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SUGGESTIONS 
 
 TOWARDS THE 
 
 FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 
 
SUGGESTIONS 
 
 TOWARDS THE 
 
 FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 
 
 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 
 
 Author of " British Kule in India," &c. &c. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 BOMBAY : SMITH, TAYLOR & CO. 
 1858. 
 
bS+4-(o 
 
 \M* 
 
 ? 
 
 HENRY MORSE STEPHENS 
 
<*o 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It seems necessary to explain the apparently strange 
 act of one like myself publishing a pamphlet on the 
 political question of the hour. The simple truth is, 
 that my lately-issued historical sketch of "British 
 Rule in India " is too exclusively historical to satisfy 
 all readers, at a time when there is a demand for 
 ideas as to the future government of India ; and, as 
 a natural consequence, I have been urgently requested 
 to present, in some familiar form, certain inferences 
 from the past history, and suggestions from the pre- 
 sent circumstances of Hindostan and its rulers, which 
 may possibly be of use in the impending controversy 
 about the maintenance or abolition of the East India 
 Company. The leisure, quietness, and impartial posi- 
 tion of the sick-room seemed to render the request 
 reasonable ; and I have had much satisfaction in doing 
 what I could to induce consideration and caution, in 
 prospect of the most formidable legislative proposition 
 that has been brought forward for many years. If 
 no good can be done by such means, there can, at 
 least, be no harm ; for it is a case in which the policy 
 of the English reformers is conservative ; and it is the 
 
 512792 
 
VI 
 
 Ministerial scheme which complicates with its old 
 Tory view a revolutionary tendency. This tendency is 
 sufficiently obvious to justify a hope that the people 
 of England and their representatives will be on their 
 guard : but every warning may be of more or less use ; 
 and it is this consideration which is answerable for 
 the appearance of the present pamphlet. 
 
 There is no pretence of originality in what I have 
 written. I have gathered suggestions (as in my 
 recent volume I gathered facts) from all quarters. 
 If I were to specify one source rather than another, it 
 would be, as supplying some of the heads in Part II, 
 the pamphlet on the " Principles of Indian Reform," 
 published by the late Mr. John Chapman, the year 
 before his lamented death. 
 
 Some apology may be considered desirable for the 
 confident, if not abrupt, tone of what I have written. 
 I had no strength and no space to spare in diluting 
 the expression of what I had to say : and I must 
 simply refer any critical reader to my title, and 
 remind him that, in offering " Suggestions," there is 
 no need of the disclaimers and apologies which may 
 soften the positive tone of a discourse or argument. 
 
 Ambleside, January 23rd, 1858. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION. The case unprecedented - - 1 
 
 PART I. The Conditions of the Indian Case. 
 
 Desiderata - - 8 
 
 1. Dimensions involved - - 9 
 
 2. Characteristics - - 12 
 
 3. History - - 15 
 
 The Conditions of the Anglo-Indian Case. 
 
 1. Specific state of mind - - - 16 
 
 2. Antecedents - - - - 17 
 
 3. Specific Errors - - - - 18 
 
 The Conditions of the English Case. 
 
 1. Popular Ignorance - - 20 
 
 2. One-sidedness - - 21 
 
 3. Precipitate Public Opinion - 27 
 
 Effect of England on India - 29 "■ 
 
 PART II. The Task to be done. 
 Political Objects. 
 
 1. Conception of a Fundamental Law - 39 
 
 2. A Body of Laws - - 40 
 
 3. Individual stake in Laws - 43 
 
 4. Independence of the Judiciary 43 
 
 5. Scope and Liberty of Opinion. The Press 46 
 
 6. Religious Liberty - - 54 
 
 7. Scope and Liberty of Industry 60 
 
 8. A Civil State of Society - 61 
 
 9. Equable and Equitable Taxation - - 66 
 Preparation already wrought - - 69 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II.— (continued.) 
 
 Social Objects. page. 
 
 1. Free Colonization - - 72 
 
 2. Tenure of Land - - - 77 
 
 3. Revenue - - - 85 
 
 4. Civic relations - - - 88 
 
 5. Education - - - 97 
 
 British Objects : — Political. 
 
 1. Domestic Policy - - - 114 
 
 2. Foreign Policy - - - - 116 
 
 British Objects: — Social - - - 118 
 
 PART HI. The Future Government. 
 
 Evils of Change - - - 129 
 
 Evils of Claptrap - - - - 122 
 Evils of a pretended Double Government 124 
 
 Scheme of a Minister for India - - 126 
 
 Head of the Government of India - - 131 
 
 Faults of the Company's rule - - 135 
 Characteristic virtues of the Company - 138 
 
 1. Independence of Political change - 139 
 
 2. Middle clas3 patronage - - 141 
 
 3. India for the Indians - - 145 
 What not to do - - - 145 
 What to do - - - - 147 
 Probable Tendency of Reforms - - 149 
 
SUGGESTIONS 
 
 TOWARDS THE 
 
 FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The time has arrived which will determine whether 
 we shall lose India very soon, or keep it as a more 
 valuable portion of the British empire than it has 
 ever been yet. Events have hastened the hour when 
 we must take a new departure in our administration 
 of our great dependency. If we take time to collect, 
 and reason from, all procurable knowledge on the 
 subject of India, we may make arrangements for 
 which the whole world will be the better. If we 
 hastily decide that India shall be a Crown colony, 
 ruled directly and entirely from England, according 
 to existing British notions and habits of colonial 
 government, we shall lose India, speedily, disgrace- 
 fully, and so disastrously that the event will be one 
 of the most conspicuous calamities in the history of 
 nations. If it is true that this is the alternative 
 before us, every man's duty is plain ; — to exert him- 
 
 B 
 
2 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 self to avert a hasty decision, first, and to procure a 
 wise one afterwards. 
 
 The commonest remark made in all companies and 
 in all periodicals within the last half-year, has been 
 that scarcely anybody knows anything about India. 
 Outside of the small Anglo-Indian society collected 
 in London and about the Company's colleges, there is 
 next to no knowledge at all about the history, the 
 geography, or the politics of Hindostan. So says the 
 Times newspaper; and such is the frank acknow- 
 ledgment of candid persons whom one meets every 
 day, seeking for knowledge. The mutiny has helped 
 most of us to some of the geography of the country ; 
 but its history and political condition are not to be so 
 easily picked up : and it may be confidently said that 
 no honest constituency in the kingdom would pretend 
 to be qualified to decide, through its representatives, 
 on the best method of dealing with such a dependency 
 as India. We may hope to see the great majority of 
 the two Houses making the same admission, and 
 insisting on not being hurried into legislation which 
 all future generations may deplore. But it is so 
 strongly believed that Lord Palmerston will assume 
 that both people and government are in a condition 
 to legislate, that there is no time to lose in putting 
 forth a plea for rational caution, and a warning 
 against such insolent precipitancy as too often follows 
 an equally insolent apathy and procrastination. Such 
 a plea and such a warning are furnished by the most 
 cursory review of the conditions of the case; — con- 
 ditions so remarkable, so peculiar, so new to the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 3 
 
 imagination and judgment of Englishmen, as to 
 demand time and study which another year will 
 scarcely afford. 
 
 The Case Unprecedented. — Before arriving at the 
 separate conditions of the case of India, we can see 
 how peculiar the whole case is. For the first time 
 we have to decide on a method of governing a vast 
 territory and population, without aid from precedent 
 or analogy. . Even if we made no change at all in the 
 apparatus of Government, it would be a new depar- 
 ture, because it would be a choice — a deliberate 
 adoption of a scheme of rule : and to such a choice 
 there is no parallel in our history — nor perhaps in 
 any other. Our great privilege as a nation is that 
 our British institutions have grown up, naturally and 
 inevitably, from our character and our circumstances 
 together. No man or body of men ever invented, or 
 even foresaw, our constitution, as we are living under 
 it now. Our colonies individually grew up in much 
 the same way, with the difference that the colonists 
 went out level, as it were, with the political and social 
 state of things at home, and therefore easy to provide 
 for as natural subjects of British law and authority. 
 The only option required in their case was how far to 
 assimilate the arrangements of the colony to those at 
 home ; how far to conclude that the same sort of men 
 could, in a different country, live in the same sort of 
 way as at home. Neither in our own case in Europe, 
 nor in that of any British settlement in Africa or 
 America, have we ever had to make a constitution, or 
 lay out a clear and complete scheme of political life, 
 
 b 2 
 
4 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 dating from a fresh starting-point. Our British com- 
 munities were never " made: they 'speet they growed." 
 Our " plantations," as our earlier colonies were called, 
 were not from new seed or borrowed cuttings, selected 
 according to a scheme ; but a spread of the branches 
 of the stout old banyan which we who live under it 
 consider the best of all trees, and do not wish to 
 retrench in favour of more varied growths. The case 
 of India never was, and never can be, at all like this : 
 and the present work of legislating for our dependency 
 is no more like any former task proposed under the 
 same title, than that was like ruling Nova Scotia or 
 Australia. Our footing in India began and extended 
 without the national cognizance, as it were; and 
 when the region became ours, it was not ruled by the 
 British Government; and to this hour it has never 
 ostensibly been so. It is no colony of ours. It has 
 never been national territory, peopled from home, and 
 organized under the English constitution and laws. 
 The question now — and a tremendous problem it is — 
 is whether India shall be a colony of ours ; whether it 
 shall be ruled by the British Government as a colony. 
 The question is unique, whether we consider the 
 length of time that India has been our dependency, 
 or the magnitude and variety of the human races 
 involved, or the unlikeness to ourselves of the people 
 whose destiny we propose to determine. Such a 
 problem clearly requires great knowledge, patience, 
 and disinterested sagacity for its satisfactory solution : 
 and there is nothing in an insurrection, and six 
 months' national agony from it, which can endow us 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 5 
 
 with the requisite qualifications ; but rather the 
 contrary. We know that we are not furnished with 
 the knowledge : as for the rest, if, as a people, we are 
 undisturbed by passion at what has taken place, we 
 shall be disposed to wait, in order to learn and judge : 
 and if we are disturbed by passion, so as to be impa- 
 tient to be settling Indian affairs, we are clearly unfit 
 to legislate. Whichever way it is looked at, the 
 peculiarity of the case is a protest against precipi- 
 tancy. 
 
 Our Colonial Experience. — If, in the next place, 
 we glance at the results of our colonial legislation and 
 rule, we shall see no such eminent success as should 
 tempt us to follow our old methods in a new and 
 fundamentally different case. Where the residents 
 have been of British race, we have not, till quite 
 recently, made them very happy ; and where other 
 races were concerned, we have committed deplorable 
 mistakes. One great group of colonies we lost. 
 Their secession may have been a blessing to us and to 
 them ; but it is so through their identity with us in 
 race, civilization, and political ideas. The loss was 
 discreditable to us, whatever may be the issue. Such 
 a mode of secession is impossible in the Indian case, 
 though the Company's government once thought other- 
 wise, and forbade the colonizing of their territory on 
 that ground; but any mode of secession possible in 
 the India case would be not only discreditable to us, 
 but so disgraceful and calamitous, that England would 
 never recover from the blow. Our existing North 
 American colonies have gone through a long period 
 
6 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 of chronic discontent, put an end to in the only 
 possible way — by giving them, first, adequate imperial 
 attention, and then the means of self-government 
 which they had grown up to. India could not stand 
 such a process. We now see the form which chronic 
 discontent would assume there ; and the territory 
 would be lost before adequate imperial attention could 
 be drawn to it — especially as self-government is an 
 impossible solution in the case. Next, there are our 
 West India colonies. We have done what we could 
 there in reparation of our misdeeds to the negro race 
 and our favouritism to the planters ; but the alter- 
 nating distresses of the two races are an evidence of 
 such serious errors in colonial government as leave us 
 no cause for confidence that we could succeed better 
 in ruling a greater number of races under far more 
 difficult circumstances. In our Cape settlements we 
 have a painful spectacle of wars in the territory and 
 discontent in the colonists ; the wars being (as Dr. 
 Livingstone shows, and nobody now seems to dispute) 
 the result of mismanagement, and the discontent of a 
 kind to be superseded in the same way as in Canada — 
 a way wholly impracticable in India. Our Australian 
 colonies are thoroughly British and very modern. 
 If we had fully succeeded anywhere, it would have been 
 there ; and less failure is witnessed there than in any 
 prior instance ; but the case yields no encouragement 
 to apply colonial government to India. There, where 
 the land was almost clear for British occupation, and 
 where pains were taken to transplant something like 
 a complete section of British society, there has been 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 7 
 
 perpetual difficulty between the settlers and their 
 rulers ; and, as is generally admitted, the appropriate 
 remedy is again the same as in the Canadian case — 
 self-government on English principles, beginning from 
 the time when each colony yields the requisite ruling 
 element out of its own community. In a tributary 
 empire, like India, composed of a group of ancient 
 kingdoms, with the interstices occupied by diverse 
 races of native Asiatics, there never was, and there 
 never can be, anything analogous to any colony we 
 ever had. To propose a method of government 
 grounded on a supposed analogy which never existed, 
 is a step so daring, and, in the present state of our 
 popular knowledge, so wild, that the mere suggestion 
 should rouse every man to take his part in controlling 
 the risk, by requiring good reasons from the proposer 
 in the first place, and time to consider them in the 
 next. 
 
8 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE CONDITIONS. 
 
 Desiderata, — Before we can judge of, or even 
 ascertain, the conditions of the case of India, we must 
 know what it is that we want. We want good govern- 
 ment for India, no doubt : but what do we mean by 
 good government ? What is our aim ? What is the 
 first object we must keep in view? That settled, 
 what is the next ? 
 
 We have learned so much, we may hope, from our 
 colonial and other political experience as to be ready 
 with the first answer. Our chief aim is the welfare 
 of the people of India. That welfare comprehends 
 our own under the great natural laws of society : but 
 if it were otherwise, the answer must still be the 
 same. Whether the tributary population be the 
 remnants of a Bed Indian tribe on a Canadian plain, 
 or a hundred millions of people of various races, 
 languages, and manners, the answer must, in all recti- 
 tude, be the same. The welfare of the little remnant 
 of aborigines cannot interfere materially with that of 
 the new comers ; and the welfare of the hundred 
 millions of old residents has an imperative claim to 
 consideration over that of any kind or number of 
 invaders. The conditions of the India case must be 
 studied with a steady reference to the welfare of the 
 people of India in the first place. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 9 
 
 The next aim is the welfare of the people of 
 England : the people at large, and not any section or 
 clique who may conceive that they have a hereditary 
 or other special claim to enjoy the patronage or other 
 good things of India. Under this head is compre- 
 hended the welfare of British settlers in Hindostan, 
 who are simply Englishmen choosing to live there. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to consider, as a third head, 
 the interests of the world, as they are involved in the 
 growth of civilization ; because this could not be an 
 aim separately pursued, as either of the others can be 
 conceived to be. Suffice it that as the welfare of the 
 people of India involves that of the British nation, so 
 do both involve the general human interest in the rise 
 and spread of civilization. 
 
 Conditions of the Indian Case. 
 
 Desiring, then, the welfare of the people of India, 
 from Thibet to Ceylon, and from Burmah to the 
 Punjaub, what are the conditions of the case, now 
 that we must decide how to govern them for the 
 future ? What are their conditions ? 
 
 1. Dimensions Involved. — Let us try to conceive 
 of a territory of 837 square miles ; and of a population 
 of 132,000,000. This is the estimate of our own 
 States alone ; but, in contemplating the case of India, 
 we must include the Native States, whose fortunes are 
 implicated with the welfare of the British possessions 
 which surround them. We may better understand the 
 vastness of the area by looking across from north to 
 south and from east to west. From the Himalaya to 
 
10 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 Ceylon the distance is nearly 2,000 miles ; and from 
 the Burrampooter to the Indus it is 1,500 or more. 
 Leaving out the French and Portuguese settlements, 
 the inhabitants of this area are more than 1 80,000,000. 
 Those who profess to have an opinion as to how we 
 should govern India, should attend to these dimen- 
 sions, and not merely let the estimate pass before 
 their eyes. They should remember that the area is 
 as large as the whole of Europe, with the exception 
 of Russia (larger, indeed, to the amount of 144,150 
 square miles), and that the population of India is 
 within 19,000,000 of that of all Europe, exclusive of 
 Russia. 
 
 This population lives in a country the resources of 
 which are practically unbounded. Already, under all 
 the disadvantages of thousands of years of misgovern- 
 ment, followed by foreign invasion, and above a 
 century of almost incessant warfare, the land in 
 British possession pays above 13,000,000/. a year ; 
 nearly 2,000,000/. from salt ; and nearly 4,000,000/. 
 from opium. While cultivation is perpetually on the 
 increase, there are wide tracts remaining to be 
 brought under tillage. Though there is yet not a 
 railway of any considerable length in the country, 
 and only one great and well-made road ; and though 
 ancient waterworks have lapsed into ruin, there is trade 
 enough to support many millions of people on the spot, 
 and many hundreds of thousands in England. The 
 natives of India take from us goods to the amount 
 of less than one shilling a head per annum, while the 
 most backward of other countries, as South America, 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 11 
 
 take nine times as much per head : but, at the low 
 rate of Indian commerce, the resources of the country 
 are still enormous. With good government it would 
 be easy to raise the amount of production and 
 exchange to that of our best customers ; for nowhere 
 is there a region more splendidly wealthy by nature ; 
 and the main hindrance, the want of roads and canals, 
 is in course of removal, as we all know. In consider- 
 ing the conditions of the case of India, from the 
 Indian point of view, it is necessary to include that 
 of the natural wealth of the country, in that acces- 
 sible state which our public works will soon realize. 
 We cannot compute it ; and the most moderate 
 estimate would look like statistics from the desk of 
 Baron Munchausen : but such natural wealth is 
 assuredly one of the features of the question which 
 must not be overlooked. As Macaulay has observed, 
 the people of India were clothed in fine muslins and 
 shawls of Epicurean beauty when our ancestors dyed 
 their skins with woad ; and their great men lived in 
 the splendour of a fairy tale before our kings lived in 
 palaces : and yet the resources of their territory had 
 scarcely begun to be attended to. The inhabitants 
 have now more natural wealth than ever — more than 
 speculation itself attempts to estimate ; while they 
 are just entering upon that application of the arts of 
 life which will practically increase their resources 
 beyond all computation. If well governed, India 
 must yield occupation and subsistence to hundreds of 
 millions of human beings, at home and abroad. Such 
 a case is not one to be dealt with hastily, or on a 
 
12 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 rash application of principles and methods, because 
 they may be the best for other races in other lati- 
 tudes. 
 
 2. Characteristics. — This leads us to the second class 
 of conditions. The native races of India, diverse as 
 they are, all differ more from us than from each 
 other. There is a tendency in us to make light of 
 differences of race in questions of government ; a 
 tendency which is an error on the best side, since our 
 race honestly claims to be the highest : but still an 
 error. The American slaveholder exaggerates the 
 differences of race, just as our first adventurers in 
 India did, and the Spaniards in Mexico, to justify 
 tyranny ; and there is some generosity in the view 
 that all races would be much like ourselves under the 
 same training. But not only has this never been 
 proved, but science and experience unite in an oppo- 
 site testimony. What concerns us in the present 
 case is, not the argument about race, but the fact 
 that India has always, within our experience, been 
 occupied by nations and tribes of various races, whose 
 bodily organization, mental condition, and moral 
 characteristics differ exceedingly, while they are all 
 so unlike ours that to this moment there is not one 
 of them that we can understand. Englishmen who 
 have passed their lives in India, in communication 
 with the natives from day to day, give the most con- 
 tradictory accounts of what they think, feel, and can 
 do ; and there seems to have been no single instance in 
 which an Englishman could be, or ought to be, as 
 soundly assured of understanding his native neighbour 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 13 
 
 in India as he is in England. The mutual under- 
 standing has not improved with time. Lord Corn- 
 wallis might possibly enter more into the native mind 
 than Warren Hastings did; but, then, he knew it 
 also better than any of his latest successors. A 
 Cornwallis, a Malcolm, a Lawrence, may now and 
 then turn up who penetrates further than other men 
 who, with the best desires, have not their peculiar 
 gift of sympathy ; but the very ablest of such men 
 are the readiest to declare that, in a general way, the 
 native mind is not accessible by the European, beyond 
 a mere skin depth. Will those who demand a parlia- 
 mentary government for India consider for a moment 
 how far Parliament is fit to rule 150,000,000 of 
 people with incomprehensible minds ? 
 
 In making a canal, or laying out railway works, we 
 should consider it indispensable that the parties should 
 have a knowledge of the terrain; and that they should 
 not merely plan after the model of similar works at 
 home. Yet, in the more important affair of laws, insti- 
 tutions, and social relations, it is proposed by some 
 people to lay schemes which will probably turn out 
 wholly inapplicable. One may cut through mountain 
 ridges, sooner than human prejudices. One may span 
 defiles and torrents more easily than bridge over the 
 chasms which yawn between races of men. One 
 may repair the damage of mistaking bog for rock, 
 and transposing elevations and depressions of surface ; 
 but there is no remedy for the mischief of treating all 
 men alike, not only in regard to having a conscience, 
 but supposing that virtues and vices hold the same 
 
14 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 relative places in the consciences of all races. Bad 
 engineering from imperfect knowledge may be set 
 right, at more or less cost : but bad government from 
 the same cause must necessarily be fatal either to the 
 rulers or the ruled ; probably to both. 
 
 Not only are the people of India different in race 
 from us and from each other, but they have other 
 differences, political, religious, social and historical. 
 How much we know of such matters at present late 
 events have pointedly indicated. How many of us 
 have learned within the last year whatever we know 
 of the relations of the Sikhs, or the Ghoorkas, to the 
 Bengalese, or even of the Mohammedans to the 
 Hindoos ? Are we so well versed in the history of 
 Indian conquests as to be ready to make arrange- 
 ments in Parliament for the people who have always 
 lived in India, and held the primeval faith and 
 customs ; and for those who came at such a time, 
 bringing a new faith and new ideas and modes ; and 
 then, for another race from another quarter, intro- 
 ducing a yet different theory and practice of life? 
 Are we prepared to decree a method of treatment 
 which shall suit the Sikhs ? and another adapted to 
 the Bengal Hindoos ? and another for the Mussul- 
 mans in Oude ? to say nothing of the Bheels, and v the 
 Ghoorkas, and the Burmese, and the Cingalese, and 
 a dozen others ? 
 
 Such diversities of race, faith, and date involve a 
 good many more, we must remember ; such as modes 
 of rule and subjection ; a military or pacific polity, in 
 all degrees, and sanctions of religion and morals. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 15 
 
 The native life of India is chiefly moulded by tradi- 
 tion. The whole Hindoo polity springs immediately 
 from tradition ; and it is a great element in that of 
 the Mogul empire. While some of us censure the 
 East India Company for affording too much consider- 
 ation to these old native bases of social life, and 
 others will never let the Directors hear the last of it 
 if they have unwittingly outraged native usages on 
 any single point ; how far is Parliament qualified — 
 how far are the constituencies prepared to require 
 Parliament — to undertake the government of all 
 these strange Asiatics, who live and move and have 
 their being in an atmosphere of tradition in which 
 Anglo-Saxon Christians cannot draw a single breath 
 of life? 
 
 3. History, — A third condition of the native case is 
 an Asiatic political experience. It may be conceiv- 
 able that, in course of ages, all manner of men may 
 become qualified for representative institutions ; the 
 best at present known for the foremost races of men : 
 but the time is certainly very far off; and there is no 
 reason to suppose that the people of India will be 
 among the earlier applicants for constitutional govern- 
 ment. They have such an immense deal to get over 
 before they can form the idea, or conceive the wish, 
 that we really have no concern with either at present. 
 In the case of all the tribes, their respective polities 
 are heaven-descended. Each holds by the system he 
 was born into, as by the rest of his religion ; and all 
 political and social arrangements are as sacred to him 
 as his devotional rites. There is, therefore, a bottom- 
 
16 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 less gulf open between them and us, as to the whole 
 subject of government ; and to them the entire range 
 of political good and evil lies between the government 
 which oppresses least and that which oppresses most. 
 From one generation to another, their forefathers 
 bore with an occasional tyrant for as long as the 
 gods let him live to impale his subjects by scores, 
 and maim them by hundreds, and starve them by 
 thousands : and from one century to another they 
 have been blessed by some comparatively good prince, 
 whose memory they praise. Beyond this range, they 
 know and imagine nothing: and they must forget 
 their traditions, and pass through a wholly new 
 training before they can know or imagine anything 
 different. 
 
 No doubt, the sooner they begin to forget on the 
 one hand, and learn on the other, the better. But 
 the present question is of the conditions of their 
 actual state. It being what it is, Parliamentary 
 Government, which can conceive of none but represen- 
 tative institutions, seems to be precisely the most 
 inappropriate that could be proposed. 
 
 So much for the conditions of the Native case. 
 What are the conditions of ours ; first in India, and 
 then at home ? 
 
 Conditions of the Anglo-Indian Case. 
 
