preserved from the corruptions of an aristocratic and the precipitancy of a more popular rule, Sir Charles Napier’s view is not more enlarged than what we might have got from his own Sir Fiddle Faddle, of whom he has left us (at page 253) so amusing a description. Though capable, as we shall soon see, of rising above the prejudices of his profession on other points, he looks at this singular Company and its governing Court with the eyes of a Dugald Dalgetty, who, while pocketing the commercial body’s extra pay, accounts it foul scorn to be obliged to submit to such base and mechanical control.
But none are all bad, and we rejoice to see it admitted at page 210 of the unfriendly book before us, that “the Directors, generally speaking, treat their army well;” and at pages 49, 261, that the Company’s artillery, formed under the rule of these very Directors, is “superb, second to none in the world—perfect.” Yet it never seems to have occurred to the author, that those under whose rule one department has reached perfection, are not likely to blunder in every other, as in his moments of spleen he made himself believe. So able a man as Sir C. Napier could not always be blind to his own inconsistencies; and accordingly, in the midst of some declamation on what India might be under royal government, he seems to have been suddenly brought up by a thought about what the Crown Colonies really are.
From this dilemma he escapes by saddling one distinguished personage with the blame of all that is wrong in the colonies, and thus punishes Earl Grey for the speech about Scinde, made by Lord Howick, some ten years ago, in the House of Commons.
To the Supreme Council of India, though he was one of their number, the author never makes any but disparaging allusions. Discontented with being a commander-in-chief under a ruling body, of which he was himself a member, he sought to be recognised as the head of a separate military government. He wished, in short, to be, not what the Duke of York was in England, but what, under peculiar circumstances, the Duke of Wellington was in Spain during the war in the Peninsula. In this he was not singular; for we suspect that the real cause of that uneasiness in their position, stated at page 355, to have been manifested by many of Sir C. Napier’s predecessors, is to be found in a desire on their part for such an independency of military administrative power, as is totally incompatible with the necessary unity and indivisibility of a government. Yet it is admitted that, in England, “when war comes, the war-minister is the real commander,”—(p. 220.) The author evidently felt how much this admission must tell against his own complaints of undue interference with his authority; for he endeavours, by some feeble special pleading, to abate its effect, and to prove the “poor Indian general,” with his £15,000 a year, to be more unfavourably placed than hisconfrèrein England.
One circumstance, however, is such, that while the latter is excluded from the Cabinet, the former can take his seat at the Council-Board, and his part in the guidance of the counsels of the State.
It is, we think, greatly to be regretted that Sir C. Napier did not more frequently avail himself of this privilege, for by keeping apart from the Supreme Council he lost the benefit of free personal communication with equals, and incurred the evil of having none near him but subordinates, whom he could silence by a word or a look.
The Civil Service is represented simply as a nuisance requiring immediate abatement.
We are told that “a Civil form of government is uncongenial tobarbarousEastern nations.” There is some truth in this, if a proper stress is laid on the wordbarbarous. In the first chapter of the fourth part of his work, Mr Kaye has shown how, in reaching the outskirts of civilisation, we are brought into contact with rude tribes like the Beloches in Scinde, “to whose feelings and habits the rough ways of Sir C. Napier were better adapted than the refined tenderness or the judicial niceties of the gentlest and wisest statesman that ever loved and toiled for a people.” But the error of such reasoners as Sir C. Napier is, that they would treat all India as barbarous, and rule it accordingly. Now, with all our respect for Sir C. Napier’s talents, we doubt much whether he would have governed the more civilised provinces of Upper India better than the late Mr Thomason, whom he condescends to praise—(p. 37); or managed the subtle and well-mannered Sikhs with more tact and skill than Sir George Clerk during the perilous period of our disasters in 1841–42.
It is true that the utter failure of the system in operation in the Punjab is confidently predicted at p. 366; but it is consolatory to find, from the very last Indian newspapers, that no progress is making towards a fulfilment of this prophecy; but that, on the contrary, a reduction of taxation has been effected by the Board, such as would be felt as a boon by the tenant-farmers of England, its influence having been counteracted by nothing but by the effects of an excessive plenty.
It is creditable to the candour of the Bengal Civil Service, that its members themselves furnish the information to be turned against their own body, and it is from a work published by the Hon. F. J. Shore, in 1837, that Sir C. Napier has borrowed his most plausible charges.
On this we can only observe, that Mr Shore, in his zeal for the improvement of his own service, forgot that what he wrote would be read by the ignorant and the unfriendly; by those who could not, and by those who would not, comprehend the real scope and meaning of his words.
The faults imputed by him to his brother civilians are mainly those of manner, already noticed by ourselves as being common to the English, generally, in their deportment towards strangers in every clime.
If we were writing only for those who know what British India is, our ungrateful task of correcting errors might here conclude; but it is upon those to whom that country is unknown that the work before us is calculated to produce an impression, and therefore we must try, in as few words as possible, to point out one of its most striking inaccuracies. On referring to the pages noted below,[37]the reader will find a series of assertions, to the effect that in Bengal the army is scattered over the country for the protection of the Civil servants. From theIndian Registerof this very year, it appears that, in the country below Benares, which, in extent and population, is about equal to France, there are only about ten battalions;[38]the half of these being stationed at Barrackpore, in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta. In the provinces above Benares, under the rule of the Lieutenant-governor at Agra, with a somewhat smaller but more hardy population, it appears that there are thirteen stations occupied by regular troops; of which eight are close to large towns, such as in every country require to be watched—or else purely military posts. There are only five other places where regular troops seem to be stationed, and of these, one is on the frontier of Nepaul.