 1. Specific State of Mind. — The English in India 
 have always been noted for losing nothing for want of 
 self-confidence. It could not be otherwise. It was 
 Clive's audacity which won India first; and the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 17 
 
 whole history of our occupation is one of conspicuous 
 ability achieving prodigious successes. That the 
 coarse men should be arrogant, and the more refined 
 sufficiently self-confident, is an inevitable consequence 
 of such a history. Moreover, the English in India 
 have always been, ex officio, possessed of a specific 
 knowledge which must nourish their self-satisfaction. 
 While immeasurably exalted above the natives by 
 their European cultivation and character of intellect, 
 they have found themselves superior to all whom they 
 met at home in a special kind of information, which 
 seemed to them more important than any other — know- 
 ledge of India and its affairs. The peculiarity of this 
 knowledge, and its being distinctively held, necessarily 
 generated specific prejudices. There is no depart- 
 ment of knowledge which • does not yield its own 
 particular crop of prejudice, — exceedingly hurtful, 
 unless a constant process of weeding is kept up by 
 enlarged association with minds otherwise employed. 
 Those which specially infest the Anglo-Indian mind 
 need not be enlarged on here, as it is not proposed 
 to make the British in India the arbiters of destiny 
 there. It suffices that they are, amidst all their 
 superiorities, subject to specially strong persuasions, 
 which are not always defensible. The noble excep- 
 tions, which may be easily noted, only make the rule 
 more evident. 
 
 2. Antecedents. — A yet more important condition 
 is the mode in which our countrymen over there have 
 arrived at their present position. Our empire in 
 India began in commercial adventure, ordinarily 
 
18 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 selfish in its character in old times ; and we need not 
 repeat so much of its history as would prove how 
 unscrupulous, rapacious, violent, and crafty were 
 some of the early heroes of the wonderful tale. The 
 singularity of the case is, that out of such a beginning 
 there has arisen an administration, benevolent in aim 
 and disinterested in practice beyond any other that 
 the world ever saw. Washington and his comrades 
 may have aspired, and did aspire, to something as 
 morally fine ; but their design fell short of its accom- 
 plishment. So, to a certain extent, has that of the 
 East India Company ; but the project stands before 
 the world for judgment; and it is of the utmost 
 importance now that the world, and especially the 
 English public, should gravely contemplate it. If 
 the policy of the East India Company, since its 
 attention has been devoted to its territorial rule, had 
 been studied as it deserves, its aims (though frus- 
 trated), its benevolent vigilance (though baffled), the 
 disinterestedness of its proposals (though overborne), 
 and the extraordinary average ability of its officials 
 (though slighted), would have obviated any such 
 proposal as that our Indian empire should pass under 
 Parliamentary government. 
 
 3. Specific Errors. — Another condition in the Anglo- 
 Indian case is, the nature and character of the errors 
 which have impaired the Company's rule. 
 
 Those errors seem to have been of two classes. 
 
 The first were errors of mere antiquity ; such as 
 the monopoly which was aimed at as a matter of 
 course by the first merchant adventurers who obtained 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 19 
 
 a charter. There is no occasion to dwell now on the 
 evidence, and the mischievous character, of the mistake. 
 Any history of India will show what harm was done 
 by " interlopers " on the one hand, and by the tyranny 
 which they exasperated on the other. The early 
 conflicts of the Company with the principles of free 
 trade — principles only groping their way without a 
 name or a claim — are interesting to read of, and 
 very suggestive ; but they need be only referred to 
 here, and simply as affecting our position in India 
 long after the error has been outgrown. 
 
 The other class of errors is of corporate origin. 
 These are of the nature of monopoly ; but the mono- 
 polizing principle was of a higher order by far than 
 the obsolete commercial one. Perceiving more clearly 
 than people at home have ever done, the difficulty of 
 establishing any sound understanding between Euro- 
 peans and the natives, the Company doubted the 
 possibility of sustaining social order and existing 
 native liberties without conflict, if the free ingress 
 of. Europeans were allowed. The secession of the 
 American colonies on republican principles aggra- 
 vated this fear at the time of that revolution, and 
 sustained it afterwards ; and, though there never 
 could have been any danger of Asiatics rebelling on 
 such grounds, there was nothing irrational in the 
 dread of the operation of a promiscuous assemblage 
 of European insurgents on the mind of Hindoo and 
 Mohammedan communities. When time passed on, 
 and the danger lessened, and the Company's rule was 
 never spontaneously relaxed, it became clear that the 
 
 c 2 
 
20 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 corporate spirit was more or less answerable for per- 
 sistency in a policy of exclusion. This policy has had 
 enough to do with our recent and present difficulties 
 to justify its being set down among the conditions of 
 the case we have to decide upon. This done, we may 
 pass on to the third group of conditions; those, 
 namely, which belong to the English at home, who, 
 by themselves and their representatives in Parliament, 
 constitute the jury and judge, or council and ruler, 
 in the most important matter which could be brought 
 before them. 
 
 Conditions of the English Case. 
 
 1. Popular Ignorance, — The most obvious and 
 unquestionable difficulty we have to deal with at 
 present is the prodigious and insurmountable popular 
 ignorance which disqualifies us as a nation for any 
 immediate legislation for India. When the first 
 news of the mutiny arrived, the extent of this igno- 
 rance became apparent. Not only did men of the 
 working class want to know " why our people staid 
 in such a place," and ask whether, "if they came 
 away, their enemies would come after them," but 
 some of the best educated persons in England 
 admitted that they had never known till now how 
 India was governed, and that they did not believe 
 that one in a hundred of their cultivated acquaint- 
 ances could tell how many Presidencies there were ; 
 nor whether Holkar was a Mohammedan or a 
 Hindoo ; nor who Scindiah was — unless he were 
 the King of Scinde. Turn where we may, we can 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 21 
 
 find no comprehension of the magnitude of the Indian 
 question — no notion whatever of the extent of differ- 
 ence between a colony inhabited by British, who are 
 driving back the few hundreds of savage natives, 
 and a tributary empire composed of groups of king- 
 doms, and occupied by a population as various and 
 nearly as large as that of Europe — outside of Russia. 
 When the simple question is asked " Whether it 
 would be rational to put all the Continental nations, 
 by the name of l Europe ' under the * Parliamentary 
 government* of any remote insular people," the 
 stare with which the question is met is something 
 memorable in the present state of our affairs. Con- 
 sidering that more or less familiarity with the 
 particulars of any theocratic religion — of any of 
 the primitive religions of the world, and with the 
 scope and character of each body of native laws, 
 and with the facts and philosophy of national manners 
 and customs, is indispensable to the good govern- 
 ment of tributary peoples, it is clear that our popular 
 ignorance on the subject of India is the prominent 
 condition of the whole case, from the point of view 
 of the English at home. If our constituencies and 
 their representatives are aware of the prevailing 
 ignorance, they will certainly refuse to legislate in 
 haste, on materials which they are not competent 
 to test. If they are unconscious of such ignorance, 
 it is of the more consequence that they should not 
 be urged into a precipitancy which they may bitterly 
 repent, but can never repair. 
 
 2. One-sidedness. — We may class under a single 
 
22 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 head our one-sidedness on several of the great elements 
 of the Indian question. For one thing, we are 
 perpetually confounding constitutional government 
 with representative institutions. In the Political 
 Dictionary we find the first sentence of the article 
 on that topic runs thus. " Constitution : — A term 
 often used by persons at the present day without 
 any precise notion of what it means." We might 
 add, that if pressed for an account of what it means, 
 nine in ten of us would answer, "Parliamentary 
 government." We are apt to suppose that this is 
 what Naples and Sicily demand when they remind 
 their despot that they have a constitution, though 
 he locks it up out of their reach. We are apt to 
 suppose that this is what we gave to Spain ; and 
 what the late King of Prussia promised to his 
 subjects, and the present King wanted them still to 
 wait for. But, important as representative councils 
 are, they are not " the be all and the end all " of 
 constitutional rule. When we fall into the mistake 
 of thinking that they are, it is because, with us, the 
 sovereign power resides in the assembled Parliament 
 of the kingdom. Wherever the sovereign power 
 resides — whether in a single supreme head, or in 
 any kind of hereditary council, or in an elective 
 council, or other body of officials, the fundamental 
 and permanent principles and laws on which the 
 administration proceeds are the constitution of the 
 country. Thus, there might be as real a constitution 
 in Eussia as in the United States, if the czars could 
 be ensured to act according to fundamental and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 23 
 
 recognized laws, to the entire exclusion of self-will. 
 The case implies more or less delegation of authority 
 to other hands — and the body thus charged is a 
 constitutional body ; and the instrument by which 
 it is appointed, whether it be a writing, or a cere- 
 mony, or a spoken pledge, is, in common parlance, 
 the constitution, while it issues from and is in accord- 
 ance with the fundamental law of the state. When, 
 therefore, it is proposed to give constitutional govern- 
 ment to India, it is no answer (however true it may 
 be in fact) to say that the inhabitants are unfit for 
 representative institutions ; nor, again, is it reason- 
 able to insist on representation in India as the first 
 feature of constitutional government. Of a possible 
 constitution for India, it will be time to speak here- 
 after ; our business in this place is with the one-sided 
 view of constitutional government which we are apt to 
 fall into. 
 
 We do the same in other instances. The religious 
 case is the most conspicuous — next to the political. 
 Knowing nothing of the multitudinous imagery which 
 occupies the religious imagination of the Hindoo, 
 and having never been trained in the stern mono- 
 theism which is the primary truth to the Moham- 
 medan, the impulse of Englishmen is to communicate 
 Christianity, without the loss of an hour, to the greatest 
 possible number of heathens and idolaters. This is 
 not only inevitable, it is a conscientious desire while 
 ignorance prevails as it does ; but it is necessarily a one- 
 sided view as long as the other sides remain undisclosed. 
 The topics of missionary enterprise and Government 
 
24 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 countenance of different religions will be better 
 treated further on. It is here necessary only to 
 suggest that we can form no trustworthy judgment till 
 we have ascertained how far the minds of the natives 
 are in the condition thought necessary for the reception 
 of Christianity eighteen hundred years ago ; or how far 
 it is possible to prepare the minds of one, two, or three 
 generations for the reception of a genuine Christianity ; 
 or by what means the primitive paganism of the 
 Hindoos may best be dealt with on the one hand, and 
 the widely dissimilar corruption of Christianity which 
 constitutes Mohammedanism may be best encountered 
 on the other. As long as we are uniformly taking 
 for granted that the various nations of Hindostan are 
 all under the same doom of perdition, amidst their 
 various faiths, for want of one which we can and 
 ought to substitute for them throughout India, we are 
 one-sided in our view of a vital point in the case : and 
 this one-sidedness is not relieved by the view being 
 held in common by the great number of churches and 
 sects among us who agree in scarcely anything else. 
 An agreement of such parties on a single point indi- 
 cates one of two things: — either that the case is so 
 clear as to admit of no variation of opinion; or that 
 evidence remains behind which all have yet to become 
 acquainted with. The standing controversy between 
 the East India Company and some sections of the 
 religious world, about the existing policy of equal 
 toleration, proves that the first supposition does not 
 apply : the other must, therefore, be the true one. 
 In other words, the English people and their repre- 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 25 
 
 sentatives are not at present qualified to form a 
 practical judgment on the religious affairs of 
 150,000,000 of people, whose civilisation is of a far 
 older date than their own. We may and must learn : 
 but, at present, we understand no religious condition 
 but our own; and we are therefore unfit to legislate 
 on the spiritual affairs of the nations of Hindostan. 
 
 We are under the same disqualification in regard 
 to a military system — actual or possible. We have 
 our own notions as to the proportion and the nature 
 of the military element in our own case — that of a 
 European commercial nation, living in the nineteenth 
 century, and having therefore passed through the 
 preparatory stages of civilisation : but we have a very 
 imperfect notion, if any, of the case of an Asiatic 
 empire, composed of nations and tribes, mostly agricul- 
 tural, many predatory, and scarcely any being further 
 concerned with commerce than in the sea or river 
 ports ; and not in the nineteenth century of their era, 
 but the fortieth or more, while having as yet passed 
 through a wholly different experience from that of the 
 Western nations. What our British view of the 
 military element in our own nation is worth, in com- 
 parison with the general Continental view, is a matter 
 of controversy. If we adhere to it in planning for 
 India, we are one-sided ; and what knowledge have we 
 of the combined military and political history of the 
 Asiatic states, which qualifies us for deciding, within 
 a few months, what is to be done with the physical 
 force of India? Do we know the whole history 
 and mystery of the Mysore army in the days of Hyder 
 
26 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 and Tippoo? Do we understand the Sikh polity, 
 either past or present? Are we to apply British 
 principles and notions to the Mahrattas? Can we 
 clearly and unanimously explain the case of our own 
 sepoys ? If we cannot, is it not clear that we are 
 one-sided in this instance also ? 
 
 In regard to the commercial case we are, as is 
 natural, the least ignorant of the facts, as we are most 
 enlightened as to the principles. We really are 
 entitled to demand, and legislate for, commercial 
 freedom for the people of India. We are right when 
 we refuse to helieve that tens of millions of people will 
 not purchase comforts and pleasures if they can get 
 them; and we may justly claim the office of inducting 
 that great population into a commercial period, of the 
 incidents and character of which they know little and 
 we much. We are qualified for providing the requi- 
 sites of commerce, in the shape of internal improve- 
 ments, enlightened methods of taxation, and com- 
 mercial freedom. But here a limitation occurs from 
 our ignorance or misapprehension of the political 
 relations of Asiatic states. Prepossessed as we are by 
 happy experience with the conceptions of security of 
 life and property, and personal and domestic indepen- 
 dence, as the prime objects and blessings of a national 
 polity, we cannot have any sympathy whatever with 
 peoples who prefer other things to these, or who, at 
 best, know so little of these privileges as to be unable 
 to value and slow to seek them. We can have 
 nothing to say to tribes and nations with whom a 
 priestly tradition goes further than the claims of 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 27 
 
 neighbours or children, and upon whom all appeals 
 on behalf of liberty, justice, peace and comfort are 
 lost in the presence of the heir of an old dynasty, or 
 the prospect of a week of marauding. Though we 
 know more about commerce than any other people, 
 from its fundamental principles to its crowning daring 
 and munificence, we must yet be one-sided in regard 
 to the institution of industry and exchange in India, 
 till we are better informed of the special conditions 
 of industry and exchange (conditions political and his- 
 torical) of ancient and modern society in Hindostan. 
 
 3. Precipitate Public Opinion. — If such is indeed our 
 case, how can we sufficiently dread any sudden for- 
 mation of an imperfect public opinion on the problem 
 before us ? The liability of such a misfortune is the 
 last condition of the English case which it will be 
 necessary to specify. If the other conditions are 
 truly stated (and it seems scarcely possible that they 
 should be denied), we are by no means entitled at 
 present even to offer a decided opinion on how 
 India should henceforth be ruled. But the people of 
 England are not so much as asked whether they have 
 any opinion at all ; nor offered the opportunity of 
 seeking representatives whom they might entrust to 
 deal with any measure brought forward by Govern- 
 ment for the disposal of India in the future. 
 
 They are suddenly called on to support a measure 
 of vital and most critical importance ; a proposal to 
 abolish the organization by which India has hitherto 
 been managed, and to substitute something, not only 
 untried, but which nobody is qualified to form an 
 
28 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 opinion about, except the Company to be deposed in 
 its favour. The hope on the part of the rash pro- 
 posers of this fatal movement no doubt is, -that the 
 calamity of the year will dispose every man to wish 
 that something should be done, and to fancy that he, 
 in virtue of his emotions, can help to do it. The hope 
 of a rash Minister no doubt is, that between the faults 
 of the old Government and the promises of the new, 
 with the national ignorance as a convenient basis 
 for showy projects, he shall make himself the most 
 popular Minister of the age. It might tempt any 
 ambitious man, — the opportunity which now seems to 
 occur for connecting in future history the amelioration 
 of India with the great calamity that has happened 
 there ; the opportunity of effacing the remembrance 
 of his own scepticism and levity on the breaking out 
 of the mutiny by regenerating the whole dependency. 
 But no personal aims of the Minister, no patriotic 
 aspirations of his which he cannot justify by fact and 
 philosophy, should be allowed to create an unfavour- 
 able condition for a case of such magnitude : and of 
 all unfavourable conditions none can be conceived so 
 disastrous as that of precipitate formation of an 
 imperfect and overbearing public opinion. This, 
 however, is precisely the peril which now most closely 
 impends. It may be escaped by simply taking time. 
 If our constituencies and their representatives will 
 but consider and avow their own imperfection of 
 knowledge, and refuse to settle the destinies of India 
 till they understand the case better, all may yet be 
 well on all hands. If we proceed to abolish the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 29 
 
 Council which knows more about India than the whole 
 nation besides, and to legislate on the basis of national 
 prejudice, in a season of passion, we shall lose India, 
 and shall be answerable for remanding the most 
 hopeful of Eastern empires back to a condition in 
 which another Tartar conqueror may be a blessing 
 to her, and all the intervening ages of progress be 
 hidden, out of historical view, as the reigns of the 
 Shepherd Kings are dropped out of the annals of 
 Egypt. Is such to be indeed our place in Asiatic 
 history ? The next few months will go far to decide. 
 
 Effect of England on India. 
 
 Taking into one view the conditions of all the 
 parties concerned, what has been the result on the 
 mind and life of India of the connection with England ? 
 
 The inhabitants never were a people ; and they 
 have not become so under our rule. They never 
 lived the recognised life of a nation (at least within 
 the historic period) ; and the only thing known about 
 them is that the weaker native multitude was over- 
 powered by the stronger Mussulman tribe, who came 
 down upon them as conquerors, and live among them 
 now in a dominating sort of way, though we are apt 
 to suppose the whole population to be levelled by 
 our supremacy. The Mohammedans (hereditary and 
 converts together) are only one-eighth — some author- 
 ities say not more than one-tenth — of the population ; 
 yet they are the most prominent and the most active 
 element. What has been the effect of English rule 
 upon them? It comes out now, that for above a 
 
30 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 century prayers have been daily offered in the mosque 
 at Delhi for our overthrow and the restoration of the 
 Mogul dominion. The fact ought not to surprise us. 
 The strict monotheism of the Mohammedans is, in 
 their belief, destined to supersede Christianity. Lut- 
 fullah says of us : " They had made three Gods 
 for themselves, instead of one, the only omnipotent 
 supreme Being — contrary to their first commandment; 
 and, most absurd of all, they attributed to the 
 Almighty God the having wife and children ; and by 
 the same token they called their Prophet and them- 
 selves son and children of God." # 
 
 Individual Mussulmans might and did attach them- 
 selves to individual British superiors ; but this tenth 
 or eighth part of the population has always regarded 
 our presence as an intrusion, and anticipated our 
 expulsion or withdrawal sooner or later. It has 
 been far otherwise with the rest of that prodigious 
 multitude. They were always wont to yield to any 
 strong hand that was imposed upon them, whether 
 that of a foreign invader or a native prince ; and they 
 are evidently more content under our rule than any 
 other — because we have saved them from other con- 
 querors, and have made their lives easier than they 
 ever were before. Faulty and mistaken as our own rule 
 has been in many particulars, from our own unfavour- 
 able conditions, it has been thoroughly well intended ; 
 and that is a virtue which never fails to be appreciated. 
 We have, therefore, a reputation for justice in India, 
 which has done more for the elevation of the people than 
 * Autobiography of Lutfullah, p. 35. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 31 
 
 any amount of express measures for the purpose could 
 otherwise have effected. Protected from invaders 
 and marauders, and enjoying a higher degree of 
 security of life and property than ever before, the 
 people have betaken themselves to industry more and 
 more ; they apply more wisely for justice than of old, 
 and expect to obtain it. They have never been 
 troubled by us about their religion, and the social 
 morals and manners which are so largely implicated 
 with it. They are horribly afraid of the British, 
 generally speaking ; and " fear hath torment" always 
 and everywhere : but they would have had more of 
 this torment to suffer in our absence, whether they 
 know it or not. If tradition preserves with any 
 fidelity the life of their forefathers, they must be 
 aware of their own comparative happiness : but it 
 seems to be thought by those who understand them 
 best, that they have not much power of imagining 
 things otherwise than as they are : and that their 
 actual grievances are not lightened by any comparison 
 with those of former generations. However this may 
 be, the evidence is now overwhelming that the great 
 body of the people are disinclined to throw off our 
 rule. Some have shown within a few months an 
 active reluctance to part with us ; and almost all the 
 rest, a quiet readiness to pay their rents, and obey 
 our laws, and take for granted that things will go on 
 as before when the present disturbance is over. Such 
 evidences are all-important at a period the most 
 critical (independently of the mutiny) which has ever 
 occurred, or, perhaps, ever can occur during our con- 
 
32 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 nexion with them ; that period, inevitable but formid- 
 able, when the practical results of a high civilisation 
 must be introduced into a scene of low social condi- 
 tion. The European railway, telegraph, and other 
 magical arts introduce into India much more than 
 themselves. They introduce an experience subversive 
 of ideas and practices, which would in natural course 
 have taken centuries to dissolve and abolish. A 
 Brahmin broke the microscope long ago. He could 
 thus disguise from himself, and conceal from his 
 neighbours, the vanity of their endeavour to abstain 
 from destroying life and swallowing animal substances. 
 He might persuade himself when the microscope was 
 destroyed, that the animated world he had seen in a 
 drop of water was a dream or a temptation ; but when 
 it comes to a railway train moving through a hundred 
 miles of villages, or of a telegraph enabling men on 
 the Indus to talk with men at the mouth of the 
 Ganges, the case is beyond Brahmin management ; 
 and we ought to prepare for the hostility of all who 
 live under Brahminical influence. I must refer again, 
 though I have done it more than once before, to the 
 significant fact that, for years past, there has been a 
 controversy in Hindostan Proper, as to how far the 
 accommodation of the rail will lessen the merit of 
 pilgrimage. From year to year the Hindoo notions 
 of virtue and expediency have been more and more 
 shocked and encroached upon by the introduction of 
 our arts among a people who would not otherwise 
 have attained them for centuries to come. They see 
 that there is no chance for their adored immutability, 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 33 
 
 their revered stagnation, their beloved indolence 
 where the English magic establishes itself. It was 
 a great thing before this year that, instead of throwing 
 off our authority, the people grew more grain as 
 markets were opened, and carried more produce out 
 into the world for sale, as the railway became familiar : 
 and now, if they let us proceed in ameliorating their 
 condition, in spite of Brahminical influence, and the 
 incitement of the mutineers, we may fairly conclude 
 that the field is open to us for a higher and better 
 cultivation than it has yet received. 
 
 Never was there a more difficult case — never a 
 more portentous conjunction in human history, than 
 this arbitrary coexistence of the European and Asiatic 
 genius on the same soil. We were only strangers in 
 the country, living there first for self-interest, and 
 next for duty ; and never from any sympathy for, or 
 real intercourse with the inhabitants. The operation 
 of our presence on the native mind has been slow in 
 proportion ; and, till very recently, it was somewhat 
 dubious in extent, and very precarious in character. 
 We now perceive that, though every people on earth 
 would be best governed by rulers of their own race 
 and faith, if qualified native rulers were procurable, 
 it is better that foreigners should reign than that 
 society should fall to pieces under misrule. We once 
 rescued India from such anarchy ; and we must take 
 care that it never recurs. The people have been led 
 up to a point of progress at which they cannot stand 
 still. They have seen not only wars extinguished, 
 but the causes of war uprooted : they have returned 
 
34 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 to the industrial life which their remote ancestors 
 seem to have led, but from which the population was 
 scared away before we set foot on their shores : they 
 have now seen that our military strength is as potent 
 as our magical arts : they have learned from us the 
 principles and methods of commerce ; they have 
 received from us an induction into a great new pro- 
 vince of literature and philosophy ; and, finally, they 
 have bound us by the very progress they have made, 
 to improve the connection, to amend our faults, and 
 increase our benefits, till the experiment is fairly 
 tried whether any genuine sympathy can be estab- 
 lished between Europeans and Asiatics. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the British in India 
 have improved in their conduct, personal and offi- 
 cial, at least in proportion to the advancement 
 of the people they ruled. It does not at present 
 appear that the improved sobriety, diligence, disin- 
 terestedness, and intelligence of the English officers, 
 civil and military, and the advancing industry, 
 self-respect, and enlargement of the natives have 
 enabled the two parties to understand each other 
 much better than of old; but every indication that 
 the higher order of mind is working upon the 
 lower is an instruction how to proceed, and an 
 encouragement to persevere. It is no less a warn- 
 ing against precipitate action on the ground of 
 English ideas. The work has not gone so far but 
 that it may be broken off any day ; and if, because 
 we are in a state of emotion about the mutiny, or 
 because we have a Minister who likes popularity, and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 35 
 
 enjoys smart legislation, we abolish any old security, 
 or venture upon any ill-considered change, we shall 
 lose India even yet. * It would be, at any moment, so 
 much easier to lose India than to govern it well, 
 that to take time is the manifest and imperative duty 
 of the case. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 PAKT II. 
 
 THE TASK TO BE DONE. 
 
 These being the conditions under which the respec- 
 tive parties lie, and such being the relation between 
 the dependency and the superior country, what is, 
 precisely, the work to be done ? What is the task 
 now set us — not only by the Minister's appeal to 
 Parliament, but by the actual state of India ? 
 
 We must go nowhere for a precedent and example. 
 There is naturally a strong tendency in us all to do 
 this. Some go hunting for an analogy in all histories 
 of colonization : some tell us how the Romans managed 
 their barbaric dependencies ; and others suppose the 
 best thing we can do is to restore the people of India 
 to "their old princes," " their own institutions," their 
 old anything that they have a mind for. But, in the 
 first place, India is not, and never was, a colony : in 
 the next, the aim of Rome was to incorporate its 
 conquests with itself; and its government was of a 
 nature to admit of such incorporation, which was 
 even an object of desire to the vanquished nations 
 who would have resisted to the death conquest from 
 any other quarter. In our age of the world, and 
 under a constitutional method of government, all 
 analogy is out of the question. There is nothing in 
 our relation even with our colonies at all resembling 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 37 
 
 the organization and aggregation of the outlying 
 dominions of Rome ; and the principles and methods 
 of British government are as inapplicable to India, 
 and as peculiar, as those of Rome were suitable and 
 universal, throughout the empire. Again, the Hin- 
 doos, and all other natives of India, except the 
 Mohammedans, prefer the existing rule to any change. 
 There are no symptoms of hankering after old princes 
 or ancient institutions. They keep their faith, and 
 their notions and their customs ; and they never had 
 any political institutions apart from their religions. 
 There is nothing to revert to, therefore, as precedent 
 or warrant ; and the only help we can get from the 
 past is a warning. 
 
 We have seen what made the people wretched of 
 old. We must save them from lapsing into any such 
 barbarism as we have lifted them out of. We must, 
 moreover, carry them on towards a higher condition, 
 with the smallest possible disturbance of their ordi- 
 nary ideas and habits. We must bear in mind the 
 many instances of insanity and death which have 
 occurred among natives of Asia and Africa, when 
 introduced too rapidly to new and surprising European 
 objects and ideas. We must make the largest allow- 
 ance for the excitable nature of the Asiatic, kept 
 quiet as it has hitherto been by the antiquity of his 
 notions and habits. If we make haste to " Europe- 
 anize " our fellow-subjects in India, we shall make 
 them mad. We have just seen what the madness 
 of fanaticism is like in a mere army. It is a spectacle 
 which may well warn us not to make changes which 
 
38 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 may imperil the sanity of whole nations. The 
 unavoidable danger which will attend any transfer 
 of authority, or any alteration in the external aspect 
 or method of rule, is the excitement which will per- 
 vade the prodigious masses of the population. The 
 news that " John Company " is dead would be enough 
 to cost us our empire ; and there is no other manifest 
 change which may not bring down a hurricane of 
 popular frenzy upon us, if it be not conducted with 
 extreme quietness and discretion. And here we 
 meet the difficulty caused by our own general igno- 
 rance and past indifference. The whole tendency 
 of the management of Indian affairs has been to 
 prevent the British public knowing or caring any- 
 thing about India. The consequence is that we 
 have no other choice than between hasty legislation 
 and a stormy and protracted controversy ; the one 
 being about as formidable as the other in the actual 
 case. If India had been extensively settled by 
 Europeans, or public works had been carried on with 
 promptitude and vigour, or inquiry into the adminis- 
 tration of India had been encouraged, we should have 
 been in better condition than we are for the great 
 task before us. As it is not so, we must the more 
 carefully consider what has to be done, and how we 
 may best do it. 
 
 Political Objects. 
 
 How far may the advantages of constitutional govern- 
 ment be afforded to India, — representative institu- 
 tions being, by common agreement, entirely out of 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 39 
 
 the question ? Excluding these, what is there which 
 could be given to India without a perilous change 
 in the existing management. 
 
 1 . Conception of a Fundamental Law. — There is 
 the foundation itself of constitutional government ; a 
 recognised fundamental law, from which all other 
 law, and all rules of social life, are derived. 
 
 It is needless to explain that the people of India 
 know nothing about such a basis. The bulk of them 
 are destitute of any ideas at all about govern- 
 ment, beyond the comparative greatness, wisdom, and 
 goodness of different rulers. Their politics came 
 down from an unknown antiquity, and were preserved 
 by priestly tradition ; and the last thing anybody 
 ever thought of was mending them. The people have 
 seen enough of our way of having laws, and altering 
 them, to be prepared for the notion that the law is 
 higher than the Council and the Governor- General 
 themselves ; and that they have all an interest in 
 this great authority, which is at once a protection 
 and a restraint to all who live under it. Judging 
 by the sensation excited when Lord Cornwallis's settle- 
 ment was promulgated, and the people found that 
 the collectors were made subject to laws which were 
 popularly explained and understood, it seems indu- 
 bitable that the idea of a sacred basis of law and 
 government, independent of individual caprice, is one 
 which could be easily and safely communicated to 
 everybody in India. As to where the sovereign 
 power resides which makes the constitution, — that 
 knowledge will naturally come in time, by way of the 
 
40 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 schools and colleges, if not by more speedy methods. 
 To instruct the natives in the respective powers and 
 capacities of the Crown, the Company, and Parliament, 
 can hardly be proposed so long as their Anglo-Indian 
 neighbours, and the people of England generally, 
 remain uninformed on the subject. Once imbued 
 with the conception of law as excluding caprice in the 
 ruling function, the people will have made, and, 
 indeed, have already made, the first great step 
 towards a higher and happier political state. 
 
 2. A Body of Laws. — The next step is, naturally, 
 to learn how it is that particular laws can be created 
 or altered, while the great fact of a fundamental law 
 remains immutable. The people understand this 
 now, to a considerable extent. In Cornwallis's time, 
 as we have seen, they witnessed a great change. So 
 long before as Warren Hastings' time, they had 
 witnessed plenty of change ; but then, there was no 
 constitution behind it to fall back upon. First, 
 every Englishman was master of all natives who 
 crossed his path : next, everything the English chose 
 was done by warrants extorted from the native 
 princes ; after that, there were open conflicts of 
 authority between the Governor- General and the 
 Council at Calcutta, which had not much the look 
 of any constitutional basis ; and after that, again, 
 there were conflicts, known only by their results, 
 between the invisible Company and the visible officials 
 (especially at Madras), leading to frequent changes 
 of persons and policy; and finally, the laws which 
 most concerned the people at large were translated 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 41 
 
 into language which they could understand, and 
 accompanied by alterations in the customs of the 
 country, well intended, but working so doubtfully 
 and painfully as to afford a solemn warning to us 
 now to make our arbitrary changes as few and easy 
 as possible. There was sufficient error in the forma- 
 tion of new laws, and sufficient corruption in the 
 early administration of them, to preclude a due 
 reverence for law on the part of the people : but the 
 great improvement that has taken place in the quali- 
 fications and the moral character of our officials, and 
 the constant evidence which rises up before the 
 people's eyes, that advancing knowlege and new arts 
 require fresh or amended laws, may now be trusted, 
 perhaps, to give them in time a practical notion how 
 new and varying laws may proceed from a steadfast 
 constitution. All this may look rather refined and 
 abstract for Hindoos and Mussulmans ; but it is 
 in the highest degree essential, simple, and practical. 
 For instance, society is in one stage when people 
 of all ranks will struggle into the presence of official 
 men with bribes in their hands, persuaded that the 
 great man's will is the sole authority under which 
 they are living : and society is in another stage when 
 the same people are aware that their acts are brought 
 to the test of immutable rules and decisions which 
 wrought before these officials were born, and will 
 work after they are dead. Society is in one stage 
 when the people have no idea whatever of rights, 
 or of any stability or security whatever, so that any 
 potentate may take their lives, liberty, and property, 
 
42 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 leaving no ground even for complaint : and it is 
 in quite a different stage when the same people are 
 aware that there is something which rules rulers, 
 and makes every man the owner of his own life, and 
 liberty, and property, in a general way. The question 
 then is only of particular rules or laws which may 
 be created, or altered according to circumstances, 
 but which steadily assume and respect the funda- 
 mental rights secured by the constitution. The 
 people of India have long been learning something 
 of this from us. To learn enough for purposes of 
 loyalty and peace they must live under laws which 
 their rulers are but ill qualified to construct. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that any parliamentary 
 committee that can be appointed will consider itself 
 competent to legislate immediately for Hindoos and 
 Mohammedans, with their antique and mediaeval cus- 
 toms and associations, and their inaccessible structure 
 of mind. Such legislation, doubtfully practicable at 
 best, must come, as the only feasible government has 
 come till now, through the brains of Anglo-Indians who 
 lose sympathy with Parliament just in proportion as 
 they succeed in legislating for the people around them. 
 Parliament should take a hint from this fact when 
 called on to legislate for India off-hand. If the exist- 
 ing body of operative laws in India are working well, 
 there is no reason for haste in the consideration of 
 them: if ill, Parliament is not qualified to improve 
 them on the instant, nor to point out who can do it to 
 better purpose than the authors and improvers of 
 those laws. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 43 
 
 3. Individual Stake in Laws. — It is of the highest 
 importance that every native should understand that 
 he has a personal interest in the law : that his rights 
 are secured by this and this alone ; and that therefore 
 it is wise to support the law generally, and the 
 European Government which established it. The 
 old Hindoo organization prepared the native mind 
 for this ; and there seems to have been little diffi- 
 culty in convincing them that the laws ought to be 
 upheld. Sir James Mackintosh was of opinion that 
 the Punchayet, or arbitration courts, saved society 
 from dissolution before the British arrived ; and Sir 
 Thomas Munro, dreading the consequences of change, 
 retained the Punchayet as an essential provision of 
 the common law of India in civil matters. But the 
 superiority of the courts introduced by the British, 
 even when administered by native judges only, was 
 presently admitted. They saved time and money; 
 and we must suppose they awarded justice with more 
 or less accuracy, as in three years, the Punchayet 
 was confined to those localities where the strange 
 and awful sight of a white face had never been seen. 
 This looks as if the people were apt in apprehend- 
 ing the character and value of laws ; and as if they 
 were therefore qualified to understand and prize the 
 blessing of having individually a stake in the polity, 
 — such as our Habeas corpus, and a good many more 
 acts give to every Englishman. 
 
 4. Independence of the Judiciary. — It is doubtful 
 whether an equal intelligence prevails as to the dis- 
 tinction between making and administering the laws. 
 
44 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 Not only do the natives still imagine that magistrates 
 may be bribed, but they suppose that, as laws may be 
 altered, the administration of them may alter also. 
 They saw too long the collectors, (the " youths " so 
 reprobated by the East India Directors in 1773) 
 declaring one thing to be law one day, and another 
 the next; and sitting in judgment on their own 
 acts ; and employing the police for their own pur- 
 poses. They saw for too short a time the subjection 
 of the collectors themselves to the courts, under Lord 
 Cornwallis's scheme ; and only too soon they witnessed 
 a falling back from this when, as the collectors could 
 not levy the revenue, they were made magistrates, 
 and given the control of the police. Nothing has 
 occurred since to enlighten them on this great subject 
 up to the point necessary for entrusting them with 
 such a method as jury trial, for instance. All who 
 know their minds and ways declare that they will 
 require a considerable training in the conception of 
 the independence of judges and juries before the 
 function of a jury can be at all understood by them. 
 Considering this, and the admitted faults and failures 
 in the courts under every method that has yet been 
 tried ; and the complications which must arise as 
 more and more English merchants and planters and 
 other settlers flow into the country, we must perceive 
 that in no direction will it be more difficult than in 
 this to introduce the native population to the benefits 
 of constitutional government. Unless there is some- 
 thing like equality of access to an equal law in every 
 region in India, it will be impossible to establish in 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 45 
 
 the native mind any faith in the impartiality of law, 
 the independence of judges, and the security afforded 
 by juries: and how such equality can be provided for 
 in a society so unique in its diversities, Parliament 
 will hardly desire to pronounce in a hurry. Lord 
 Metcalfe, who knew at least as much as any entire 
 Parliament we are likely to get, said, " All our sub- 
 jects, European Christian, native Christian, Hindoo, 
 Mohammedan, foreigners, &c, ought to be under one 
 code of laws in whatever concerns them in common, 
 returning to their own in whatever is peculiar to each 
 sect." He was also of opinion that everywhere such 
 courts should exist as would afford satisfaction to 
 both European and native residents. A prodigious 
 and multifarious work, requiring a world of con- 
 sideration, if the country is to be thrown open to 
 European settlement, which it certainly will be sooner 
 or later. 
 
 It is to these points of the native training that we 
 must look in providing for the continuance of our 
 empire in India. Lord Metcalfe continually repeated 
 the warning that our power was precarious to the last 
 degree, because it rested on impression. Before the 
 close of his own career, he saw the change which he 
 noted in the words " We have ceased to be the wonder 
 that we were to the natives : the charm which once 
 encompassed us has been dissolved, and our subjects 
 have had time to inquire why they have been sub- 
 dued." Again : "Our greatest danger is not from a 
 Russian invasion, but from the fading of the impres- 
 sion of our invincibility from the minds of the native 
 
46 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 inhabitants of India."* The best resource he declared 
 to be, not any increase of force, even if a sufficient 
 increase were possible : but doing such good to the 
 governed as must " neutralise their disaffection," and 
 thus defer the expulsion which he believed must 
 happen sooner or later. Place beside this testimony 
 of our best qualified Anglo-Indian that of a native, 
 as well qualified as can easily be found ; and it will 
 be plain in what direction we may hope to do most 
 good to the governed. Lutfullah, in recording the 
 native opinion of the British at the beginning of the 
 present century, says,f " Many other things were said 
 against them, and only one in their favour — that they 
 were not unjust ; but, in the administration of justice, 
 they never deviated from the sacred book of the 
 ancient law of Solomon, the son of David." If this 
 was anything like the " impression," so important in 
 Lord Metcalfe's view, we are likely to keep up our 
 prestige for wisdom and power by our " magical arts " 
 of lighting Calcutta by " lamps without wicks," and 
 by the telegraph, and other such necromancy : but, 
 for our good name in morals, we had better follow the 
 lead of native opinion, and sustain and improve our 
 reputation for "justice" in the administration of the 
 law, which will be appreciated in proportion as the 
 natives rise into a proved capacity for constitutional 
 government. 
 
 5. Scope and Liberty of Opinion. — After Law 
 comes Opinion. Next to equality under the law and 
 
 * Papers and Correspondence of Lord Metcalfe, p. 163. 
 t The Autobiography of Lutfullah, p. 35. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 47 
 
 its administration, we must convince the governed of 
 their rights of opinion, and thus make constitutional 
 subjects of them in the shortest way, and safe neigh- 
 bours in the surest. 
 
 The Press. — It must be remembered that the 
 establishment of British rule extinguished the old 
 means of discussion and the old councils. The durbar 
 was superseded ; and there was nothing to replace it. 
 The reasons which decide the universal judgment 
 against giving representative institutions to the 
 natives, are the same as those which plead for entire 
 liberty of thought and speech for all classes alike. 
 The natives have plenty to say on public affairs. No 
 movement of our officials takes place without its being 
 presently the talk of the bazaars in every town in 
 India ; and comment seems to accompany news as 
 invariably as the moral makes the tailpiece to iEsop's 
 fables in our school-books. If the public opinion which 
 exists is ignorant, it is highly necessary for the 
 Europeans to be aware of it, in order to gain an 
 insight into the native mind ; and it is no less necessary 
 for the natives to be able to express it freely, that 
 absurd notions may be exploded, and a common stock 
 made of such wisdom as there is. Almost anywhere 
 else, there might be hope of a sound growth of public 
 opinion from the germ of village life and adminis- 
 tration ; but the hereditary character of municipal 
 office throughout Hindostan nearly precludes all hope 
 of that social improvement, through the consultation 
 of neighbours, which is the best ground of a genuine 
 public opinion. From the time when laws were given 
 
48 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 them in their own language, there was something 
 for them to discuss ; and it was a great lift in their 
 progress. The more topics of general interest we 
 furnish them with, the larger will be the growth of 
 opinion, and the more necessary it must be to afford 
 entire liberty to its expression. In this method of 
 training alone lies any hope whatever of the people 
 becoming fit for eventual participation in public 
 affairs, and for any sort of present understanding 
 between them and the dominant race. 
 
 At the same time it is necessary to admit the 
 difficulties that have always beset, and that do still 
 beset, the question of the freedom of the press in 
 India. If, in Warren Hastings' days, the English 
 press in Calcutta was thoroughly infamous, from its 
 being devoted to mischievous and scandalous gossip, 
 and to exasperating the disputes of the most quarrel- 
 some society on record, what can be expected from the 
 native press, while its writers and readers have no 
 public questions to interest them, and are occupied, 
 not only with their own gossip, like the contempo- 
 raries of Hastings, but with the much richer amount 
 afforded by the dominant class, whom they neither 
 understand nor love. Add to this, that the native 
 news-writers and readers are well aware that the 
 English will never know what is thus said of them ; 
 and we may conceive what the native newspaper press 
 may be, and probably is. The native tongue is not 
 very strictly restrained by truth, nor the native 
 imagination by decency, under the best circumstances ; 
 and in this case the temper of the conquered has to 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 49 
 
 express itself, however true it may be that the Hindoo 
 multitude at least would not exchange our rule for 
 that of any other potentate. It is no wonder, there- 
 fore, if the native newspapers are, what we are assured 
 they are, full of offensive comment on every act of 
 their European neighbours. When we remember the 
 offensiveness, to them, of the European dinners, where 
 ham, beef, and wine are eaten and drunk, where the 
 gentlemen wear a dress which is indecent in native 
 eyes, and ladies are present, dining and dancing in a 
 manner which Indian tradition and custom brand as 
 profligacy we cannot wonder at the tone and temper 
 of the " fashionable intelligence" department of their 
 papers. If, judging by Lutfullah's amazement at 
 being civilly treated in England, we must credit 
 something of the prevalent impression that the natives 
 are wont to be insultingly spoken to by saucy Euro- 
 peans, we may imagine the gusto with which they 
 avail themselves of their opportunity of returning the 
 contumely in their own field of literature, where no 
 British eye will follow them. All this makes up one 
 great difficulty ; but there is another, arising out of 
 the hostility, created by a bad policy, between the two 
 classes of British on the spot. The European settlers 
 in the country, a very small class, have a natural 
 proclivity to hate the Government, and especially the 
 Company's part of it. The railing accusations of the 
 European enemies of the Government are at times 
 almost as offensive in tone as the native slanders ; and 
 how the natives relish the reports they hear of them 
 may be easily conceived. Now, there is really no 
 
 E 
 
50 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 small difficulty in deciding, in such a case, what it is 
 best to do. The effect on the native mind of the 
 Government being perpetually held up to reprobation 
 and contempt by Englishmen, must be admitted to be 
 a formidable consideration. However clear it may be 
 in the long run, that liberty of the press is best after 
 all, it should be kept in view that the question is 
 wholly unlike that of liberty of the press in France, 
 or Austria, or Italy, or any country which is not 
 a tributary empire, inhabited by one race and ruled 
 by another. 
 
 This admitted, any conclusion in favour of freedom 
 of utterance must have such weight as will preclude its 
 overthrow ; whereas, if the liberty were granted as a 
 concession to an ignorant demand for the same thing 
 under all manner of circumstances, there would be a 
 strong probability of the reversal of the policy, 
 after the difference between the European and the 
 Asiatic cases began to be discovered. Time and 
 testimony, then, seem to indicate that, great as are 
 the difficulties all round, a free press is a smaller evil 
 than a restricted one. 
 
 As the Government of India improved, the tone of 
 the Anglo-Indian newspapers improved. An open 
 policy afforded good topics, and scandal receded before 
 politics. Thus it was in Lord Cornwallis's time. 
 When the French were working against us in India 
 among the native States of indigenous rulers, the 
 conditions of the case were so far changed, that 
 Marquis Wellesley thought it necessary to control the 
 press, employed as it was, not only in discrediting the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 51 
 
 Government, but in making dangerous, if not treacher- 
 ous, disclosures to vigilant French eyes and ears. The 
 dread of the newspapers did not die away with the 
 occasion, but increased by indulgence, till Lord Moira 
 found it in a condition worthy only of Paris or Milan 
 at the present time. He slackened the bonds at once ; 
 and forty years ago the censorship at Calcutta was 
 little more than nominal. While the old members of 
 the Council were aghast at the criticisms of Govern- 
 ment acts, Lord Moira refused to check them, took 
 lessons from some of them, and let pass those which 
 he despised. When he came home, Mr. Adam, who 
 temporarily filled his place, set to work to repair the 
 mischief done, as he believed, to the dignity and 
 efficiency of Government ; and he inflicted that depor- 
 tation upon Mr. Buckingham which erected him into 
 a man with a grievance for the rest of his days. A 
 native editor was as fiercely put down, by laws which 
 left the press a mere name. Lord Amherst let it 
 alone during the latter part of his rule ; and Lord 
 William Bentinck not only abstained from applying 
 the press laws, but declared that he had learned more 
 from the newspapers than from all other sources 
 whatever ; and it should be remembered, in connec- 
 tion with this declaration, that the enemies he made 
 by his reforms were the most eager and active contri- 
 butors that the editors could boast of. On the only 
 occasion on which he ever proposed to curb the press, 
 he was remonstrated with by Charles Metcalfe, in 
 the well-known letter on the liberty of the press which 
 appears in his Life (vol. ii. p. 254), and as soon as Lord 
 
 e 2 
 
52 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 William Bentinck sailed for Europe, an appeal was 
 made to Charles Metcalfe, and responded to by him, 
 in the form of a complete emancipation of the press 
 from the restraints of late years, no conditions being 
 imposed but such as made printers and publishers of 
 periodical publications responsible, as known parties, 
 for the works they issued. In reply to the enthusiastic 
 thanksgivings of the Calcutta public, native and 
 foreign, he stated reasons for believing that liberty of 
 speech is the best policy ; reasons which may serve us 
 now, or at any time, as well as they served him then. 
 After such a testimony from so experienced a man, 
 the question should have been regarded as settled for 
 ever. 
 
 The first consideration was duty to the people, 
 whom it is our business to enlighten, and not to keep 
 in the dark. Next, there was every reason to hope 
 that the Government and the people might like one 
 another the better, the more they became acquainted. 
 Again, the press was the grand safety-valve, among a 
 people who had no other public means of expression. 
 Once more ; the press naturally acted as superin- 
 tendent and critic, or even informer, over the entire 
 range of Government operations. Every oppressor, 
 or slothful or incompetent public servant, was sure to 
 be informed against, however remote his district 
 might be ; and such criticism was the most important 
 aid Government could receive. False accusations 
 could be immediately confuted, while true ones saved 
 a world of abuses. Finally, a crop of suggestions was 
 for ever springing up from that free soil, enlarging 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 53 
 
 the views, and fertilising the minds, of the Govern- 
 ment corps ; so that a distinct period of improved 
 Government dated from the emancipation of the 
 Indian press, though there was a settled purpose at 
 home to reverse the measure. The 15th of September, 
 1835, is called the birth-day of liberty of the press in 
 India : but the next year would have put the fetters 
 on again, if Lord Auckland had not gone out, and 
 seen at the critical moment that the most liberal 
 policy was the wisest. Some of the highest authori- 
 ties say that these reasons are as applicable now in 
 the case of India as they were when they were set 
 forth by the Bentincks and Metcalfes of quieter times : 
 and, to plain Englishmen, it appears that there never 
 was a period when it could be so perilous to close 
 any safety-valve, or to cut off from Government pre- 
 cisely that information which cannot be obtained 
 through its own servants. However this may be, we 
 cannot govern India in the future without supplying 
 to the unrepresented of all races the means of forming 
 and strengthening a public opinion. No perils of a 
 press can be so great as having (practically) none : 
 and those who most dread evil-speaking, falseness, and 
 foulness on the part of the native press, and mischief 
 to Government from censure, ought to be aware that 
 the only appropriate remedy is, on the one hand, 
 elevating, not suppressing, the tone of newspaper 
 criticism, by fostering the education of the natives ; 
 and, on the other, welcoming on the part of Govern- 
 ment, all honest and useful strictures — simply des- 
 pising such as are false or merely malicious. No 
 
54 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 one can say that such a method is impracticable. 
 Bentinck and Metcalfe practised what they preached ; 
 and any who come after them can bear what they 
 bore. Moreover, no man or body of men can be fit 
 to rule India who do not see, after the events of 1857, 
 that if we are to keep our empire, we must come to 
 such an understanding with the people as cannot be 
 had by any other means than a free press. Nothing 
 that can be told could have created the mutiny, but 
 only something that is even yet untold. The only 
 wise policy is to turn the balance, and reduce the 
 proportion of the untold to the told by every possible 
 means : and the very best yet devised is a free press. 
 
 6. Religious Liberty. — Among the indispensable 
 liberties to be secured to the people of India is liberty 
 of religion. This seems so obvious that one would 
 hardly think of doing more than setting it down in 
 its place but for the cry which it is attempted to raise 
 for " Christianizing India." It is really mournful 
 that Englishmen should give themselves over to a 
 sectional cry, without learning what it means and 
 what it proposes. In this case the zealots go into 
 the enterprise as they would go (and often have gone) 
 into a scheme for converting Patagonian savages, or 
 Australian aborigines, or red Indians. There is but 
 little result from even that kind of enterprise, where 
 a rude fetishism only has to be supplanted, or a total 
 void filled : but when we see our zealots proceeding, 
 without any distinction in the cases, to convert the 
 Jews in Palestine, and all sorts of believers in India, 
 without any special preparation on their own part, or 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 55 
 
 any idea of a fair encounter with their anticipated 
 converts, we must plead for the credit of our country 
 in regard to good sense and common liberality. Is it 
 impossible to induce our countrymen to consider that 
 in India we find ancient religious systems, not only 
 venerable in the eyes of their professors, but exclu- 
 sively so? — far more so than any religion can be 
 which is not a theocracy, because it is implicated with 
 all the transactions of life. The levity with which 
 the devotedness of Hindoos and Mohammedans to 
 their religion is treated by many Christians on the 
 spot, and more at home, is astounding. We call their 
 constancy, as well as their bigotry, by all the bad 
 names we can apply ; and then we propose to make 
 Christians of them, without more or less counting the 
 cost of the attempt. There are probably few who 
 contemplate any direct coercion, in comparison with 
 those who take for granted that the natives can be 
 convinced of their own errors : but the proposals of 
 neither party should be attended to till they have 
 proved that they understand the difficulties of the 
 case. There can be no fear of the nation sanctioning 
 any scheme of religious coercion : but it is much to 
 be apprehended that the wisdom of the East India 
 Company in carefully guarding liberty of conscience 
 is far from being generally appreciated. How many 
 among us are aware of the extent in which the mind 
 of the Hindoo is pervaded by the ideas of his religion, 
 so that to make him a Christian requires nothing less 
 than the dissolving of all his associations, and the 
 reconstitution of his mental structure ? There is 
 
56 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 nothing in any modern faith at all like the funda- 
 mental character of the primitive religions which 
 absorbed the whole of human life into themselves. 
 And as for Mohammedanism, — how has any propa- 
 gandism ever succeeded against its own ? How can 
 the unintelligible fanaticism of the Prophet's followers 
 be dealt with by Christians who go out with no other 
 idea than pitying and saving the Mussulman? In 
 India, there are, according to the testimony of the 
 most scholarly Englishmen who have been there, men 
 of profound and extensive learning, with whom few 
 Europeans are qualified to converse within the range 
 of philosophy, history, and antiquities, and even 
 science : yet our zealots propose to make Christians 
 of such an order of men, just as we resolve to make 
 respectable shoe-blacks of boys from the Bagged 
 Schools — as a philanthropic enterprise, the issue of 
 which is at their own command. The assumption is 
 much the same as in the case of the missionary who 
 proposed to preach to the Mussulman subjects of 
 Rajah Brooke. After debating among themselves 
 the point of hearing him or not, the sensible fellows 
 made two proposals : — one, that the Englishman 
 should postpone his service till he understood their 
 language well enough to be secure against blunders 
 on subjects so solemn : and another, that he should, 
 in return, listen to what their doctors had to say. 
 The wrath of the missionary was great at the sugges- 
 tion that he had anything to learn from people whom 
 he came to teach and save. Too much like this is 
 the tone we encounter on all hands, except among 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 57 
 
 the best informed Anglo-Indians, when the religious 
 concerns of India are spoken of: and in forming a 
 plan of future rule, it will be necessary to exercise 
 the most vigilant care, if the liberties of the human 
 conscience are to be respected in future as they have 
 been in the past. 
 
 The plain rule of the case has been fairly exempli- 
 fied in the Company's policy ; — the rule that every 
 man shall have liberty, under the sole restriction of 
 his liberty not trenching on that of his neighbour. 
 Every man's civil rights must be absolutely unaffected 
 by his religious profession. By such impartiality 
 only can a European minority govern a vast Pagan 
 and Mohammedan majority. No one now seems to 
 advocate the early practice of countenancing popular 
 superstitions by affording Government aid, as in the 
 Juggernaut rites, or by permitting murder, under the 
 name of the Suttee. Wherever social wrong is done, 
 it must be stopped, whether it pleads a religious 
 sanction or not. If caste interferes with duty, either 
 the function or the caste-consideration must be given 
 up, because they are incompatible : in the same way 
 that proselyting officers must either give up their mili- 
 tary function or converting the natives, as the latter 
 business is irreconcileable with professional fidelity 
 in the service of the Company. Social security and 
 equal justice being provided for, and no man allowed 
 to sacrifice his neighbour to his own persuasions, the 
 most entire liberty of opinion and its profession ought 
 to be guaranteed, and must be the principle of our 
 policy, if we mean to retain as our fellow-subjects 
 
58 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 these tens of millions of so many faiths. Provision 
 will, in any case, be made for Christian worship and 
 instruction for the Europeans in India, and for any 
 accessions which may accrue : and Christian teachers 
 will, of course, have the same liberty of teaching and 
 preaching that those of any other faith will have : — 
 liberty bounded only by the claims of the public 
 peace. It will, no doubt, be determined that mis- 
 sionaries of any denomination shall be subject to some 
 test of their qualifications, before entering upon their 
 labours in so new a field. The churches will probably 
 look to this : but, whether they do or not, the State 
 must, if past experience is of any value to us. After 
 the Vellore mutiny, and the facts it brought out, of 
 the unfitness of some of the missionaries to address 
 the native mind and heart, it will be the fault of the 
 State if men who know no more of the Hindoo and 
 Mussulman mind than of the language of birds, are 
 permitted to excite either ridicule or passion among 
 native hearers. Now that we have a Livingstone 
 among us, we shall be inexcusable to allow the most 
 primitive races to be attacked, under the counte- 
 nance of the State, by any other method than that of 
 civilization, which Livingstone declares and shows to 
 be the only effectual and safe road to the object: and, 
 in the far more difficult case of ancient nations, who 
 were socially organized while our ancestors were bar- 
 barians, there is really no chance of getting on at all 
 but by the principle of unrestricted liberty of con- 
 science. 
 
 We have to deal, in the Hindoo case, with a 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 59 
 
 paganism so antique that its members are incalculably 
 remote from the state of progress attained by the 
 Hebrews and other first recipients of the Christian 
 dispensation ; and, in the Mohammedan case, with a 
 regime more modern than Christianity, prevailing far 
 more extensively, and naturally believed by its members 
 to be a great advance upon it. It is inconceivable 
 that the small intermediate sect — the Christians in 
 India — should overbear either of the others with any 
 success ; and the attempt would doubtless cause our 
 expulsion. The natural and hopeful way is the same 
 in Asia and in Africa — to recommend the higher 
 faith by its fruits, on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 to prepare the native mind for its reception by estab- 
 lishing those modes of life and habits of thought 
 and feeling which are its necessary antecedents. 
 Thus, the Christians in Hindostan must have the 
 amplest means of worship and instruction provided 
 by a Christian mother-country : and the native pro- 
 fessors must be free to hold, practise, and avow their 
 respective faiths, without let, hindrance, or molesta- 
 tion. If any of the parties should desire to encroach 
 on the liberty of any other, such encroachment must 
 be prevented. The conditions will seem hard to the 
 two most modern sects, while the old pagans no more 
 desire to make converts than the Jews : but all must 
 come under the same rule — of liberty without license 
 — in this fundamental matter, if the peace of society 
 is to be preserved. Equal civil rights, amidst all 
 diversities in religion, must be the principle of the 
 case ; and it includes the necessity of all state func- 
 
60 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 tionaries, civil and military, abstaining from inter- 
 ference with any man's religious persuasion. 
 
 7. Scope and Liberty of Industry. — There must, 
 again, be impartial liberty of action in industrial 
 enterprises and affairs, and in all the lawful activities 
 of life. Under the old despotisms, men traded by 
 stealth, or at least hid their gains ; and, as a general 
 rule, they concealed all that was possible of their 
 doings and movements. Under the early British, 
 every native was the slave of every foreigner he came 
 in the way of. The case has steadily improved ; but 
 the monopoly doctrines of the East India Company 
 suppressed the activities of the inhabitants for a long 
 period, and allowed only a very slow development at 
 last. Free trade has done as much already as could 
 be anticipated, under the peculiar circumstances : but 
 we have yet to provide for the new phase — the free 
 colonization of India. The risks introduced by that 
 free colonization (risks inferior only to those of inter- 
 dicting it) must be met by allowing to the natives 
 the freest participation in our enterprises, or liberty 
 for their own. The only way to reconcile their 
 superstition to our material inventions is to allow 
 them to regard them as matters of business. The 
 only way to render our presence acceptable is to 
 make it the means of welfare to them. In that view, 
 they desire and adhere to our rule at present, aware 
 how much worse off they would be under any native 
 princes : but, if we further desire to make them good 
 fellow-subjects, we must secure to them perfect liberty 
 of industrial action. Our own national interest de- 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 61 
 
 mands this, for the development of India requires 
 all the resources that can be mustered : and when 
 once we see a sufficient number of native capitalists 
 aiding the railways and internal navigation, and 
 native landholders irrigating and otherwise improv- 
 ing, and native merchants trading without dread of 
 imposts or peculiar visitation of any kind, our footing 
 there will be more secure than any amount of military 
 force could ever make it. 
 
 These considerations lead us on to the two remain- 
 ing constitutional advantages which may be enjoyed, 
 short of a representative system. 
 
 8. Civil State of Society. — Recent events have 
 shown us the consequences of adopting an old-world 
 regime of a military quality in India. It seemed the 
 necessary mode while we were reluctantly, and, as it 
 were, by a fatality, acquiring our territories by wars 
 which nobody entered into willingly. To meet the 
 necessity of the case, the Government of India orga- 
 nized its new subjects into the means of acquiring 
 more dominion. It seemed to be the fit and natural 
 use to make of men reared as our sepoys were, and 
 ruled as they then must be. The method answered 
 while military employment was abundant and pressing. 
 When there was no more conquest on hand, and the 
 soldiers were turned back upon themselves, they broke 
 out against their commanders and the whole English 
 race. Our lesson ought to be easily read. Some say, 
 most people say — that we can henceforth hold India 
 only by military force ; and that, as this cannot be 
 done by British soldiers only, we must work the native 
 
62 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 tribes against each other. We must, we are assured, 
 revert more decisively than ever to a military policy. 
 
 Is it so ? Must we retrogress in our Asiatic while 
 we advance in our European policy ? Cannot a military 
 control of turbulent elements of society be effected 
 without exchanging the commercial for the worn-out 
 military habit of society ? The rebels of the present 
 insurrection, we must remember, constitute only the 
 fifteen-hundredth part of the population of our fellow- 
 subjects in India. Is this a proportion which should 
 change the principle and method of society in a rising 
 empire ? It seems more probable that we should 
 reconcile our difficulties by the development of the 
 peaceful arts, and by an equal distribution of commer- 
 cial facilities and benefits, than by any military system 
 which Englishmen could make up their minds to 
 institute and uphold. If we could now have what we 
 should like best, would it not be a territory put in the 
 way of progressive development, with good internal 
 navigation, railways, advancing agriculture, and ex- 
 panding commerce ; the restless element engrossed 
 in industrial activity, and the apathetic roused to it; 
 while thebarbaric hill tribes, irreclaimable from war (if 
 there are any such), should be kept well in hand as 
 the defenders of the whole polity from external aggres- 
 sions ? Is such a scheme really and totally impracti- 
 cable ? We ought to be very sure that it is, before 
 we consign our Indian empire to the old military 
 methods, which we are not likely to revive successfully 
 in this late century. We must remember that the 
 sepoys did not peremptorily devote themselves to a 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 63 
 
 military life. It was we who gave them the destina- 
 tion: and when we consider how many of them are 
 drawn from Oude alone, and what large areas have 
 yielded very few soldiers, we may have hope that it 
 will not he necessary to step back into a bygone age 
 for a pattern of a Government which will suit our 
 Asiatic dependency. 
 
 The native States ought, in fact, to be our warning 
 against that barbaric mode of life. There, as in 
 Europe in the Middle Ages, every man who can arm 
 any followers does so, and makes war wherever he 
 pleases, the armed men of the community being 
 responsible only to their own chiefs, and not to the 
 sovereign ; so that all protection to peaceful industry 
 is out of the question. British rule long ago raised 
 its subjects out of this stage into the higher one, in 
 which the soldiery are in immediate connection with 
 the State. The late revolt will probably lead on our 
 Indian fellow-subjects another step. The whole 
 country is covered with forts, the native princes count- 
 ing their strongholds by hundreds. Our best method 
 will probably be to keep up, in entire efficiency, a con- 
 siderable fortress in every central position, and as 
 many more as may be necessary for the protection of 
 the people near the frontier lines of native rulers : 
 and to make the defence of the country so distinctly a 
 special business of Government, and the function of a 
 professional soldiery, that no excuse for military action 
 shall be left for anybody else. The time may come 
 when the general population may be allowed to carry 
 arms ; but within a year of the breaking out of the 
 
64 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 mutiny it is not likely that anybody will advocate 
 such a license, unless it be where the population is 
 scattered and thin in rural districts where there is 
 danger from wild beasts. The peculiarity of the case 
 suggests the necessity of a military police, the choice 
 and organization of which will be one of the most 
 difficult tasks remaining to be achieved. 
 
 Another difficulty will be drawing the line between 
 the classes who may and those who may not be per- 
 mitted to carry arms. European settlers must have 
 entire freedom to do so, one would think, provided 
 they were registered, or in some way rendered respon- 
 sible for the use of weapons, in districts where the 
 public opinion and the ready police and law of towns 
 are not present to impose the check which all men 
 need. The social condition of the Southern States of 
 the American Union, where men of our own kindred 
 live in the presence of a dark-skinned race, is a suffi- 
 cient warning to all Europeans. . The practice of 
 carrying arms not only makes men tyrannous to the 
 unarmed negroes, but quarrelsome to the last intensity 
 among themselves. I have myself passed from town 
 to town, from plantation to plantation, from State to 
 State, finding the highway of life strewn with victims 
 from the murderous tone of mind and cruel code of 
 honour, which had grown into a sort of insanity in the 
 stage of society in which citizens carry arms. That 
 was above twenty years ago, and the evil has increased 
 so fearfully of late years that a slave-holding clergy 
 preach on the commandment not to kill, and hold up 
 from the pulpit the statistics of murder in their States 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 65 
 
 in contrast with their countrymen of the free States, 
 and with every other civilized society. There is only 
 a distant resemblance between the case of slaveowners 
 and that of British settlers in India, it is true ; but in 
 the one point, of the few being of a superior race and 
 culture to the many, there is a sufficient analogy to 
 suggest extreme care in determining the question of an 
 armed, or an unarmed, or a partially armed population. 
 It is not a question to be argued at length in this 
 place, where the object is merely to show, among the 
 constitutional advantages which India may enjoy, that 
 of a definite establishment in a civic state of society, 
 the military function being only for defence, and alto- 
 gether the affair of the State. This has always been 
 the theory, and long the practice, of the Indian 
 Government. The care demanded now is to see that 
 the policy is more conspicuously recognised and carried 
 out than ever, instead of being reversed on account 
 of the calamities of last year. It is true, those cala- 
 mities place before us a clear alternative : and if we 
 do not resolve on a strenuous working of a pacific and 
 industrial polity, we must embrace the other alterna- 
 tive of a thorough -going military system. Till we 
 have tried and failed, we have no right to doubt that 
 the ordinary effects will follow from the opening of the 
 productive resources of the country, the encourage- 
 ment of industry, and the security of property. 
 Nothing that has happened throws any doubt into the 
 case in the minds of rational men, however clearly 
 they may see the necessity of cowing rebellion, and 
 putting down violence by the strong hand. But, as 
 
 F 
 
66 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 long as we see that there are any among us who rush 
 on from this admission into a notion that India cannot 
 be governed without a falling back into a military 
 system of society, it is necessary to be on our guard 
 against a lapse as shocking and mischievous as the 
 similar retrogression by which Napoleon set back the 
 fortunes of the European nations for centuries. 
 
 9. Equable and Equitable Taxation, — There is no 
 respect in which the people of India have been more 
 thoroughly excluded from the benefits of constitu- 
 tional government than in that of Taxation. To be 
 equably and equitably taxed, it is not necessary that 
 the accounts of the country should be submitted to 
 the people, as is done under a representative system. 
 They have never been, more or less, the constituents 
 of government, nor otherwise concerned in the taxes 
 than as having to pay them. They have never known 
 what the money was for, or where it went, or why 
 they had to pay so much as precluded all hope of 
 rising in life. They must inevitably suppose that, as 
 in the case of all neighbouring States, the great men 
 lived upon the little ones ; and that there was no 
 hope of any time when the many poor would not be 
 hard pressed to pamper the few rich. Surely this 
 notion might be obliterated, and some constitutional 
 ideas introduced, by a renovation of the system of 
 taxation, according to the improved knowledge and 
 enlightened views of our own time. Under this 
 head, we are concerned only with the political, and 
 not the social, aspect of the taxation question ; and 
 all that need be said at the moment is that much 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 67 
 
 may be done towards educating a backward people, 
 and attaching a disaffected one, by so varying the 
 character of taxes, and apportioning their levy, as to 
 show what objects they are intended to answer, and 
 for whose benefit, in the long run, they are designed. 
 As Sir Charles Metcalfe observed, a quarter of a 
 century ago, such a sacrifice of revenue was, perhaps, 
 never made by any Government as by the Bengal 
 Government in 1793, in the permanent settlement of 
 the land revenue. But it did no good, he adds, in 
 regard to the minds and fortunes of the people at 
 large. It merely paid over the proceeds into the 
 hands of " individuals who had no title to it, without 
 any beneficial effect on the public interests, as far as 
 is perceptible to common observation." * No doubt, 
 the people at large believed, both before and after, 
 that their earnings were taken to enrich some power- 
 ful person or class ; and it would be news to them, 
 even now, that taxes may be, and ought to be, levied 
 only to pay for the mechanism and security of the 
 social state, so that every contributor purchases, 
 when he pays his tax, something more valuable to 
 him than money can buy in any other form. If the 
 fearful problem of the real incidence and true dis- 
 tribution of the land-tax in India could be so far 
 solved as to permit a re-arrangement, and a consider- 
 able reduction by means of new or increased taxation 
 of other kinds, the old associations in the native 
 mind could be dissolved, and fresh views would grow 
 up, inducing more or less of a constitutional habit of 
 
 * Papers and Correspondence of Lord Metcalfe, p. 167. 
 
 f2 
 
68 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 thought. Any noticcahle influx of European settlers, 
 and all such developments of industry as must accom- 
 pany the introduction of new arts of life, will render 
 new methods of taxation necessary. However great 
 may be the extension of agriculture, commerce and 
 the arts of life must increase faster, and the land 
 revenue become more and more unjust by tending 
 to either extremes — by being made to bear the chief 
 burden of the State expenses if left unfixed, and by 
 contributing too little under an improved state of 
 things through being already permanently settled. 
 There was every .reason why, before the days of 
 modern political economy, a corporation governing a 
 swarming agricultural population, and hedging them 
 in from intercourse with the world without, should 
 levy their revenue from the land, thinking it enough 
 to be responsible to their constituents for the method 
 and the proceeds. But those times are gone by ; and 
 we have to prepare for a wholly new state of society, 
 in which it is probable that the labouring class will 
 relinquish the land more and more to a richer order ; 
 and in which fundamental changes will be wrought 
 by the establishment of a vast and growing domestic 
 and foreign commerce. Though land will become far 
 more valuable than ever before, it will be less ex- 
 clusively so. There will be some other option than 
 the existing one, — between landholding and hoarding 
 silver. Then will be the time for varying the popular 
 notion of what the public revenue is, and communi- 
 cating some idea of what it is for. Even a population 
 steeped in the prejudices of caste may learn to con- 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 69 
 
 ceive of salaried office, and of functionaries selected 
 for fitness ; and the view of institutions as express 
 arrangements for the general good, to be paid for by 
 a general contribution, will become in time familiar. 
 By that time, though the people may be as blind as 
 ever to the doctrine that representation should be 
 co-equal with taxation (the doctrine which the Com- 
 pany so dreaded their learning from America, if 
 settlers were allowed to enter the country), they will 
 have outgrown their old barbaric idea of taxation, 
 and may thenceforth enter more and more into a 
 constitutional view of the whole matter. Every man, 
 of any race, knows when he is made to pay more 
 than his neighbour, or more than leaves him enough 
 to subsist upon. Starting from this point, under an 
 expanding system of government and civilization, he 
 may attain to something like a European knowledge 
 of the relations between the State and its tax-payers, 
 before he thinks of claiming a voice in apportioning 
 the levy and distribution of the public money. 
 
 Preparation already Wrought. — These seem to be 
 the main particulars by which the political aim is 
 to be pursued. Before we turn to the social, it may 
 be well to console ourselves by the thought of the 
 very considerable extent in which the work is already 
 achieved. The disinterested and benevolent aims of 
 the East India Company have wrought well upon the 
 native mind, through all the obstacles arising from 
 their exclusive methods, by the hard insolence gene- 
 rated in the majority of Europeans by the mere pre- 
 sence of an inferior race, and by the unfortunate 
 
70 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 necessity (as to which the Company was the most 
 sceptical of all parties) of conquering the peninsula 
 throughout its length and breadth. If, in spite of 
 these obstacles — living, till lately, under the most 
 stringent bureaucracy that was ever heard of, treated 
 as brutes by nine in ten of the Europeans they saw, 
 and feeling in turn the ravages of war in every pro- 
 vince — the people have attained a thorough practical 
 trust in their security under us as to life and property ; 
 if they freely appeal to law wherever there are courts, 
 and extol our "justice" while abhorring everything 
 else about us ; if they, till recently, understood that 
 their respective religions were never interfered with, 
 that we desired an improved agriculture, and fur- 
 nished new means of intercourse and trade, and 
 preferred seeing men working at home to fighting 
 elsewhere, surely a great preparation is made for 
 further progress. The fundamental constitutional 
 ideas are there ; and where they entered the rest may 
 follow. The more freely they enter, and the more 
 firmly they take hold, the more surely shall we handle 
 our great Eastern empire. If we were the most 
 exclusively military power in Europe, we could not 
 attain so safe a grasp by military methods as by that 
 sort of tenure which, at this hour, amidst all the 
 incitements of a military revolt, leaves the people of 
 India generally best satisfied to let us remain. They 
 are tilling their fields and paying their taxes in multi- 
 tudes, while the soldiery are straining every nerve to 
 expel us, and the criminal class are plundering 
 wherever they can lay their hands on booty, and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 71 
 
 indulging in a license of wickedness which does not 
 seem to spread beyond the two revolted classes — those 
 revolted classes constituting, as has been said, only 
 the fifteen-hundredth part of the population of our 
 Indian empire. A people quiet and staunch, for any 
 reason, under such circumstances, must be admitted 
 to have entered upon political existence. Time and 
 wise experiment must prove what further they are 
 capable of. Can a course of such wise experiment be 
 decided on, and the means organized, on the summons 
 of the Minister, in the Parliamentary session following 
 the revolt, and before we have disposed of it ? The 
 first of our wise endeavours should be to gain time. 
 
 Social Objects. 
 
 The first question under this head is the coloniza- 
 tion of India. What ought we to wish ? What 
 ought we to do ? 
 
 We shall gain little light from the past about this. 
 At first, " interlopers " were abhorred by the Com- 
 pany, as poachers are abhorred by game-preservers, 
 and " mean whites " by American slaveholders. The 
 case explains itself. When, at length, the Company 
 became aware of its responsibilities as a territorial 
 power, a genuine and humane interest on behalf of 
 the people grew up, which induced a dread of their 
 being ill-used by chance settlers on the one hand, and, 
 on the other, made discontented under the Company's 
 rule by tidings of revolts and strifes between other 
 peoples and their Governments. Then, the rule of 
 exclusion was relaxed ; and, finally, the country was 
 
72 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 thrown open for settlement, as it remains now. The 
 argument is no longer whether Englishmen can go 
 and live in India if they please ; for to reimpose obso- 
 lete restrictions is out of the question in our age of 
 the world. The point for consideration is, what can 
 be done to render such immigration most safe and 
 beneficial to the native population. The case of the 
 immigrants will come under notice afterwards. 
 
 1 . Free Colonization, — One of the chief benefits of 
 our new public works in Hindostan is that they afford 
 admirable centres for the settlement of Europeans. 
 They are natural centres to begin with ; and sim- 
 plicity is the first virtue in such a case. Next, they 
 reduce the speculative element to the utmost ; for 
 every man who goes will, in the first instance, have 
 his proper business, which will open the way for a 
 safe sort of speculation, grounded on the formation of 
 roads and the improvement of land. From each rail- 
 way station, for instance, European settlements will 
 radiate to an extent proportioned to the importance 
 of the market thus rendered accessible. The groups 
 of immigrants collected round the head of the Ganges 
 canal, and near the tea plantations formed on the slopes 
 of the Himalaya, are patterns of hundreds or thou- 
 sands more which will grow up as our improvements 
 extend. No question can be more grave than that 
 which is first suggested under these circumstances : — 
 What terms are these settlers and the natives to be on? 
 
 Nobody at home can give an answer to this which 
 it would be at all safe to rely on ; for much depends 
 on a fact which cannot be satisfactorily ascertained — 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 73 
 
 What the morals and manners of the Company's ser- 
 vants towards the natives have actually been. There 
 has been every gradation of conduct, probably, as in 
 every other class of men : but the conditions of the 
 case are opposite, according to the general profligacy 
 and insolence, or the general sobriety and dignity, of 
 the English officials at the stations throughout Hin- 
 dostan. According to one authority, an able corre- 
 spondent of the Times, official men were once in the 
 habit of surrounding themselves in their quarters 
 with disreputable women and their rapacious and 
 profligate male connections ; and of steeping them- 
 selves in sensual indulgence of all kinds, while treating 
 as brutes the natives who either ministered to their 
 vicious pleasures or remonstrated against them ; 
 whereas, says the same authority, all this is much 
 amended now ; the Europeans have become more 
 sober and decorous, and generally considerate, while 
 further divided from the people by that very improve- 
 ment. Others tell us that such profligacy was never 
 more than an exception ; that half-caste children were 
 rare ; and that officials, civil and military, had too 
 much to do at their posts, and too little liking for 
 Hindoo or Mohammedan companions, to cultivate 
 their acquaintance for virtuous or vicious reasons. 
 There is probably a good deal of truth in both state- 
 ments ; and the case is one which exemplifies the 
 diversities of human character. The one particular 
 in which all the accounts seem to agree is that of the 
 insolence of tone and manner with which natives are 
 habitually treated. This is confirmed by all sorts of 
 
74 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 testimony. Anglo-Indians who come here on furlough 
 tell us that nothing can be done with the natives but 
 by the most imperious language and conduct — just as 
 Nile travellers used to say (and say too often now) 
 that nothing can be done with the Arabs but by 
 blows, and as the American cotton-planter declares 
 the whip to be the natural motive of the negro. 
 Bayard Taylor, from the United States, and other 
 foreign travellers in our Indian territory, express 
 amazement and disgust at the creeping subservience 
 of the natives before every white face, and the auda- 
 cious absolutism by which such abjectness is created. 
 Again, the last chapter of Lutfullah's narrative 
 discloses his perpetual surprise at being politely and 
 kindly treated in England ; and, when asked by the 
 Prince Consort what he admired most in England, 
 the Indian stranger replied " that the civility of the 
 people of high rank and station was the thing most 
 admirable "* in his view. As time and change have 
 proved that negroes work better without the whip, and 
 that Arabs navigate the Nile better without kicks 
 and blows, we may hope to see that in Hindostan, 
 as in the rest of the world, " Courtesy is a power." 
 The experiment seems likely to be tried first, and 
 most extensively, by the introduction of settlers for 
 commercial and agricultural purposes. They go 
 among the people — with less sense of responsibility 
 than the official man, it is true, but also with far less 
 class-prejudice and traditional narrowness. More- 
 over, they are there, not to rule over their neighbours, 
 
 * Autobiography of Lutfullah, p. 418. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 75 
 
 but to employ them, and, so far, to depend on them ; 
 and this sort of connection has a powerful civilising 
 influence. As is the Yorkshire manufacturer of our 
 day to the deputy of Cortes in Mexico, so is the 
 indigo-planter in Central India to the collector of the 
 last century, and (as there is too much reason to 
 believe) in some districts even now. The best hope 
 is in the settler getting on so well with his neighbours, 
 as to shame the insolent official, if such there be, out 
 of his ill-manners. There, is a broad basis for a good 
 understanding between the lay settler and the natives, 
 from which everything might be hoped if no arbitrary 
 impediments were raised. There are many rich men 
 among the various sects of India, who will impart 
 their capital more and more freely as enterprise 
 extends ; and there are multitudes of wretchedly poor 
 men who will first be glad to work for pay, and 
 in time enjoy the natural benefits of an expanding 
 industry. As masters of the arts of life, and employers 
 of labour, and creators of convenience and abundance, 
 our countrymen who go out as planters, manufac- 
 turers, or merchants have a power of social good 
 lodged in their hands such as few men in our age of 
 the world are endowed with ; and it is in pursuit of 
 their own fortunes that this power is to be exercised. 
 Surely such a case is full of hope and cheer ! 
 
 The indispensable requisites to success in the great 
 experiment are, first, that in all important respects 
 the settler and the natives should live under the same 
 law, whatever by-play may be permitted to the natives 
 on account of traditional customs and sectional fancies. 
 
76 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 As all must be equal before the law in the matter of 
 allegiance to the authorities of the State, so all must 
 be equal before the law in regard to security of pro- 
 perty, the observance of contracts, liberty of industry, 
 the liability of debtors, and, in short, all the parti- 
 culars which concern them as industrial fellow-citizens. 
 Next, that taxation should be impartial. Next, that 
 the means of full and free intercourse should exist 
 from the time when the relation begins. This last 
 requisite depends chiefly on the settler. It is a more 
 feasible thing for the comparatively few immigrants 
 to learn the native language of their selected locality, 
 than for the multitude of natives to learn English ; 
 and especially after the establishment of such an 
 abominable jargon as the servile classes speak for 
 English. It will be a matter for consideration how, 
 while immigration is left free and open, particular 
 encouragement can be given to such qualifications 
 (a knowledge of the vernacular, for one) as are 
 indispensable to the formation of a genuine alliance, 
 a true fellow-citizenship, between the British and 
 native inhabitants. The large and promising schemes 
 of cotton growing, of inland navigation in India, of 
 exploitation of the country in all departments of 
 production, render this problem important in the 
 highest degree. It is probable that a sound indus- 
 trial and commercial connection may make India ours, 
 really and truly, soundly and for a great length of time : 
 whereas, if the British go as soldiers on the one hand, 
 and slave-driving planters on the other, we shall to a 
 certainty lose India, and in a thoroughly disastrous 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 77 
 
 manner. Our middle class men will decide the case, 
 if the Government afford them scope to do so. Equal 
 laws, and security of property and industry being 
 provided, it will be for private individuals or com- 
 mercial bodies to decide whether they will become 
 acquainted and live on friendly terms with their 
 neighbours, or, by merely getting out of them what 
 they can, leave the ignorant pagan and the fanatical 
 Mussulman to be possessed by the old seven devils of 
 prejudice and hatred which cannot come out but 
 with much rending and tearing. 
 
 2. Tenure of Land. — The fact of an increasing 
 colonization of India brings us immediately upon the 
 scene of difficulties at which every heart sinks. Who 
 is not weary and sad at the mere mention of land 
 tenures in India ? Who will undertake to say that any 
 British Parliament is qualified to decide even which 
 of the three systems of deriving revenue is the best 
 in any or every part of India, or how far it is possible 
 for any of them to work on much longer ; or how any 
 one of them can be best exchanged for a new method ? 
 How far is our existing Parliament qualified even for 
 committing the decision to any specified tribunal? 
 Considering the earnestness with which the land 
 tenures and revenues of India were discussed seventy 
 and sixty years ago, how often the subject has come 
 up since, and what highly-qualified judges have taken 
 opposite sides, and drawn opposite conclusions from 
 the mass of Indian facts, is it conceivable that a wise 
 system can be inaugurated by our imperial Goverment ? 
 or that any British Parliament or Minister can select, 
 
78 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 within a few weeks, any authority which can he trusted 
 with the decision of such a question ? It is needless 
 to say that in this place, it would be useless even to 
 speculate on the right policy. The object is not to 
 discuss the question, but to gain time for due consider- 
 ation; and, with that view, it is enough to say that 
 the whole case of land-settlement in India is intimately 
 connected with those of free European immigration 
 and the prosecution of public works. If this had 
 been duly understood for half a century past, much 
 unreasonable censure of the East India Company 
 would have been spared, and we should have been 
 aware that to settle India requires some further 
 arrangement than taking off the old prohibition. The 
 land tenures in India are various, and some of them 
 so peculiar that, in certain neighbourhoods, it would 
 be difficult to show how new comers could sit down to 
 their agricultural work without injustice to some 
 inhabitants, or discontent with the Government on 
 account of its levy of revenue. It is certain that some 
 fundamental changes must be made, if free immi- 
 gration is to take place : and those changes will 
 necessarily involve the destinies of India to such an 
 extent that it is fearful to think of our danger of 
 precipitation in legislating on the subject, or in 
 confiding the power of management to any individual 
 who can be proposed by the Minister. 
 
 To colonize India it is necessarv that the new 
 residents should be able to acquire land. No thorough 
 exploitation of the country can be efFected if the 
 improvers cannot obtain possession of land. If long 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 79 
 
 leases would do for a time, it could be only by the 
 lessee being at once master of the soil for the term of 
 his lease, and satisfied with the method and degree of 
 his liability to Government. Now, who owns the 
 land in India ? That is the first question. In order 
 to answer it, we may ask, how is it that some people 
 call Lord Cornwallis " the great creator of private 
 property in land in India," while others, of high 
 authority too, declare that what he created was 
 " private property in the state revenue," and that he 
 was " the great destroyer of private property in land ? " 
 He could show a body of new proprietors ; but others 
 could point to hundreds or thousands of dispossessed 
 owners for each one that he had created. So said 
 Metcalfe, and so have others declared who knew 
 India better than Cornwallis did when he was penning 
 his scheme at sea; that is, between the Cape and 
 Point de Galle. 
 
 Who owned the land before Cornwallis was born ? 
 It may be said, in a general way, that the land 
 belonging to a village was, or might be, held in ways 
 at least as various as the land in an English county. 
 Some considerable portion was actually owned ; other 
 portions were permanently occupied by right, without 
 being owned ; others were held on lease, or for regular 
 periods ; while others again were occupied by tenants 
 at will. If this had been all, no Englishman would 
 have dreamed of creating a new proprietory, and 
 bringing all the existing occupants under one head as 
 tenants. But the relation of Government to the land 
 obscured all the native relations which lay beneath, 
 
80 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 and rendered the questions of land tenures and revenue 
 as complex and excruciating as they now are. 
 
 It is customary to call the Government the rent- 
 holder of India ; from which the transition is easy to 
 the idea of Government being the landowner of India. 
 If Government were really so, the task before us 
 would be much simplified ; for it would be easy to 
 open the country to purchase by capable proprietors, 
 and to reserve enough land to maintain the Govern- 
 ment according to the ideal of the economists, which 
 they cannot persuade the Americans to immortalize 
 in practice. But in strict truth the Government has 
 nothing to do with rent. It is a share of the gross 
 produce which Government takes. The question of 
 the amount cannot be entered upon here. The 
 compassionate observers of the fortunes of the ryot 
 say, it is not less than four-fifths that the Government 
 and the zemindar take from the cultivator ; while the 
 profession is that Government takes one third in one 
 place, one half in another, and so on. Metcalfe's 
 statement is " the tax is generally so high that it 
 cannot well be higher." It has been the constant 
 endeavour of the East India Company, for a long 
 course of years, to reduce the amount as much as is 
 consistent with the maintenance of the requisite 
 revenue : and Metcalfe's papers on the subject were in 
 part called forth by a proposal, on the part of the 
 Court of Directors, to let the tax remain fixed on 
 certain lands, though the cultivator (owner or lessee) 
 should devote his field to the growth of sugar-cane or 
 other more valuable crops than those on which the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 81 
 
 estimate was calculated. This well meant proposal 
 was proved to be unjust and impolitic ; and we need 
 only make the passing remark, that we see here one 
 of the mischievous effects of taxation in the form of 
 a division of produce. Other mischiefs and per- 
 plexities are obvious enough. Shall the estimate be 
 made by calculating the comparative value of soils ? 
 or by scrutiny of the crops ? Under the permanent 
 settlement, the zemindar class had, for the most part, 
 no right, beyond the arbitrary will of the Government, 
 to the ownership of the soil, while, of the ryots under 
 them, some were the hereditary owners of the fields 
 they cultivated, others had an hereditary right of 
 occupation, and the rest held leases from other owners 
 than the " manufactured proprietors," as we often 
 hear them called. All this was done long ago ; and 
 so was Munro's revolution, in which the middle class 
 was swept away with as little ceremony, leaving the 
 cultivators a prey to swarms of native valuers and col- 
 lectors, who made their own profit out of every field 
 they taxed ; and so, indeed, was the more promising 
 intermediate system, — the village system of the North- 
 West provinces, where the headman is made responsible 
 for the revenue, and where, it is feared, the levy is 
 made by means of atrocious cruelty, inflicted by 
 natives on natives. These arrangements also were 
 instituted long ago ; and all we have to do with 
 them here is to draw an inference or two from their 
 operation. We see what has become of the old 
 owners of the soil. Some of them are still owners ; 
 some of the deprived are tenants for terms; and some 
 
 G 
 
82 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 are tenants at will. The bulk of them are exces- 
 sively poor. Kammohun Eoy told us, thirty years 
 ago, that one might take one's stand anywhere in the 
 country, and find that within a circle of a hundred 
 miles there was probably not one man, outside the 
 zemindar class, who was in independent circumstances, 
 or even possessed of the comforts of life. There are 
 literally millions of inhabitants who, eating rice, 
 and clothed with a mere cotton cloth, cannot live — 
 much less accumulate. Their only wealth, hereditary 
 or acquired — their silver, hoarded as money or orna- 
 ments — has gone by degrees to pay their taxes, and 
 they can sink no lower. It is true, there has been 
 considerable improvement in various directions. Be- 
 fore Lord Cornwallis's death, he saw cultivation 
 rapidly extending ; and great progress has been since 
 made. In some regions, and especially in the North- 
 West provinces, the cultivators have, in great mea- 
 sure, ceased to sink, and occasionally assume the 
 aspect of a rising community. But how can any 
 considerable number of British agriculturists or 
 manufacturers sit down amidst such a state of things 
 as exists ? Are they to rent land of zemindars ? or 
 to buy up rights of permanent occupancy, with more 
 or less restriction as to the treatment of the soil ? or 
 to purchase of the actual owner ? — subject in all these 
 cases to hand over the main proportion of their pro- 
 duce to Government ? Is it conceivable that English 
 capitalists will put themselves under such a system ? 
 Will any Englishman improve the soil under the 
 liability to an increased levy at certain periods, heavy 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 83 
 
 in proportion to the improvements he has made? 
 Yet, can there he one system of taxation for the 
 natives, and another for immigrants ? That is out 
 of the question. Will there be a method of redemp- 
 tion provided ? Will there be a method of immediate 
 commutation ? These are among the questions 
 already discussed, and certain to be more earnestly 
 discussed ere long. Much may be learned from the 
 agriculturists among the few hundreds of existing 
 immigrants — the indigo and sugar planters — as to 
 the difficulty or otherwise of obtaining land in fee, 
 and of the liabilities belonging to tenancy, in regard 
 to both the owner and the Government. But this 
 inquiry will take much time. The only thing we 
 can be sure of beforehand is that enterprise cannot 
 prosper as it ought under other conditions than full 
 and free proprietorship of land, and an ascertained 
 and moderate amount of tax. Considering this, and 
 that the levy of the revenue is extremely oppressive 
 in its operation, while the country might yield a 
 fivefold or tenfold amount under a better develop- 
 ment of its resources, we may safely conclude that, 
 if we are to retain and settle the country, a total 
 change of system must take place, whether the 
 change be gradual or speedy ; and such a prospect 
 authorises a demand for delay. We have much to 
 learn yet before we are qualified to decide what shall 
 be done about the land and the revenue of India, 
 or to appoint any authority which may relieve us of 
 the decision. On one hand we hear that our country- 
 men will certainly buy out all the natives ere long ; 
 
 g 2 
 
84 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 on another, that the Government is the sole land- 
 owner, and that it will sell land to Englishmen gladly 
 enough ; and again, that British capitalists might 
 easily, as individuals or in companies, huy up 
 whole villages from Government, and make their 
 own terms with the inhabitants. One may hear 
 half-a-dozen such suggestions in a day ; and one may 
 see an " old Indian" smile at them all ; or, more 
 probably, sigh over the whole business, saying that, if 
 we break up the old foundations to plant down our 
 modern schemes, we shall simply lose India. It is 
 encouraging to remember that all the authors of the 
 existing land-settlement methods anticipated a free 
 colonization of India in the near future, and that 
 their defenders have ascribed all failures to that 
 particular disappointment : but it does not follow 
 that, the evils having been established for fifty or 
 sixty years, any colonization beginning now would 
 exclude them. Nor is it probable that, in the ad- 
 vanced state of British enterprise, enlightened capi- 
 talists would risk their interests and labours under 
 such a system as that of the land revenue of India, 
 though ignorant and rash adventurers might do so. 
 For the introduction of a sound class of British 
 capitalists, as well as for the future coalescence of 
 that class with the natives, and for the immediate 
 benefit of the natives themselves, it seems to be 
 desirable in the highest degree to institute a more 
 various, if not a wholly different method of taxation ; 
 or such a re-arrangement of the present method as 
 will make it in fact a new one. Europeans will not, 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 85 
 
 even if they can ever so easily, buy land which has 
 to yield up the largest obtainable amount of its pro- 
 duce to Government. An extensive immigration of 
 Europeans would make other methods of taxation 
 practicable and increasingly profitable. And, again, 
 the resources of India will not be fully developed 
 till Europeans do invest their capital largely there. 
 Such is the statement of the case, according to the 
 best authorities. Is the Minister willing, — is Parlia- 
 ment prepared, — to take such a case in hand, and settle 
 it in a single session ? But that the task cannot be 
 indefinitely deferred, any true statesman would decline 
 to say how long it must be before any British council 
 could be qualified to frame a new polity so difficult 
 in its character, and so serious in its results — what- 
 ever they may be. Any statesman who would invent 
 and carry a new system in the course of a few weeks 
 or months, should be prepared to lose India, after a 
 course of famines, revolts, and chaotic conflicts such 
 as English history has not to show, and Asiatic 
 experience can hardly match. 
 
 3. Revenue. — As to what would be the best method 
 of taxation in a country so full of natural wealth — so 
 vast, and so variously peopled — the first fact which 
 presents itself is that there is yet a prodigious amount 
 of waste lands. There are, on the one hand, wild 
 tracts which seem to have been always uninhabited, 
 though fertile ; and, on the other, there are lapsed 
 territories, once covered with towns and villages, 
 and rich with produce, which might be reclaimed. 
 
86 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 Wherever any important public work has been com- 
 pleted, production immediately increases, and popu- 
 lation thickens fast. It was the policy of the Company 
 to discourage the sale or letting of waste land at low 
 prices to the native residents in Hindostan, because it 
 was already difficult enough to levy the revenue from 
 each village; and it would become impossible if, 
 instead of tilling the fields at home, the cultivators 
 should wander away to the wastes. But it might be 
 quite another thing with a European class of custo- 
 mers. The undisputed theory of a perfect taxation is 
 that, at the outset of the political existence of any 
 State, a reserve of lands should be made for the pur- 
 poses of Government ; the perpetual increase in the 
 rent, consequent on the thickening of the population, 
 being adequate to the increased expenses from the 
 same source. As no State is aware of its own 
 beginning, and good lands are all appropriated before 
 the inhabitants entertain the question of a polity, the 
 experiment is ordinarily regarded as an impracticable 
 one. May it not be otherwise in this case ? Whose 
 are the wastes in India? We find them spoken of 
 as the property of Government. If so, why not 
 dispose of them — not for the sake of a stated propor- 
 tion of the produce, but on lease for long terms, and 
 to lessees who would develope their fertility ? It 
 would have to be considered how far such lands lay 
 from the railroad, and whether they could be brought 
 within the compass of public works and the reach of 
 markets. Many points would have to be considered : 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 87 
 
 but here is one method of diverging from the practice 
 of levying proportions of the produce — the nominal 
 and real levies being very unlike each other. 
 
 According to the fundamental principles of taxation, 
 direct taxes are better than indirect ; they should be 
 as equally distributed as possible, and they should be 
 paid out of income and not out of capital. The two 
 last conditions are practically violated in India to a 
 most serious extent, even if the first is not. Probably 
 the headman of the village makes everybody pay 
 something, whether the householders have land or 
 not ; but it is certain that the richer landowners 
 exact from the peasants a good deal more than their 
 dues to Government, and also that the hoards of 
 millions of the people have melted away, and their 
 possessions been mortgaged, pawned, and lost, to pay 
 their taxes. It may be questioned whether a poll-tax 
 would work so ill for the payers as the land-revenue 
 system. Assessed taxes on articles of necessity, con- 
 venience, or enjoyment, could ^apply only to the more 
 opulent of the natives ; while imposts on any species 
 of industry, or on any industrial materials, are bad in 
 principle. It would be a pity to introduce any duties 
 on commodities, even if the state of commerce would 
 justify such a system. To leave industry free, and 
 allow commodities to be supplied at their natural 
 price, must favour the wealth of the country, and, 
 therefore, the maintenance of the Government, more 
 than any honest, direct taxation, could injure it, 
 among a people accustomed to a direct taxation, suc- 
 ceeding to a constant liability to pillage. These are 
 
88 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 points for consideration not to be hurried over — for 
 the welfare of future generations, and, possibly, the 
 civilization of Asia, may depend on them — but to be 
 discussed with abundant hopefulness, because the 
 whole debt of the country, and any amount of reve- 
 nue that can ever be required, are a mere trifle in 
 comparison with the wealth which might be obtained 
 by a very moderate application of enterprise, skill, 
 prudence, and benevolence. If, under existing disad- 
 vantages, the country yields a revenue of nearly 
 30,000,000/., what might it not do when we and 
 other European nations go there for cotton, sugar, 
 dyes, and timber; for grains, seeds, gums, opium, 
 hides, silks, and various manufactures ; for tea, wine, 
 fruits, fibrous substances, and much besides ? When 
 the rivers show their long lines of flat-boats laden 
 with produce, and the railways their waggon-trains of 
 commodities, and the plains are covered with crops, 
 and the hills resound with the axe which lays low the 
 finest timber in the world, will it be any difficult 
 matter to pay off a debt of 56,000,000/., or the 
 interest of it, or to provide thirty or forty millions 
 yearly for the support of Government ? A more hope- 
 ful prospect never lay before a council of statesmen 
 than that of providing a state-income for India, if the 
 money were all. 
 
 4. Improvement in Civic Relations. — Our Indian 
 fellow-subjects, in the mass, might well think that 
 the money is all, by what they know of us. Multi- 
 tudes of them have no other idea of the relation 
 of India to the English than that the one pays and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 89 
 
 the other receives the revenue. They know that 
 every effort is made to raise a certain amount from 
 each village, and that Englishmen are distributed in 
 posts all over the country to see this done. They 
 otherwise see very little of Englishmen — except, in- 
 deed, in the army. 
 
 The task which lies before us in the future is to 
 dissolve this fatal conception. Why should genuine 
 intercourse between the natives and the British ever 
 have been confined to the military department of social 
 life? There is nothing in the fearful issue of the 
 particular connection in Bengal to alter our duty in 
 regard to other classes than sepoys. There was a 
 time (according to Sir John Malcolm and others, who 
 knew better than we can know now) when the relation 
 between the native soldiers and their British superiors 
 was sound and true, and thoroughly advantageous to 
 the native ; and there seems to be no reason why the 
 same beneficial relation should not be established in all 
 departments of industry and social pursuit. We led up 
 the native soldier into intercourse with us, putting the 
 idea of his taxes out of his head, and giving him other 
 things to think of; and, whatever mistakes we may 
 have committed since to his injury and our own de- 
 struction, we did elevate him above the rest of native 
 society before we spoiled him, by indulgence first, and 
 then alienation. What we have to do is to elevate 
 others than soldiers, and neither to spoil nor insult 
 them. We have to raise them into skill, industry, and 
 prosperity in agricultural pursuits, in the arts, and 
 in trade ; and there are plenty of evidences, on the 
 
90 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 soil, in the towns, on the rivers, and in all average 
 households, that the task is easy enough, if only it is 
 prosecuted in a right spirit. We are not in reality a 
 military nation: we are not in fact bent on our money 
 and nothing else, when we send our young countrymen 
 to administer affairs in India, and when we gather 
 counsel from all the grey-haired Anglo-Indians we can 
 meet : and if the natives really think so of us, it is 
 from our mismanagement. Under the very settle- 
 ment which deprived multitudes of natives of their 
 hereditary fields, the Company sacrificed an enormous 
 amount of revenue, purely for the good of the people. 
 Nothing in the shape of corporate or representative 
 government ever approached that of the Company in 
 beneficence — not in disinterestedness merely, but in 
 painstaking, patient, difficult, protracted experiments 
 of good government, exhibiting an unexampled muni- 
 ficence indeed, but a noble devotedness which is of a 
 higher order than any money -giving. Yet the bulk of 
 the people in India know nothing of this. The task 
 is before us to fill their minds with other associations 
 than they have ever had yet ; and when our merchants 
 and planters go and settle there, not as rulers like the 
 early generation, nor as interlopers, discouraged by 
 the Government at a later time, but as citizens who 
 go to live and work there, the people will work for them, 
 and emulate them in work, and at length regard them 
 as neighbours, just as the soldiers once regarded their 
 officers as comrades ; and they will become fitted, the 
 immigrant and the native, to live side by side under 
 equal laws. If they are human, such might be, and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 91 
 
 ought to be, the natural course of events. Thus far, 
 the English have been soldiers or civilians. The 
 English citizen is a character yet to be disclosed to 
 the native mind, except in a very few spots in the pro- 
 vinces. We have to see whether the citizenship must 
 be for ever confined to the English. 
 
 It should be remembered in this connection that our 
 presence in India has extinguished such civic interests 
 as existed before, and depressed the inhabitants below 
 one level of hopelessness and ennui, except in the com- 
 mercial cities along the great rivers, where the pursuit 
 of wealth and of some degree of social distinction can 
 still be maintained. As the native princes have 
 unavoidably sunk into mere shams of greatness, the 
 classes next below them have sunk too. Intolerable as 
 the native rule had become, it was rule ; and the 
 rulers were sovereigns in reality. They now have 
 palaces and princely incomes, and nominal officers of 
 state, without any actual power of political adminis- 
 tration. The aristocracy, who had their political aims 
 and interests, like the same class elsewhere, can now 
 only intrigue for pastime, and hunt and amuse them- 
 selves ; the orders below them have, again, none but 
 restricted personal objects to pursue, even where there 
 is but one white face to be seen within a circuit of 
 hundreds of miles. Englishmen at home are per- 
 petually remarking on the frivolous and hard and 
 vicious state of the social mind and manners which 
 grows up under such despotisms as those of Austria 
 and Naples, and (now) France, through the exclusion 
 of the solemn and generous and virtuous aims and 
 
92 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 interests which are the offspring of political liberty. 
 The society of the chief continental cities is an 
 intellectual and moral desert to Englishmen who are 
 worthy of their citizenship. Under a different aspect, 
 the same phenomena are seen and felt in the cities of 
 India ; and if our countrymen had been duly qualified 
 for intercourse with the natives, the state of the case 
 would have been apparent long ago. Wherever a 
 career in life is open, there the natives are superior 
 to their countrymen in general. The puppet-princes 
 are the worst specimens of all, perhaps, for other 
 reasons in combination with this ; but next to them 
 come the aristocracy, who have no political functions 
 to fill, no tribal wars to embark in, nothing to do but 
 make a show and revel away their lives. The 
 merchant class are superior, because their career is 
 less restricted. Some of the merchants of Bombay 
 and Calcutta, and a considerable number throughout 
 the country, are highly intelligent men, devoting their 
 time to improving objects, and ready with their wealth 
 to promote the general welfare and all manner of 
 private charities. With such a class before our eyes, 
 it would be the mere insanity of prejudice to doubt 
 whether we can make citizens of the races they belong 
 to. They found colleges and schools as well as 
 hospitals and almshouses, and vigilantly guard and 
 improve the institutions they have founded, making 
 a genuine pursuit of objects which are thus seen to be 
 no mere child's play of benevolence or ostentation. 
 Nowhere are there better trustees of educational 
 institutions than some native gentlemen who have 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 93 
 
 founded colleges and opened libraries and schools. 
 They not only guard and improve the property, but 
 exert themselves to elevate the studies and expand 
 the literary resources of the students and their 
 instructors. Similar characteristics mark the learned 
 class of natives, and yet more, all who are permitted 
 to enter into competition with Europeans in any walk 
 of public life. While all this is the case, and always 
 was so, we have taken up natives for the military 
 career, and no other ! If we have our rebuke, we have 
 also our encouragement from the issue. We chose a 
 handful of the population to serve our purposes ; we 
 spoiled them by our selfish exclusiveness ; and we 
 hopelessly offended them by barring their rise above 
 a certain point in a profession which exists by 
 ambition. What our fate in this instance teaches us 
 is, that we must bring up our native neighbours in 
 every other department of social action, avoiding 
 partiality, and setting up no arbitrary limit in the 
 path of their advancement. We have been too much 
 given at home, as well as everywhere else, to a priori 
 speculation about the "sphere" of our inferiors, be 
 they who they might ; and the Irish Catholics, the 
 American colonists, and English ploughmen, artisans, 
 and women, have all had more or less of the experience 
 which the Hindoos and Mussulmans of Hindostan 
 are suffering under, of having their " sphere" (a very 
 contracted one) pronounced on by the dogmatists who 
 appropriate a higher "sphere." The insolence on the 
 one hand, and the irresistible advance on the other, 
 now open a prospect of the establishment of some 
 
94 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 criterion in this very essential matter. Once admitting 
 that there may be a criterion, it is not very difficult 
 to discern the nature of it. In regard to the American 
 colonies, and to a good many humble members of 
 society at home, it is plain that their true sphere is, 
 what they can do. It would be wise to apply it in 
 the Indian case, to all appearance. If, instead of 
 attempting to hold India as a preserve of English 
 destinies, a nursery of British fortunes, we throw it 
 open, with the aim of developing India for the Indians, 
 by means of British knowledge and equity, we shall 
 find our own highest advantage, political and material, 
 and may possibly recognise brethren and comrades 
 at length, where we have hitherto perceived only 
 savages, innocents, or foes. A preacher belonging to 
 the Evangelical Alliance told his hearers, one evening, 
 that he was once walking towards a Welsh mountain, 
 very early in the morning, when the mist was on the 
 hills ; and that he saw on the upland something that, 
 magnified and disguised by the mist, looked like a 
 monster. As he drew nearer, he perceived that it 
 was a man ; and when he came up to him, he found 
 that it was his brother. That brother was not a 
 sepoy, certainly ; but neither are all the natives of 
 India sepoys ; nor are unspoiled sepoys monsters. It 
 is of the utmost importance to us to ascertain what 
 our Indian fellow-subjects are and can do ; and the 
 discovery can be made, perhaps solely, but certainly 
 soon and clearly, by opening to them a free career 
 in every department of social life. It is their concern 
 how far they are able to use the opportunity. When 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 95 
 
 dogmatists of the old school insist that an artisan 
 cannot learn to vote properly, nor a ploughman benefit 
 by books, nor a negro slave learn to read, the sensible 
 answer is, " Let them try ;" and so it seems to be with 
 the natives of that India which was a cluster of 
 empires while Britons lived in caves. Let the career 
 of social usefulness (political or other) be thrown 
 open ; and the world will see who can run and who 
 must halt. Among the many benefits of such a 
 method, it is by no means the least, that men will be 
 brought face to face, and must soon cease (whether 
 the dark or the white) to look on one another as 
 monsters. 
 
 We hear so much at the moment of the sepoys as 
 monsters, and see it so generally taken for granted 
 that their recent outbreaks are simply a manifestation 
 of insuperable vices of race, that little favour can be 
 expected for any proposal to regard them as men, and 
 treat them as subjects of ameliorating discipline. But 
 we shall wander hopelessly from truth and good sense, 
 if we do not remember that the case is not new, 
 though, in our horror, we naturally exclaim that 
 nothing like the treatment of the sufferers in India 
 was ever heard of before. It is a painful subject to 
 dwell on ; but we are bound to remember that the 
 same ferocity and devilish cruelty have been manifested 
 in some stage or other of every religious fanaticism, 
 and every outbreak of a half savage conquered people. 
 The persecution of the Albigenses was marked by 
 cruelties equal to any perpetrated last year in India ; 
 and this is only one of many instances in which the 
 
96 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 agents were white men and Christians. In Cromwell's 
 time, unspeakable horrors, tortures, and indecencies in 
 one, were inflicted on the mountain Christians in Savoy ; 
 and in our own century, there have been excesses 
 of the Carlists in Spain, and of Gallician peasants 
 towards their nobles, which were as diabolical as any- 
 thing the sepoys are answerable for. Some rebel serfs on 
 the Volga showed equal cruelty and lust but a very few 
 years since ; and the mulattoes (more than the negroes) 
 in St. Domingo, half a century ago ; but the cases 
 which involve consideration of colour and slavery are 
 less instructive, in the present connection, than those 
 in which European Christians have been the aggressors. 
 As to the supposed constitutional vices of our Indian 
 natives — falseness, treachery, and lust — the last may 
 probably be implicated with a basis of race, though 
 mainly due to training ; but as for the others, it will 
 not be disputed that deceit is the natural resource of 
 the oppressed, and treachery the power of the weak. 
 This is true everywhere, among all races ; and we can 
 form no judgment of the moral capacity and promise 
 of any Asiatic people, while it is under the strong 
 hand of Christian conquest, or, as we might better 
 say, under the European heel. If we are ever to 
 learn whether there is, between us and the races of 
 Hindostan, any of the family relation of humanity, 
 we must give them scope to show what they are and 
 can do. It is for them to prove their capacity, 
 intellectual and moral ; but it is for us to afford them 
 the opportunity. We must dispel the mist which 
 makes monsters of them. 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 97 
 
 There is a preliminary process, however, to he 
 attended to and provided for : that of an appropriate 
 education. 
 
 5. Education. — The historical student is aware 
 that no mode of Government has yet succeeded in 
 drawing the most qualified men into the function of 
 administration. Absolute sovereigns are served by 
 men who can submit to be tools ; and not only tools 
 but slaves. At the other end of the scale matters 
 are no better. In a democratic republic the best 
 men retire furthest from public life, and the most 
 unscrupulous, selfish, and flexible obtain the power, 
 because better men will not accept the conditions. 
 Our own country has the best chance in theory ; and 
 in regard to the personal character of Ministers, the 
 average is, we believe, the highest known : but after 
 a dozen years of such incapacity as our Government 
 services have exhibited, it is necessary only to refer 
 to the failure of the class — the aristocratic order — of 
 men who practically assume that the Government of 
 the country is consigned to them by some irresistible 
 authority. Our theory of Government is the best, 
 we English assert: but it does not appear that we 
 get our work done any better than other people. The 
 one partial exception to the failure is the Government 
 of India, as far as the conduct of affairs in certain 
 departments is concerned. The defects of the Double 
 Government we shall have to consider in another 
 connection : and there is no particular comfort in 
 looking back along the series of Governors- General ; 
 but below the point of ministerial interference, in all 
 
 H 
 
98 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 the departments where the preparatory education of the 
 Company's servants works out its natural results, the 
 quality of the administration is far superior to any- 
 thing obtained at home. The difference in the 
 transaction of the civil business of the interior is at 
 least as remarkable as the superiority of Indian to 
 Queens military officers, as shown in the cases of the 
 late Crimean and present Indian war, and as conspi- 
 cuous as the success of the East India Company in 
 ruling our great dependency, compared with the 
 centuries of mistake for which our Colonial Govern- 
 ment is answerable. That, under the circumstances, 
 the Indian Government should be reluctant to admit 
 natives to public employment is inevitable ; and there 
 are reasons and evidences which go a good Way 
 towards justifying the reluctance: but one great con- 
 sideration appears to have been overlooked; for, if 
 not overlooked, it would have been placed in the front 
 of the whole argument : viz., that in this case, more 
 than in any other known, the best men will seclude 
 themselves from notice, and the worst will push them- 
 selves into it. If we will for a moment consider our 
 own island the scene of events, we shall recognise the 
 truth at once. If a handful of able and powerful 
 foreigners ruled us, professing a faith, and exhibiting 
 manners abominable to us, treating us with excessive 
 haughtiness, insisting on our use of their language 
 instead of our own, and overruling our forms of 
 justice and methods of Government, would it be 
 the best or the worst of our citizens who would seek 
 or accept office under the strangers ? The parallel is 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 99 
 
 not so absurd as some will suppose ; for we are apt 
 to take our notion of the natives from the inferior 
 specimens which press upon our observation, either 
 from their numbers or their servility : but it should 
 be incessantly borne in mind that there are, not only 
 individuals of ripe culture in native Indian society, 
 but whole classes who keep up the old private life of 
 their country under the security which our rule 
 affords them, and who never make themselves known 
 to us because they have nothing to ask of us, and 
 wish to have nothing to say to us. While such men 
 are pursuing their business, and their studies and 
 recreations beyond our ken, the vain, the ambitious, 
 the time-serving, the intriguing — and, in many cases, 
 men who are merely restless or inquisitive — thrust 
 themselves in our way, and are taken for certain 
 employments, for want of better. We are not to 
 conclude, then, that if natives are employed we must 
 make up our minds to intrigues in the cities and 
 among the courts, and oppression in the rural dis- 
 tricts, and lying and fraud everywhere. If such 
 were necessarily the character of native office-holding, 
 the case would be desperate : for it seems to be 
 undisputed that there must be more and more employ- 
 ment of natives, in several departments now, and 
 hereafter in perhaps all, as the price of our preserva- 
 tion of India. The more we can infuse of the con- 
 stitutional spirit into the public mind of the country, 
 the better will be the quality of the men employed in 
 the public service. 
 
 The means of providing for this necessity lie mainly 
 
 h2 
 
100 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 in the extension of education. Unless a mutual know- 
 ledge and sympathy can be established between the 
 Europeans and the natives, that fuller admission of 
 natives to office which is admitted to be necessary 
 will simply end, as Metcalfe long ago suggested, in 
 our expulsion : and there is no other way than edu- 
 cation by which that mutual knowledge and sympathy 
 can be established. The hope that " Christianizing 
 India" may do it, is just now stirring the religious 
 world; but there is one consideration which should 
 reduce that hope to its due limits ; — the consideration 
 that the conveying of dogma will not answer in this 
 case, which requires nothing short of a basis of 
 science. It is a case of the extremest difficulty, we 
 must remember; a case in which the chasm to be 
 bridged over is that of race, complicated with oppo- 
 sitions in all the phases of the mind's existence. 
 From the very outset, the formation of associations is 
 different ; the faith is (in the Hindoo case) not only 
 different, but creating an opposite character of mind ; 
 the action of the moral faculties, and of some of the 
 intellectual, is inverted; and there is nothing in the 
 whole range of human ideas which can operate in the 
 same way on the European and native mind but fact, 
 or, in its extended sense, science. Dogmas may be 
 so offered and so urged as to be received, with more 
 or less sincerity, and in a manner believed ; but if 
 the teacher could get into the pupil's mind for a single 
 hour, he would find that under the sincerest use of 
 the same words lay a set of ideas and feelings that he 
 could not recognise at all, from any resemblance to 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 101 
 
 his own : and it takes many long years to prove the 
 true operation of such ideas and feelings as there are. 
 The Latin Christians were delighted with the in- 
 fluence of their teachings in China, where there were 
 not only a good many converts, hut a multitude of 
 secondary Christians, who were becoming familiarized 
 with the leading points of the Catholic faith, and 
 preparing society for the reception of the whole. We 
 witness the result in the gospel of the Chinese rebels. 
 British missionaries have, no doubt, done something 
 better than this ; and they will be right to do what- 
 ever they can, under conditions of intelligent prudence, 
 and not with the ignorant precipitancy which degraded 
 their cause, and disgraced their zeal fifty years ago. 
 If the missionaries sent out will have patience to 
 obtain a command of the native language of their 
 locality, and to study the native mind before they 
 begin to instruct it, and to implicate the conscience 
 and the affections in whatever they teach, instead of 
 aiming at the reception of dogma, and supposing the 
 main work done when they have apparently accom- 
 plished that, they may in time do great good, though 
 there is no probability of their religion pervading the 
 life of the Indian community. Neither will any ulti- 
 mate purpose be served by any operation through the 
 imagination. Eecent events show us the terrific force 
 of Asiatic imagination, and its excessive susceptibility. 
 To this — to " impression " — some of the wisest Anglo- 
 Indians say we owe our Indian empire ; and through 
 this, no doubt, effects of any magnitude can be 
 wrought, singly and temporarily, by any power which 
 
102 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 holds the mastery of that faculty for the time. With 
 this we may include the generally allied faculty of 
 subtle reasoning or analysis, so conspicuous among 
 the cultivated natives of India. These may be laid 
 hold of for use by teachers who do not look beyond 
 immediate effects, so as to carry on the native educa- 
 tion (as it is called) to an advanced point in literature, 
 and what is supposed by a good many men in all 
 countries to be philosophy. But this is not the edu- 
 cation by which alone a true understanding can be 
 established between the governing and the governed 
 nations. For the same reason that the Czar Alex- 
 ander allowed a certain order of studies to be pursued 
 at Moscow, nearly forty years ago, while others were 
 suppressed, we should discourage analogous pursuits 
 in India. After interdicting all organized societies 
 among the students and literary men, the Czar quietly 
 retracted his sentence in favour of that which was 
 devoted to the study and discussion of Schelling's 
 philosophy. Alexander observed, in an official " aside " 
 to his minister, that he had no objection to a pursuit 
 which amused some aspirations, without any danger of 
 practical results. We, on the contrary, ought rather to 
 discourage courses of study — such as dogmatic theology 
 and metaphysical philosophy — which tend to aggra- 
 vate intellectual dispositions already too strong, and 
 which can only separate the native mind further from 
 our own, by producing an apparent occasional agree- 
 ment, where no test of real agreement is possible. 
 The appeal to " consciousness " is abundantly delusive 
 among Englishmen of the same cast of mind and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 103 
 
 training. Between the European and the Hindoo it 
 is utterly and necessarily fallacious. A third con- 
 sideration of caution should be, not to let any instruc- 
 tion in words pass for education. The same structure 
 and habit of mind which dispose the native to credu- 
 lity of imagination, and to skill and delight in meta- 
 physical pursuits, render him apt and able in all 
 word-studies. In as far as this is taken advantage of 
 for spreading the knowledge and use of English (real 
 English, and not the jabber of the verandah and 
 parade) it is well : but we must guard against sup- 
 posing the natives educated through any extension of 
 those word-studies to which they are already suffi- 
 ciently addicted. In the same way, the researches 
 into Asiatic literatures and philosophies, which now 
 constitute a pursuit among a few accomplished native 
 scholars, are a great benefit in their way, and create a 
 good ground for intercourse between them and a few 
 of our best residents in India : but the good thus 
 done is to literature, in the first place, while, in a 
 secondary way, it is pleasant for the two orders of 
 minds to meet on the ground of any innocent and 
 virtuous taste: but all this has nothing to do with 
 establishing a sound mutual understanding and sym- 
 pathy between two opposing races of men. The only 
 knowledge that can effect this is the knowledge of 
 fact ; in other words, science. Men have no power 
 of disagreeing about the multiplication table, or the 
 properties of space, or the precision of a predicted 
 eclipse, or the accuracy with which a ship of any 
 nation, commanded by a captain of any race or Ian- 
 
104 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 guage, hits its port. Let a man of each race on the 
 globe meet all the other delegates at any point of 
 convergence: it is probable that each will insist on 
 some theological dogma which will appear impious or 
 absurd to all the rest; and, as for philosophy, the 
 abstract Chinese, the inquisitive Hindoo, the narrow 
 Mussulman, the allegorical German, the figurative 
 Arab, the dogmatic Scotchman, the analytical French- 
 man, the misty Anglo-American, the literal Red 
 Indian, the sentimental Russian, &c, will speak, each 
 in his own language of ideas, exciting more opposition 
 than sympathy among all the rest. But, introduce 
 science, and what immediate and necessary agreement 
 there is among them all, from the moment they un- 
 derstand the terms, and can verify the facts ! The 
 practicable qualities of all objects afford an inex- 
 haustible field of study for all manner of men ; and 
 the only area in which there is any hope of peace and 
 progress, as long as opposing races remain otherwise 
 unreconciled. 
 
 Here, then, we have an indication as to the import- 
 ance of educating the people of India, and how to set 
 about it. It is not necessary to use fine words, or pro- 
 pose inaccessible achievements. All the arts of life 
 teach science ; and every industrial school already 
 open in India is doing the work we want. The long 
 and short of the matter is that we must teach the 
 Hindoos things, and not only (nor chiefly) words. In 
 as far as books teach science, let our pupils attain to 
 that book -knowledge : but, if it is our object to train 
 and enlighten the native mind, we have means in everv 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 105 
 
 public work, in every mercantile enterprise, and in 
 every natural fact which takes place before their eyes. 
 A great deal has already been done, both in the 
 direction of book-learning and of industrial training. 
 The more we can extend this kind of enterprise, and 
 win the children from their barren study of the 
 Kuran under their Mussulman teachers, and from 
 their dreamland of nonsense and nastiness under the 
 Brahmins, to sound instruction in elevating and 
 civilizing realities, the more hopeful will be our pro- 
 spect of holding India and redeeming the Asiatic 
 nations. 
 
 There can be no fear but that, in this way, the 
 truth will justify itself, in all directions. This is the 
 faith of the first of living missionaries — Dr. Living- 
 stone. When the native mind is disciplined and 
 enlightened up to the point when the faith and philo- 
 sophy of the foremost nations can be worthily received, 
 that faith and that philosophy will vindicate them- 
 selves, if they be true : whereas, if either is swallowed 
 as an affair of authority or of imagination, the whole 
 process is, or may be, altogether deceptive. Unless 
 we follow the guidance of nature, using our sense and 
 experience as interpreters, we shall ultimately fail in 
 our educational as in our military training-schemes in 
 India; and our ready-made Christians, and philoso- 
 phical and literary officials, may rank hereafter, in 
 piety, moderation, and intellectual proficiency, with our 
 Bengal sepoys, boasted of so recently for their loyalty 
 to the English, their fidelity to their officers, and the 
 depth of their homage to the wives, and of their ten- 
 
106 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 derness to the children of our countrymen. In every 
 stage of the process of training, in so unique a case, 
 there should be some reliable test that we are not 
 moving in a dream — " walking in a vain show:" and 
 nowhere are dreams and vain shows so besetting and 
 importunate as in the fields of religious conversion 
 and metaphysical exploration. The only reliable 
 touchstone is proveable fact, yielding ascertainable 
 knowledge. This, then, is what Government has to 
 charge itself with providing, if we are to escape 
 insurrection through ignorance on the one hand, or 
 expulsion through native conceit and encroachment 
 on the other. Let the missionaries prove the worth 
 of their 100,000 converts, and add to their number 
 by all holy and innocent methods of inducement : but 
 the Government must have nothing to do with dog- 
 matic training of any kind. It has to lay open the 
 field of knowledge to all, and to discipline the head 
 and hands (and with them the heart) of its subjects, 
 as far as Government has power to do so by means of 
 schools. If it does not thus bring the native and the 
 European mind into genuine intercourse, and the 
 heads and hands of the two races into co-operation, it 
 will never do so at all. The question then will be 
 whether the two peoples can march together, thus 
 veiled from each other, through the whole course of 
 the world's history, or whether the one or the other 
 will not, in some terrible hour, fling off the disguise, 
 and lay his mysterious comrade low. We may remem- 
 ber what happened in France when some philosophers 
 introduced to each other two schools of pupils — the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 107 
 
 blind and the deaf and dumb. For some time, the 
 respective parties strove incessantly to make them- 
 selves understood : when it was found in vain, most 
 of them drew off from the strangers, and amused 
 themselves with their own companions ; but they from 
 time to time renewed their efforts, partly from the 
 urgency of the bystanders, and partly through some 
 irresistible impulse in themselves. At length, the 
 point of possible endurance was reached : with yells 
 of rage they flew at each others' throats, and much 
 injury was done before they could be dragged apart. 
 It would be deplorable if the school of Indian inter- 
 course were to resemble this, more or less. Some 
 method of mutual understanding must be found: 
 there is but one universally trustworthy — a common 
 stand on the ground of realities ; and in this case, 
 therefore, all training in dogmatic beliefs and verbal 
 acquisitions should follow, and not precede, the know- 
 ledge of facts and the practice of industry. 
 
 Meantime, it should be remembered that experi- 
 ments have been tried, sufficiently various and durable 
 to yield some guidance. We have no trustworthy 
 accounts of the state of popular education prior to 
 this century. Inquiry was then set on foot, and it 
 appeared that " the great mass of the lower ranks had 
 literally no instruction" whatever. The labour of 
 children was indispensable to the family maintenance ; 
 and, even in the middle classes, the children left school 
 at ten years old, able only to read (with little or no 
 apprehension of the meaning), to write, scarcely 
 legibly, on a plantain leaf, or with a rod on the sand, 
 
108 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 and to reckon a few simple sums. Education was 
 believed to have declined exceedingly since the early- 
 days of Hindooism, which provided for a series of 
 schools and colleges. The difficulty of administering 
 justice among a people so little known had caused the 
 establishment of two or three colleges, which might 
 supply a class of instructed natives, to help the 
 Government ; and Warren Hastings's Mohammedan 
 College in 1781, and the Sanscrit College at Benares, 
 founded by Lord Cornwallis in 1792, were created 
 with this view. After the opening of the century, 
 the missionaries made some attempts at gathering the 
 children together, having found it hopeless to devote 
 themselves to the conversion of adults : and the move- 
 ment was carried on by the bishops, the first of whom 
 went out in 1814. Side by side with them, the 
 enlightened Hindoos worked for the improvement of 
 the popular intelligence. The Hindoo gentlemen and 
 pundits of Calcutta opened a College in 1816, with 
 the avowed object of bringing their countrymen up to 
 the European level of instruction, adopting " the 
 European system of morals," and the primary con- 
 ception of "duty to God," while excluding Christianity. 
 In the next year an association was formed, including 
 Christians, Mohammedans, and Hindoos, for the pur- 
 pose of expurgating the native literature to a sufficient 
 amount to supply schools with decent books. At the 
 Calcutta College, the students acquired a really useful 
 and extensive knowledge of the English language and 
 literature, together with history and geography, while 
 some made a considerable advance in mathematics and 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 109 
 
 the elements of physical science. One natural con- 
 sequence was the opening of schools, not only at Agra 
 and Delhi, but in many smaller towns ; the method 
 being to improve, in the European spirit, on the know- 
 ledge and studies of the country. Another natural 
 consequence was a mistaken eagerness on the part of 
 the English rulers for the exclusive cultivation of their 
 language in the schools. Wherever English was 
 cultivated, the progress made was rapid and striking; 
 and Lord William Bentinck was sanguine as to the 
 effects of its propagation through the country. Calm 
 reason and experience showed, however, that outside 
 the great towns, the people had little use for the 
 English language, and that the short time of a child's 
 life that could be devoted to school-instruction would 
 be best employed in developing his intelligence in 
 connection with the natural business and interest of 
 his career. Serious mischief was done by starving out 
 the native colleges in favour of the English establish- 
 ments, but Lord Auckland restored them without 
 discouraging Lord William Bentinck's institutions. 
 Where the old exhibitions for students were destroyed, 
 he made amends, as far as he could, by a liberal dis- 
 tribution of scholarships among every kind of semi- 
 nary. This was the way to elicit the truth in regard 
 to the native demand for knowledge, and it was 
 presently apparent that, however eager was the desire 
 for the English language and literature in two or 
 three of the chief haunts of the British, the real 
 demand of the country was for general knowledge 
 conveyed in the native language. 
 
110 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 This brought us into the critical position which 
 has been the subject of perpetual argument and dis- 
 cussion for twenty years past. The Government, 
 the missionaries, the clergy, the citizens, native and 
 foreign, and even the army, have all something to 
 say on what has been done — something to urge as to 
 what ought to be done. Government has steadily 
 desired to countenance and assist popular education, 
 without interference in the religious question : and it 
 appears that, while strictly prohibiting all manner of 
 proselytism in institutions which expressly disclaim it, 
 Government has ever been ready with aid in support- 
 ing Christian instruction, as well as worship, in its 
 right place ; that is, in establishments openly devoted 
 to the purpose. The missionaries, even while ad- 
 mitting that their hope of Christianizing India rested 
 on an education of the children which could only 
 prepare them for, or indirectly lead them to, the 
 reception of Christianity, have for the most part been 
 opposed to Government undertaking education at all. 
 Dr. Carey used his last painful breath in deprecating 
 all action of Government in that direction. The fear 
 was that the people should have what in Ireland is 
 called " godless education." — Again : it seems to be 
 universally admitted that the whole intelligent popu- 
 lation which has been lifted out of the indigenous 
 system of thought by education has no religion what- 
 ever, or none which can be classified among existing 
 sects. It would seem that the missionaries at least 
 ought not to quarrel with this result, as it is the state 
 of things which they professed to aim at in their 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. Ill 
 
 secular schools, as a clearing of the ground for the 
 reception of Christianity : and it is impossible to 
 conceive how Christianity can he truly accepted 
 through any other process. Yet the fact excites 
 alarm and grief, and is employed at present to stimu- 
 late the efforts for the evangelizing of India. The 
 truth probably is that the clearing of the ground is 
 not followed by the new growth which was confidently 
 reckoned on. The multitude who have emerged from 
 the Brahminical system are not becoming Christians. 
 One would think that a case like this, comprehending 
 a very large number of the most intelligent and 
 enlightened natives, might awaken some doubt of 
 their own discretion in the minds of missionaries. It 
 might occur to them that, if they find themselves in 
 such a difficulty as this, they may have proceeded on 
 insufficient knowledge, on narrow views, on mistake of 
 one sort or another which the Government could have 
 warned them of, and by which the action of Govern- 
 ment may, after all, be justified: but at present it 
 appears as if failure, or misapprehension of necessary 
 facts (whichever it may be) only animated the mis- 
 sionaries to repeat the old experiment. Yet, again, 
 we learn by various and weighty testimony in the 
 public prints, two orders of facts so portentous that 
 no future Government of India can neglect them. 
 The one is that the educated natives who are mourned 
 over as in this godless condition have everywhere been 
 faithful to us in the present crisis : and not only 
 faithful as desiring our continued presence (essential, 
 no doubt, to their own safety) but trustworthy in 
 
112 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 regard to their integrity in affairs, and their attach- 
 ment to the British personally. The other class of 
 testimonies relates to the actual condition of the 
 native converts, showing that it is their relative 
 incapacity, physical or other, which mainly excludes 
 them from public employment; that they are com- 
 monly regarded, by persons of all ways of thinking, as 
 examples of the union of indigenous and European 
 vices : and that it is the universal complaint of the 
 missionaries themselves that they cannot train their 
 converts to " simplicity and godly sincerity," all efforts 
 and the longest discipline failing to cure them of the 
 lying and deceitful habits in which they were reared. 
 If ever there was a preponderance of evidence in 
 favour of dispassionate prudence, of benevolent cau- 
 tion, in instituting a scheme of policy, surely it is this. 
 The missionaries plead their 100,000 converts ; a 
 Christian host, they say, as numerous as the late 
 Bengal army. Let them show what these Christians 
 are and can do. By their fruits we shall know them, 
 and in the course of a single generation. Meantime, 
 it would not be safe to consign the cultivation of 
 100,000,000 of minds, as yet unfit for the due recep- 
 tion of a religion absolutely alien from, and repugnant 
 to their own, to a class of instructors who profess that 
 alien religion, and nothing else. The only rational 
 method (where all are more or less perilous) is surely 
 to employ the minds of the rising generation on what 
 is, by universal admission, true and real. To awaken 
 and train the powers is, throughout the field of educa- 
 tion, more important than to impart any knowledge 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 113 
 
 whatever. Let this exercise be employed on material 
 which is, in the most accurate sense, knowledge ; and 
 then, if the mighty population of Hindostan is ever to 
 to be christianized, this will be found the shortest, 
 because the only secure, road to that end. Govern- 
 ment will not, we suppose, interfere with private 
 effort henceforth any more than hitherto : but the 
 education of all young Iiidia is not an affair which 
 can be left to private enterprise. It must be very 
 long before a highly centralized Government can be 
 dispensed with in an Asiatic dependency like ours : 
 and if Government is to superintend, or be involved 
 in, the essential work of native education, the only 
 possible way of success seems to be in developing the 
 powers of the pupils, supplying them with knowledge, 
 properly so called, and with the arts by which know- 
 ledge is verified and applied. 
 
 It is a serious consideration that by this method 
 only can the intelligent natives be prepared for the 
 trustworthy discharge of public functions, and made 
 the interpreters between the foreign and the native 
 mind. If the chasm between the Eastern and the 
 Western races can ever be bridged, it can only be by a 
 class which owes its birth to the one and its develop- 
 ment to the other. Thus solemn and thus pregnant 
 is the question of the relation of Government to 
 popular education in India: and it may be hoped 
 that Parliament and people will refuse to be hurried 
 into any premature engagements in regard to it. 
 
114 suggestions towards the 
 
 British Objects : — Political. 
 
 Such are the political and social objects we have to 
 provide for on behalf of the people of India. Those 
 of the people of England, in as far as they can be 
 separated from the interests of their native fellow- 
 subjects, need only a slight .reference at this parti- 
 cular time. 
 
 1. Domestic Policy. — Our political aims come 
 under the ordinary heads, the domestic and the 
 foreign; and the road to both is the same. We 
 need India as a source of occupation and wealth ; as 
 answering most of the purposes of a colony, and some 
 others that no colony ever aspired to. We want it as 
 an ever-expanding market for our manufactures, and 
 as a mine of natural wealth, in the form of raw 
 materials for those manufactures. We desire it as 
 a territory, thickly peopled in comparison with any 
 of our colonies, but admitting and requiring a far 
 larger population to make the most of its resources. 
 We want to clear its jungles, to open its mines, to 
 thin its forests, to till its wastes, to make use of its 
 rivers; and thereby to call into existence tens of 
 millions of human beings who would not otherwise 
 be born. We want to call millions into existence at 
 home by the same means, and to improve the lot 
 in life of millions more. The revenue yielded by 
 India is less burdened by debt than any in Europe, 
 small as it is in comparison with what it might be. 
 Our revenue at home is about one- twelfth part the 
 amount of our debt: and nearly half our annual 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 115 
 
 income goes to pay the interest of the debt. Every 
 country in Europe is burdened in a heavy proportion, 
 though not so heavily as we are : but India, which is 
 nearly as large as all Europe, has a debt amounting 
 to only between two and three years' income ; and less 
 than one-seventh of that income is needed for the 
 interest of the debt. So clear as is the prospect of a 
 doubled, a five-fold, a ten-fold, a twenty-fold, income 
 from India when colonization and commerce have had 
 a free course there for some time, it is a political object 
 of first-rate importance to govern the country in such a 
 way as may best develop the intelligence and industry 
 of the inhabitants, and the peaceableness and loyalty 
 of their temper. It is of extreme importance to render 
 the country one in which English settlers can live in 
 security and prosperity. If we lift up hands and eyes 
 at the announcement just now of such an aim, we must 
 remember that even the suffering colonists on the spot 
 do not. Many of them certainly contemplate return- 
 ing to their fields and warehouses, with their wives 
 and children, when the remnants of the Bengal army 
 are finally disposed of, and the escaped jail-birds 
 recaptured ; and we have their testimony in abundance 
 that the revolt is a Mohammedan affair in the first 
 place, and a military one in the second, all its evils 
 being aggravated by the liberty and license of the 
 criminal population. They tell us that the resident 
 Hindoos lament the outbreak as much as the English 
 can do ; that they have assisted the British whenever 
 it was possible to do it ; and that British and Hindoos 
 together solace themselves under the calamity by 
 
 i 2 
 
116 
 
 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 looking forward to the restoration of peace and order, 
 when they may live as they did before. It must be 
 our endeavour that the native at least shall live more 
 happily than he ever did before. 
 
 As for the British, ten thousand of them are always 
 living in and on India as officers, civil and military: 
 and about 30,000 soldiers have hitherto been sup- 
 ported there. Besides the annual income thus derived 
 from India, there are pensions paid in England to 
 retired officers, widows, and children. The total 
 income thus paid in cash to English people is computed 
 at ten millions per annum at least. How much it 
 may be increased by the development of the country, 
 can be no more foreseen than whether the Government 
 revenue of near thirty millions will be only doubled, 
 or quadrupled, or further augmented. It is a great 
 political object to us to develope thoroughly a territory 
 which has as yet been hardly touched by the hand of 
 science and skill. The road to our object is clearly 
 by rendering the people contented and intelligent. 
 Upon their condition of mind, body, and estate 
 depends our welfare among them ; and that condition 
 of theirs depends mainly on the method of government 
 we now adopt. A thing, therefore, not to be done in 
 a hurry. 
 
 Foreign Policy — Our other object is to keep our 
 foreign relations in a secure state on the side of 
 India. 
 
 A few words are enough here. The time for 
 discussion and dispute was when we were sending 
 Burnes up the Indus, for a stealthy survey under 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 117 
 
 false pretences ; and when we sacrificed a succession of 
 gallant officers as spies in Central Asia ; and when 
 we went half-way to meet Persia, and lost ourselves 
 and our prestige among the Affghans on the way back ; 
 and all through fear of the very same Kussia which 
 has since proved herself unable to win a single battle 
 on her own European frontier. We have learned 
 some valuable lessons since those days. We have 
 learned pretty accurately what the military forces 
 of Russia are, on her own side of the deserts which 
 have to be traversed in order to attack us in India. 
 We have learned the relative value of Anglo-Indian 
 and Queen's officers on the one hand, and of native and 
 British soldiers on the other. We have learned that, 
 while our watch on the North- West frontier must never 
 be relaxed, there is no ground for such apprehension 
 of invasion as can ever again draw us into the wilds, 
 instead of awaiting at home any possible encroachment 
 of an enemy. We must prove, over and above all the 
 rest, that we have learned what security there is in a 
 well-governed, well-developed, well-disposed people, 
 who prefer our rule to that of any stranger. As far 
 as the possession of India gives us consideration in the 
 eyes of the world (and that will be the case hence- 
 forth, more than ever before), and places us at the 
 head of Western influences in the East, our future 
 destiny as a member of the family of nations, our 
 future place in the world's history, depends on the 
 decision we are now to make as to our future govern- 
 ment of India. Everybody will agree, that to rule the 
 country well is the true method of defence, as well as 
 
118 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 of development, of India as of every other country 
 inhabited by human beings. In any year, and under 
 any circumstances, this must be true. In any year, 
 and under any circumstances, the question of the best 
 mode of proceeding from a new starting-point would 
 be one requiring time, and every appliance of know- 
 ledge and capacity that can be obtained. In the 
 present year, and under existing circumstances, a 
 precipitate decision, by ill-informed legislators, would 
 be a crime deserving, as one item of its punishment, 
 the loss of a territory we did not trouble ourselves to 
 govern with care, and a future expulsion from Asia, in 
 favour of a Kussian successor. 
 
 British Objects : — Social. 
 
 This is hardly the place in which to speak of our 
 social aims in the management of India. The charge 
 at this day of more millions of human beings than the 
 imagination can in truth comprehend^ is the most j 
 solemn task ever committed to the human intellect 
 and conscience. The conscience of nations has been 
 developed, like other influences, by the passage of 
 time ; so that the responsibility of a British nation 
 in regard to India is now a far more serious matter 
 than that of Rome to its dependencies could possibly 
 be so many centuries ago. We have to keep the 
 peace among the native peoples, so that each may live 
 and grow. We have to lift them all out of a low, 
 coarse,. irksome, and painful stage of social existence 
 into a succession of higher and better states, till it is 
 fairly ascertained what elevation nature permits them 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 119 
 
 to reach. We have to weed out the vices, and cherish 
 the virtues, of a population which nearly equals that 
 of Christendom ; and in this, we have to settle the 
 balance of probabilities of all Asia becoming civilized 
 or remaining semi-barbarous. We have to justify 
 or abuse the most portentous trust ever yet confided 
 to a single nation. And what shall we say when a 
 rash Minister would persuade us to settle it all, not 
 by the deliberate counsel of a single nation, which 
 would be sufficiently formidable to a people possessed 
 of an intellect and a conscience, but by the precipitate 
 decision of an ill-informed Parliament in a single 
 session ? Any Minister who would propose such an 
 act of levity, through ignorance or for a purpose, 
 ought to find every other object set aside, if need be, 
 in order to gain time for a due consideration of this. 
 
 t jW-tEo.^-* 
 
120 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE FUTURE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Evils of Change. — If it is true that the changes 
 introduced into life in India by the advance of science 
 and the arts are more than the constitution of the 
 natives can hear without danger and injury, the first 
 consideration, in the question of ruling India, is to 
 avoid external changes as much as possible. The 
 rush of ideas which attends the telegraph, the steam- 
 boat, the railway, and other inventions, is too much for 
 the native brain, in many ways. There is not only 
 the marvel, and the hurry and speed; there is the 
 subversion of old associations — the shaking of the 
 whole structure of ideas ; an alteration in the con- 
 ditions of everyday life ; and, yet more, deadly offence 
 to all the priesthoods. Such consequences cannot be 
 helped, though they may be more or less prudently 
 dealt with : but it would be madness to introduce 
 further essential changes which are not immediately 
 necessary. It is an object worth any amount of pains- 
 taking to preserve the names and public functions of 
 the authorities under which several generations have 
 grown up and passed away, and especially at a time 
 when the people of India have quite enough agitation 
 to sustain, without any addition from the side of their 
 rulers. The " Company " has been the visible em- 
 bodiment of Government to them, through several 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 121 
 
 generations ; and if they now lean on British autho- 
 rity and support, amidst the turmoil which pre- 
 vails, it is by faith in the " Company." Touch that 
 ark, in the hour of tribulation, and all will be over- 
 thrown. The multitudes who now trust in us, and 
 depend upon us, and are acting with a view to their 
 future relations with the Company, as faithful sub- 
 jects, will fall from us on the first solicitation when 
 the Company shall be heard of as dead, or even on 
 its trial for fault or weakness. Nothing that has 
 happened yet in India can compare, as a calamity, 
 with the consequences which must ensue from any 
 invasion of the prestige of the Company by the 
 Ministers of the Sovereign. The mutiny has in- 
 volved the Bengal soldiery, and the criminal and 
 loose elements of society : but an attack upon the 
 British authority which has held the kingdoms of 
 India together till now, and raised the whole country 
 into a progressive civilization, would alienate, by 
 consternation and perplexity, a hundred millions of 
 citizens, over and above the hundred thousand of 
 soldiers with whom we are now contending. The 
 grandest service that any British citizen could at this 
 moment render his country would be to induce the 
 withdrawal, before it reaches Parliament, of any 
 ministerial project for laying hands on the authority 
 of the Company, at a moment when it is essential to 
 the loyalty of India that its ruling power should stand 
 above the storm, unchanged in aspect, uninjured in 
 power, and unaffected in prestige. If the most 
 virulent enemy of England were to propose a scheme 
 
122 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 of deadliest injury to her interest, it would be that of 
 a change in the Indian Government, at a moment 
 when the population of the country most need and 
 desire to rely on the authority from which has ema- 
 nated for generations all that they have seen and felt 
 of power, wisdom, protection, and improvement. 
 
 Evils of Clap-trap. — Next to the insanity of 
 choosing such a time for ostentatious change is the 
 folly of proposing theatrical shows and transparent 
 shams, such as scores of our fellow-citizens have been 
 bringing forward since the idea of a revolution in 
 Indian policy got abroad. Some advise a proclamation 
 throughout India of the Sovereign as Empress of 
 Hindostan. In itself, there might seem to be no harm 
 in this; but what can be said in answer to the 
 question — " Why should it be done ? " Why convey 
 to the Hindoo mind, already scared by the sepoy 
 rebellion, the notion that the Government is gone — 
 the Company swept away— nothing left of the autho- 
 rity which had stood for centuries. Either the Com- 
 pany must have been weak, to be vanquished by the 
 Sovereign of Hindostan; or it must be wicked, to 
 have been deposed at such a moment. It may be 
 asserted that the panic will be calmed down, and the 
 royal authority accepted in time, and after due ex- 
 planation : but why create the panic at such a crisis ? 
 why thrust a new authority on a group of nations 
 during a struggle which is drawing their allegiance 
 to the familiar form of Government closer than it ever 
 was proved to be before ? The minister who would 
 perplex such an allegiance, and degrade such an 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 123 
 
 authority, is a greater enemy to British rule in India 
 than Nana Sahib, and all possible kings of Delhi and 
 Oude together. They may alienate the soldiers and 
 the scoundrels : but he would lay open a bottomless 
 chasm between the Government and the whole people, 
 at the very moment when they are confidently pre- 
 ferring our cause, because it stands fast in the old 
 ways. If Queen Victoria is ever to be truly acknow- 
 ledged Empress of Hinjdostan, there as here, it must 
 be in virtue of waiting for the fitting hour of pro- 
 clamation. She has been so for twenty years, in the 
 way which has best suited the interests of her empire 
 in both countries : and to alter the expression of the 
 fact, at a time when all change is perilous, will not 
 look to posterity like skill in her advisers, or loyalty 
 in her subjects. 
 
 If a change that tells no lies is to be deprecated for 
 its imprudence, what can be said to schemes that 
 involve mere shams, — such as that which we have seen 
 proposed as the best of all — that one of the Queen's 
 sons shall be enthroned as King of Hindostan. The 
 proposal was at first supposed to be hopeless ; but it has 
 been echoed and renewed; and it ought to be noticed 
 on account of the disclosure it involves of certain 
 prevalent notions of India and its people. The people 
 of India are not all babies— not all ignorant of British 
 history and government : and everything that concerns 
 themselves travels fast from mouth to mouth. There 
 are plenty of Hindoos who know that no English 
 Prince has any title whatever to any Asiatic throne : 
 and there is nobody in any country who needs to be 
 
124 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 told that no English Prince is, or can be, qualified by 
 knowledge of Indian affairs to govern Hindostan. 
 Every such sham that has been, or can be, proposed 
 will lead every native observer and oracle back to the 
 unanswered question — " Why depose the Company, 
 which does know India, can govern India, and is 
 preferred by the people of India to any Government it 
 has ever had ? " 
 
 Evils of a pretended Double Government. — We all 
 know very well what the people of India, and all other 
 people, would say if informed of the reason which 
 renders necessary some extensive (though not hasty) 
 changes in the government of Hindostan. The reason 
 is not disputed in England, and it would be em- 
 phatically assented to in India, if known and under- 
 stood: — viz. the fact that the Double Government 
 works ill, under its present conditions, for the 
 interests of India. This is a reason for reform. 
 The theory of the method is one thing, and its 
 practical working is another. The power is assumed 
 to be divided between the Board of Control and the 
 Board of Directors ; whereas, the power of the Direc- 
 tors is little more than nominal ; and that of the 
 Board of Control, and especially of its President, is 
 overweening. Those who know most about India can 
 do nothing except by the capricious leave of a Minister 
 who knows nothing w r hen he enters on his office, and 
 who is, or may be, always entering office, because he goes 
 in and out with all administrations. One of the most 
 melancholy spectacles ever seen is that of the helpless- 
 ness of the Leadenhall Street authorities about their 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 125 
 
 own business ; so that they must sit still and silent, or 
 speak in vain, while schemes of aggression and plots 
 of circumvention are organized which they disapprove 
 and expect to be calamitous ; as they did when we 
 went out to meet Russia at Caubul, and stole up the 
 Indus on false pretences. Nothing can be more dis- 
 tressing than their mortification when compelled to see 
 a hundred small affairs go wrong, because those affairs 
 must wait the leisure or the pleasure of the President 
 in Cannon Row. At one time an army perishes, like a 
 snowdrift in thaw, amidst the Affghan passes, and the 
 mountain tops echo the mocking laughter of the foes 
 we have stirred up : and the authorities at the India 
 House hear it all, with boiling blood, but are unable 
 to preclude the calamity. At another time a cargo of 
 a perishable commodity should be arranged for by one 
 mail rather than another, under the penalty of the 
 loss of £5,000 ; and the mail goes out without orders, 
 because the Board in Cannon Row must be waited for. 
 This way of ruling India cannot go on. But it is 
 matter for deliberation and consultation when the 
 change shall be proposed, as well as what the change 
 should be. The common-sense of ordinary people 
 would doubtless pronounce that the very crisis of a 
 great Indian peril and calamity is not the right time : 
 and the dismissal of the well-informed partner of the 
 firm not the right measure. Men who understand the 
 case will doubtless agree that the best way is for the 
 two to work together as well as may be through the 
 special season — the less-informed deferring to the 
 better-informed wherever possible ; both striving to 
 
126 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 reduce to the utmost the impediments caused by an 
 obstructive machinery of administration. Afterwards, 
 when the time comes for re-organization and re-dis- 
 tribution of powers, it will be the time to assign more 
 authority to the party which has been too far deprived, 
 instead of lodging the whole in unqualified and 
 fluctuating ministries, under no other responsibility 
 than the customary one — excellent in English, but 
 hopeless in Indian affairs — to Parliament; — a political 
 body ignorant of the politics of India. Kesponsibility 
 to Parliament ultimately is indispensable, of course, in 
 the case of any British possession ; but to abolish the 
 Anglo-Indian body which has always been the medium 
 between India and the home Government, and leave 
 only a changeable functionary or two standing between 
 them, in order to boast that India is to be brought 
 into immediate relation with the Crown, will seem to 
 most people who know what India is and includes, the 
 way to thrust India into immediate relations with any 
 Government rather than the British. This point will 
 be abundantly discussed before long : the immediate 
 and urgent considerations are, first, the rashness of 
 precipitating any conspicuous change at a moment 
 when every old association is precious, and every hint 
 of revolution perilous in the extreme ; and next, the 
 perverseness of offering to depose the only authority 
 which has ever shown that it can govern India, and 
 which the people of India have been accustomed to 
 acknowledge, trust in, and obey. 
 
 Scheme of a Minister for India. — The demand of 
 a Secretary of State for India is not very intelligible, 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 127 
 
 apart from provisions which might be made without 
 any such special Minister. If India is to be brought 
 into immediate and exclusive relation with the Crown, 
 is this Secretary of State to be the Indian Premier, 
 with a Cabinet in London or in Calcutta ? or is he to 
 be the sole ruler of Hindostan, responsible for every- 
 thing, and to Parliament alone ? If so, where is such 
 a man to be found? And if the man were found, 
 what is to be done on the first occasion of a change 
 of Ministry? What benefits could compensate for 
 the evil of installing a new Secretary of State for 
 India with every Ministry that comes in ? The 
 mischief is abundantly serious now, when we have 
 the Company and their trained body of officials always 
 ready to advise the inexperienced, and to do the work 
 of the dependency. If we subject India to the liabi- 
 lities of the colonies, which were not long ago favoured 
 with five successive Ministers in a year and a half, we 
 shall be inviting destruction. If we are to understand 
 the proposal simply as a convenience, in the form of a 
 Minister who may be held to a stricter responsibility 
 in Parliament than can be enforced at present, there 
 may be no objection to the scheme, as far as it 
 goes : but then, two things have to be considered : 
 first, whether the means of obtaining information 
 would be really improved, since it depends very much 
 on the temper and character of the individual whether 
 he will give information, and render candid allegiance 
 to Parliament ; and next, whether such an appoint- 
 ment would bring us any nearer to a satisfactory 
 arrangement. Such an official would be so little 
 
128 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 unlike the present head of the Cannon Row Commis- 
 sioners, sitting in Parliament, that we could no more 
 spare the Court in Leadenhall Street than we can now. 
 A Minister for India, guided and checked by a Board 
 of Anglo-Indians, would be so like the present Adminis- 
 tration, that the arrangement need never reach the 
 ears of the Hindoos generally, while the change would 
 scarcely be evident to their eyes or even ours : and 
 while doing no great harm, it is difficult to see what 
 good it would do. A Secretary of State who should 
 be substituted for, or appointed to act without, the 
 Company, would be, certainly and immediately, the 
 ruin of India. If fit for Parliament, he must be a 
 stranger in the whole region of Indian associations and 
 manners. If qualified for his post by familiarity with 
 Indian life, he must be unfitted for Parliament. If 
 we have a man with the requisite qualifications, he 
 is wanted at Calcutta ; and any man who can be spared 
 from the Indian Council is not the man for the 
 post at home. It may be found a convenience, and 
 possibly something more, to have a Secretary of State 
 for India (supposing the right man to be in existence 
 among us) ; but he can be nothing more than a single 
 item in a scheme of reform, and not a scheme of 
 reform in himself. If we can unite him with a Council 
 in Leadenhall- street, it may be all very well; but it 
 will never do to abolish the Court of Directors, to 
 set him up in its stead. 
 
 It will not be disputed that a Secretary of State 
 for India must have advisers. Shall his advisers be 
 men who know, or men who do not know India ? If 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 129 
 
 men who know India, who is there that can compete 
 with the Directors in this qualification? They are 
 the only people in England who have even any notion 
 of the magnitude of the task to be accomplished. 
 Their lives having been passed in the atmosphere of 
 Indian affairs, they have that priceless attribute, the 
 familiarity with life in Hindostan which renders easy 
 what is most difficult to the European official mind, 
 and precludes a million of mistakes. It seems 
 incredible that a body of men so specially accom- 
 plished should be destined for exclusion under the 
 new scheme ; and yet, if some are to be invited to 
 act as advisers, what can they reply ? They consider 
 their present number small, in comparison with the 
 variety and magnitude of the interests to be provided 
 for : and they would not undertake the responsibility 
 with diminished means. They could not assume the 
 office of advisers without due security that their 
 advice should be obtained, considered, and registered 
 on all occasions ; because otherwise their office would 
 or might be merely nominal, and they could have no 
 certainty that India would be the better governed for 
 their being at their posts. To avoid these objections, 
 to have a Minister for India, aided by a Council of 
 Directors from Leadenhall Street, and compelled to 
 require, receive, and consider, their advice on all 
 occasions, would be to adopt an arrangement so like 
 the existing one, that the change would amount to 
 a mere weakening of the existing securities for intel- 
 ligent Government, and some alterations in names 
 and titles. If it is proposed to set up a Minister for 
 
130 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 India to judge and act alone, the people and Parlia- 
 ment of England surely cannot sanction so insane a 
 project. Nor will they countenance any proposal of 
 a council of unqualified Englishmen. Of qualified 
 advisers as to matters of administration, there are 
 none out of the pale of the Company, because India 
 has been accessible only through the Company : and if 
 the advisers of the Ministers are to be derived from 
 the Company, they are not to be had on terms inferior 
 to those on which they are at present acting. Such is 
 the case, as it appears to the common-sense of most 
 men; and as we now (January 20th) learn, to the 
 minds of the Directors themselves. 
 
 As the professed object is to bring India directly 
 under the government of the Crown, something like 
 this must be the intention of the Minister. But 
 what is the function of Parliament to be in the 
 business ? Is Parliament to accept or reject measures 
 supplied from the Minister's own English brain, in 
 the one case? or from the Minister's Anglo-Indian 
 advisers in the other? Can those advisers be 
 expected, or even invited, to place their plans and 
 proposals at the mercy of a fluctuating body of 
 legislators who, if they represent the British people 
 ever so well, can represent only the popular ignorance 
 in regard to Indian affairs? It is vexatious and 
 painful enough to Anglo-Indians to witness once in 
 twenty years the desultory absurdities of an India 
 debate, on occasion of the renewal of the Company's 
 charter. The general public can perceive, at those 
 periods, the fragmentary, superficial, aimless or 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 131 
 
 perverse character of the discussion on the part of 
 most of the speakers, and the obvious marks of 
 cramming disclosed by the Ministers. When such 
 debates should not come on only once in twenty 
 years, but as often as anything was to be done in or 
 for India, the case would be too hopeless to be 
 countenanced by adequate judges. A parliamentary 
 Government of India, with its political oscillations, 
 its inevitable ignorance and rashness, its adverse 
 chances, where it is improbable that any measure 
 should be good, and thorough soundness would be a 
 matter of miracle, can never be assented to by any 
 man, inside or outside of the Company's pale, who 
 has even the necessary preliminary knowledge of the 
 conditions of the case. The choice will have to be 
 made between governing India by and through the 
 one class which understands Indian affairs, under 
 ultimate responsibility to Parliament, or without that 
 class. Such is the option at the present moment. 
 Is not this a sufficient reason for delay ? Is it not 
 worth while to wait till it can be ascertained whether 
 any means exist of remedying evils in India without 
 banishing from the enterprise the only class qualified 
 to suggest means and attain ends in Indian affairs ? 
 
 Head of the Government in India. — Turning from 
 the legislative administration here to the executive in 
 India — what is to be done there ? It may be impos- 
 sible to convey to the English public any adequate 
 idea of the nature and extent of the mistakes com- 
 mitted by British noblemen who go out to Calcutta 
 unprepared by any special education for governing 
 
 k2 
 
132 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 Hindostan. The affair was comparatively simple 
 half a century ago ; yet, even then, a new Governor- 
 General was in the main reduced to the alternative 
 of being the puppet of his Council or finding himself 
 wrong at every turn, if he acted on his own judgment. 
 No man can become qualified in a hurry for wise 
 administrative conduct in Hindostan, after having 
 grown up in the English habit of mind. It is 
 foreign to English conceptions to administer affairs 
 with the protective minuteness which is indispensable 
 if the Hindoos are to be governed, in their own view 
 of the matter ; and the English way of setting about 
 such a new function is sure to be more or less wrong 
 during the period of inexperience. If the case is 
 bad at present, and the strong errors of a Lord 
 Dalhousie, and the feeble errors of a Lord Canning 
 are disastrous at once to India and to England, what 
 may we not expect if the imperial Government holds 
 the power of appointment, without check from the 
 matured knowledge and the administrative experience 
 of the Company ? Lord Auckland and his Affghan 
 war are not forgotten yet. The Company strained 
 every nerve to intercept, to modify, to compensate for 
 his mistakes ; and yet his errors were irretrievable, 
 and immortally disgraceful to the national reputation. 
 What can be hoped if more Aucklands may be sent 
 out, released from the check of the Company's 
 administrative body ? We should witness, in union 
 or succession, the errors of every true British 
 Governor- General, from Lord Cornwallis to Lord 
 Canning, followed by the retribution appropriate to 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 133 
 
 each — a concentrated retribution which would leave 
 England no Indian problem to solve. 
 
 But how do we know that there would be a Governor- 
 General at all ? Merely from the obvious fact that 
 a collective empire like our Indian one cannot be 
 ruled but by an individual potentate, under one title 
 or another. There is no need to waste words on this, 
 as it does not seem to be a questionable point. No 
 scheme of governing such a territory by a council, 
 without a visible and responsible head, would be enter- 
 tained for a moment, in or out of Parliament, because 
 it is fully understood how, in a general way, any 
 aggregate authority works feebly, slowly, and without 
 precision ; and, in the particular case, how Govern- 
 ment at Calcutta came to a dead lock when the first 
 Council had the means of paralysing the action of the 
 first Governor- General. Some single official per- 
 sonage there must be, it is agreed — whether a viceroy, 
 or a representative of the Company. It would seem 
 that, in the latter capacity, we might have hoped to 
 see a qualified Anglo-Indian at Government House, 
 though, as viceroy, it is too natural to expect, and put 
 up with, an unqualified English nobleman. If the 
 rational hope has been disappointed during the term 
 of the Double Government, what may we not appre- 
 hend under British ministerial or parliamentary rule ? 
 
 The one point in which a due popular apprehension 
 of the ministerial scheme appears to have been 
 aroused is this — the dread of the appointment of a 
 commonplace British nobleman, or of one below com- 
 monplace, for the most arduous and the most peculiar 
 
134 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 post that has to be filled by appointment, anywhere in 
 the world. On this head, too, the public are pro- 
 vided with a notion and a wish. They see that 
 wherever the officials of the imperial Government 
 and those of the Company come into comparison, the 
 superiority of the latter is conspicuous and unques- 
 tionable. The Company's military officers, or Queen's 
 officers, well practised in Indian warfare under the 
 Company's arrangements, have achieved, wherever 
 tried, successes as brilliant as the failures of the other 
 class have been intolerable. The people of England 
 have less opportunity of knowing how far a similar 
 contrast prevails in the civil service : but it is at least 
 as striking to all who have penetrated into the busi- 
 ness offices of the two Governments. It is generally 
 understood that nothing, in the way of transaction of 
 business, exists that can compare with the achieve- 
 ments in Leadenh all-street, and in most of the offices 
 in India, which are held duly responsible to the 
 central authority ; whereas, we are in the habit of 
 hearing a good deal of the opposite weakness, and 
 feeling something of the misfortune of it, in our 
 home administration. The natural inference is that 
 in the highest office, as in both classes of subordinate 
 functions, a nominee of the Company would answer 
 better than one appointed by the imperial Govern- 
 ment. All eyes turn at this moment to Sir John 
 Lawrence as the right man. Whether he be so or 
 not, the general desire should operate as a popular 
 nomination, to check an unpopular one. If it were 
 duly attended to, neither royalty, administration, nor 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 135 
 
 aristocracy, would venture to propose any ordinary 
 home-bred Englishman as the ruler of a hundred 
 millions of men, while there are Anglo-Indians in 
 existence who are familiar with the country and the 
 people, and have proved that they can administer the 
 one and rule the other. 
 
 Faults of the Company s Rule. — But, it is said, 
 there is a narrowness of mind in all old corporations, 
 and a formality in all time-honoured administrations, 
 which prove suicidal sooner or later ; and the hour of 
 the Company may have come. Is that, indeed, 
 likely? There has been plenty of narrowness in the 
 policy of the Company, no doubt ; but that was long 
 ago. Whatever there may be still, it has been 
 perpetually diminishing, from the early days of the 
 hunting of " interlopers," till the present prosecution 
 of public works for the benefit of all comers. 
 
 It is an odd moment to choose for the punishment 
 of the Company for narrowness when the develop- 
 ment of India is proceeding incomparably faster than 
 at any former period, and when every improvement 
 that becomes manifest is traceable to the foresight 
 and care of the Indian administration. As to the 
 formality in the delivery of words and deeds, that 
 is also true : but it is in part misapprehended ; and 
 the rest might be properly cured without endangering 
 our tenure of India. We hear a great deal of the 
 amount of writing always going on at and between 
 Cannon Row and Leadenhall Street, and of the diffi- 
 culty there is in getting the smallest affairs settled. 
 We hear, again, of the fossil characteristics of the 
 
136 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 councillors and staff of all functions at the presidencies. 
 No doubt there is much truth in all these charges. 
 Allowances should be made, however, for the peculiar 
 relation of the two governing bodies at home, whose 
 fidelity, honour, and efficiency, as well as their 
 Charter, require this much-abused plenitude of 
 writing. It is the very principle of the adminis- 
 tration of the two Boards that they should commu- 
 nicate in writing, that each may fulfil its own 
 function, and that their work may exist in a visible 
 form for criticism, for reference, and for justification. 
 It is the function of the one to suggest measures, 
 and to prepare despatches, to be submitted to the 
 other, discussed (in writing also), adopted, modified, 
 or rejected. It may well be that in course of time 
 the method may become exaggerated, and that it 
 has actually done so in this case. But it should 
 be remembered that the method exists under parlia- 
 mentary sanction, and cannot be legally evaded. It 
 is probable that great relief might be given by 
 exempting business of certain kinds and proportions 
 from the ordeal of so much penwork ; and why not 
 try, before proposing to dismantle the whole structure 
 of Indian Government for such a grievance as this ? 
 The same may be said about the pedants in the 
 councils and at the desks of the Company in India. 
 If they are the offspring of a stringent bureaucratic 
 system, let them be succeeded by men of wider ideas 
 and more enlarged sympathies. As provision is 
 actually made for the progressive expansion of the 
 system, it would be strangely perverse to annihilate 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 137 
 
 it now on account of faults which it is progressively 
 outgrowing. And is it really supposed by anybody 
 that we shall get rid of such defects by turning over 
 the business to the imperial Government? Do we 
 see in our ministerial councils such frank, broad, 
 sensible, national views prevailing as satisfy us that 
 our domestic interests are furthered according to our 
 wish; and that our good name and our travelling 
 countrymen are safe abroad; and that our national 
 interests are prosecuted everywhere, alike in the 
 darkness and the light ; and that no aristocratic pre- 
 possessions interfere with the service of the people 
 at large ? Is our business so exceedingly well done 
 — are the details of affairs dealt with so promptly 
 and certainly — are ministerial promises so accurately 
 kept — is the service of Government so well liked 
 for the punctual and generous consideration of its 
 claims as that any administration is entitled to ask 
 leave to overthrow the Indian Government, and 
 take charge of it in addition to all the business 
 already on hand ? There is not a trait of exclusive- 
 ness or narrow formalism in the Company's procedure 
 which cannot be matched any day by many an one 
 before our eyes. There is not an instance of 
 obstruction and delay which will not bring up the 
 mention of ten times as many from sufferers by the 
 unbusiness-like character of our public office work; 
 whereas it would be hard to show in what direction 
 the imperial Government rivals, or has for many 
 a year rivalled, the public-spirit, the generosity, 
 the liberal appreciation of improvements and of 
 
138 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 merits which have always — and never more than 
 now — distinguished the rule, spirit, and temper of 
 the East India Company. 
 
 This estimate leaves untouched the question whether 
 some of the grievances complained of are ascribable 
 to the Indian or the British partner of the double 
 Government. Many people believe that the Cannon 
 Row partner is mainly responsible for them : but it 
 is the business of a committee of inquiry to investi- 
 gate this. It does not appear that there is a desire 
 on any hand to exempt the Indian Government 
 from inquiry and ultimate judgment. Such a cata- 
 strophe as has occurred authorizes a demand for a 
 thorough investigation. The Company themselves 
 have instituted an inquisition in India, and appealed 
 for one at home ; and the one point on which all 
 parties might and should agree is this. The adminis- 
 tration, however, leads the way in that precipitancy 
 which is the ordinary reproach of mob judg- 
 ments, and would obtain from popular excitement 
 that lynch law for the victim which is sure to 
 be repented of when too late, but can never be 
 repaired. 
 
 Characteristic Virtues of the Company. — In all 
 ages men have taxed themselves with the puerility 
 of not valuing their blessings till they lost them. 
 This will be the melancholy folly of Englishmen 
 now if they do not rescue from destruction, — I do 
 not say the East India Company, but the special 
 blessings for which we are indebted to that body. It 
 will be matter for future consideration whether the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 139 
 
 blessings can be secured apart from the corporation 
 to which we owe them. 
 
 1. Independence of Political Change, — The first 
 of these is the Company's independence of political 
 change. Through whole centuries of irregular changes 
 and frequent perturbations which Englishmen could 
 control and overrule at home, but which made terrible 
 sport of the interests of our colonies, the Government 
 of India has been stable, consistent, as immutable in 
 the eyes of its Indian subjects as a god ruling from a 
 steadfast throne. In so peculiar a case, this has been 
 an inestimable blessing. Its corporate character, and 
 successions of various men, have redeemed its rule 
 from the curse of despotisms — the power of self-will ; 
 while its independence of the politics of the day has 
 protected its dominion from the manifold mischiefs of 
 party changes — mischiefs which we admit to be evils 
 at home, though we prefer them to the evils of any 
 other system. To Hindostan the non-political cha- 
 racter of the Company has been absolutely a vital 
 matter. Our rule there could not have been main- 
 tained if the authorities at the India House had been 
 changed as often as the Ministry, and at the same 
 time with the ins and outs of the President of the 
 Board in Cannon Row. But the benefit has also 
 been great to ourselves at home, though we may only 
 now be beginning to understand the greatness of it. 
 While subject to a constant sense of nightmare under 
 our painful efforts to get the national business done 
 by groups of officials who always and necessarily begin 
 in an incompetent condition, and usually go out of 
 
140 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 office or change their function as soon as they become 
 equal to their work, so that the conduct of public 
 business is a perpetual irritation to middle-class people 
 who in their private affairs are accustomed to efficient 
 performance, it has been a real blessing to have one 
 public body in the midst of us which did work effec- 
 tively, as far as it undertook to work at alL No 
 doubt, it was often jealous in its temper, and restric- 
 tive in its policy, and repressive and vexatious towards 
 adventurous men ; but whatever it undertook to do 
 was done in an orderly, prompt, liberal manner, and 
 with a continuous force which would have been im- 
 possible if it had been implicated with the Ministers 
 of the day. Before we abolish such an institution as 
 this, we are bound to take care that the Government 
 of India is secured, as carefully as hitherto, from being 
 affected by party changes : but, so far from such a 
 precaution being a feature of the Ministerial proposal, 
 the plan actually is to bring India within that very 
 sphere of fluctuations to exclusion from which she 
 owes her existence as a dependency of England. 
 Englishmen may now show that they value a blessing 
 before they lose it. If they make any change, it had 
 better be in an opposite direction to that proposed. 
 They had better make their Minister for India 
 (whether President of the Board of Control or a 
 functionary under a new name) independent of Minis- 
 terial changes while the Company exists than subject 
 the future Government of India to such fluctuations. 
 At the present moment, it appears unquestionably the 
 wisest course to make no alterations at all till Minis- 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 141 
 
 ters and people are better informed about the depart- 
 ment of policy it is proposed to revolutionize. 
 
 2. Middle- Class Patronage. — The second bless- 
 ing ascribable to the East India Company is the 
 keeping open a broad area of public employment for 
 middle-class occupation. The Times professes to 
 be weary of the subject of the popular character 
 of the Indian service ; and it is easily conceivable 
 that the Minister, also, is weary of the warnings 
 issued to the public within the last few weeks, 
 under the existing danger of this field of patronage 
 being taken possession of, like every other, by the 
 aristocracy. To vary the topic, it may be well 
 to draw the Minister's attention to the other side, 
 and warn him of the danger to the aristocracy of 
 appropriating the entire patronage of the empire, as 
 they will have done, if they succeed in getting pos- 
 session of that of India. At the close of the late war, 
 the aristocracy were, for the hour, grave and humbled, 
 as it was fitting they should be. Wherever their con- 
 nections were in office, the business was apt to break 
 down ; and their incapacity impaired our national 
 reputation all over the world, lowered the style and 
 tone of European politics, and showed the proudest 
 families in England the precariousness of their 
 political position, besides clothing almost every one of 
 them in mourning, and reminding them how many 
 more of the homes of England were made desolate by 
 their intrusion upon domains of business for which 
 they were unqualified. Though some advances have 
 been made in the direction of qualification by merit, 
 
142 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 • 
 
 the improvement is far from being settled and secure ; 
 and at every turn we meet evidences of the reviving 
 spirit of the old possessors of patronage, and of their 
 undiminished vigilance in seeking their own advance- 
 ment. Just at the moment when the whole empire is 
 becoming sensible of the superiority of the Indian 
 service, military and civil, and when that result 
 ensues which wearies the Times and the aristocracy — 
 the warnings to the constituencies and to Parliament 
 not to let the middle classes be excluded from the only 
 avenue to that service of the State in which every 
 class should be more or less exercised — the Minister 
 proposes to appropriate for his class the entire patron- 
 age of the Company. How it would be used, we have 
 had abundant warning. There have been complaints 
 in high places for some time past that the aris- 
 tocracy are not sufficiently represented in Indian 
 office ; that new fields of patronage are needed for the 
 younger sons of the upper class ; that there are ten 
 thousand civil and military officers of desirable rank 
 in the Company's service, few of whom are nobly con- 
 nected, because the pay is not adequate to the work and 
 the sacrifices required. The pay suffices for the actual 
 office-holders ; and it must be looked to that they and 
 their class-fellows are not made to give way to greedy 
 applicants of higher connections. The Company has 
 paid its servants enough to secure good service, as the 
 results show ; while its bounty has been lavished on 
 behalf of the natives, rather than on that of the 
 English. Under imperial government, called par- 
 liamentary, there would be large retrenchments of the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 143 
 
 outlay for Indian objects on every hint of a question 
 in Parliament ; while, on the other hand, it would 
 speedily be made worth while for high-born youths 
 to go out and " represent the aristocracy" in the 
 Indian service. 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to appeal to the middle 
 classes to take care of their own interests, and the 
 national reputation, by resisting every attempt, whether 
 sly or audacious, or both, to alienate from them this 
 their rightful field of public service : but it may be 
 well to explain publicly what the case appears to 
 plain-minded men to be in regard to the interest of 
 the aristocracy in the ministerial scheme. The 
 danger which that class became aware of by means 
 of the war is by no means over. It will be always 
 impending till high-born officials of all degrees in all 
 departments have proved themselves adequate to their 
 engagements. If the class at present on probation, 
 and bound to justify their position under heavy 
 penalties, should now seize on, or accept from any 
 Ministry, any new domain of public office, taken 
 from any other class, it is even doubtful whether 
 events will allow them time to prove their quality. 
 It would be madness to suppose that they are at 
 present fitted to rival the Company's officials, in 
 either the civil or the military service : and England 
 is not bound to bear, and India is not able to bear, 
 any deterioration in the public service, at the present 
 or any future time. If the aristocracy value their 
 permanence and security, they must hazard no such 
 imprudence as extending their encroachment into the 
 
144 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 field of public service at all, seeing how rapidly and 
 irrecoverably their credit has for some time declined ; 
 and of all directions in which to encroach, India is 
 the most perilous. It is the most difficult country to 
 govern in the whole range of the British empire ; 
 and it has been on the whole the best governed. 
 Any power which should now get possession of the 
 Government, and bring in a new order of officials to 
 do its work, would almost certainly bring down ruin 
 on the Asiatic empire, and on the British clique 
 which failed to rule and secure it. This would be 
 the last folly, the crowning madness of the aristocracy 
 which should be implicated in the adventure ; and 
 their fall would bring down more than were ever 
 implicated. The higher class has had a bare escape 
 with its privileges (its prestige not having escaped) 
 within five years. It is too soon to run further risks, 
 were the chances ever so good: and in a case like 
 this, where they have really no chance of success and 
 credit, it would be insanity to invite the national 
 attention to their qualifications, and to challenge 
 public opinion to award them their deserts. They 
 must show a better quality of service in the home 
 and colonial fields, and in diplomatic service in the 
 Western world, before they can with any prudence 
 attempt to engross the East. The loss of India 
 would to them be revolution at home ; for it would 
 infallibly cause the overthrow of their order, 
 already insecure from the loss of popular confi- 
 dence. In this way, it may be said that the 
 fortunes of the aristocracy are bound up with the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 145 
 
 preservation of India. Let them act upon this view, 
 and do what they can to induce the Minister to hold 
 his hand till there has been time for consideration all 
 round. 
 
 3. India for the Indians. — Of the issue of such 
 consideration few can have any doubt. Already the 
 nation prefers the Company's generals to the Queen's : 
 and, as other departments of service are laid open 
 to view, the superiority will everywhere appear on 
 the same side. Important as this is, there is a 
 consideration (before touched upon) which is more 
 vital still : that India has long been, and now is, 
 governed on behalf of the Indians ; whereas, from 
 the hour when so-called parliamentary government 
 should be instituted, that aim could never more 
 be steadily maintained and fulfilled. No practical 
 citizen will assert that it could ; for the steady main- 
 tenance of such an aim can be looked for only from 
 a special association (under whatever name) of men 
 of special and rare knowledge, qualified for their 
 task by a lifetime of such experience as no man 
 can pick up in Parliament, or attain anywhere in 
 a hurry. When we cease to rule India for the 
 Indians, we lose India; and to vest the service of 
 India in the Horse Guards and our civil depart- 
 ments, is to hand over India and the Indians to 
 parties whose distinctive characteristic it is to regard 
 all public service as a patrimony of their own. 
 
 What not to do. — What, then, is to be done ? 
 This question might be sufficiently answered by 
 another, Why do anything in the way of change 
 
14() SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 at this moment? and it should perhaps he the first 
 step to compel from Lord Palmerston an avowal 
 of his reason for bringing forward a revolutionary 
 scheme in a season of turmoil and distress on that 
 very topic. This taken care of, the next object 
 is to be certain as to .what ought not to be done. 
 We should not legislate unnecessarily in a time of 
 excitement. We should not legislate hastily when 
 the means of knowledge are in our hands, and the 
 knowledge itself can be had by methods already 
 instituted, and in time for all practical purposes. 
 We should not legislate for a hundred millions of 
 people when our field of vision is engrossed by a 
 class of a hundred thousand. We should not legis- 
 late in a mood of depression from grief, or of passion 
 from injury. We should not legislate by means of 
 an unprepared House of Commons, recently elected 
 by unwarned constituencies. We should not, for 
 any slight or doubtful reasons, risk the distrust and 
 alienation which will infallibly be occasioned through- 
 out India by the deposition of the great, immutable 
 sovereign, the Company, which has been the object 
 of their allegiance for successive generations. We 
 should not permit the deposition of such an authority 
 in an hour of adversity, for which, if any authority 
 is answerable, it is not mainly the Company, but, 
 in the first place, the Board of Control, which has 
 long been finally and supremely responsible for 
 measures of Government in relation to India. We 
 should not hastily extinguish the power (too singular 
 to be ever replaced) by which our Asiatic empire 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 147 
 
 was acquired and has been sustained, without cost 
 to the British people, while supporting millions of 
 them by a commerce capable of comprehending tens 
 of millions more. We should not throw away the 
 vast stores, or crush the prodigious apparatus of 
 Indian knowledge which exists in the midst of us, 
 combined in the form of a government unparalleled 
 in the history of the world for civic success and 
 social progression, no resources being at our command 
 for supplying the need if, by Act of Parliament, this 
 moving power is blown off into space, and, as a 
 motive force, annihilated. This is enough. We 
 must not be rash. We are ignorant ; but that 
 defect may be repaired, if only we will not be rash. 
 
 What to do. — As for what is to be done, as well as 
 not done ; — we must investigate the whole subject. 
 The Company has set on foot an inquiry into the 
 causes of the revolt. Parliament should do the same ; 
 and the inquiry should comprehend a complete review 
 of the whole theory and practice of Indian Govern- 
 ment, at least, from the institution of the double 
 Government till now. The requisite basis of know- 
 ledge obtained, the ulterior aims may be pursued, and 
 the progression of our Indian empire provided for, 
 whether by the Company's policy, revised, amended, 
 and brought into coalescence with the Imperial 
 Government, or by another scheme. Then will be 
 the time for determining how much of the general 
 form and active laws of our Indian empire, as well as 
 grace and honours, shall be furnished from home, and 
 how much legislative power on local matters shall be 
 
 l 2 
 
148 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 confided to the Indian Government. Then will be 
 the time for deciding how the consultative and 
 administrative functions shall be divided between an 
 Indian Council at home and another at Calcutta, or 
 Agra, or some other centre. Then will be the time 
 for deciding the extent to which natives should be 
 admitted into consultation, legislation, and administra- 
 tion. Then will be the time for determining the 
 powers of the head of the Government in India, — 
 whatever may be his title in that day. At present, 
 all we really know is that all errors or short-comings, 
 in any quarter, should be ascertained and remedied : 
 that all means of information in regard to India and 
 its people should be welcomed and cherished ; that the 
 object should be set before the national mind in its 
 fair and full proportions : and that, till reform or an 
 enlargement of method can be achieved, every risk of 
 anarchy in India and destructive rashness at home 
 should be avoided as the crowning peril of the whole 
 situation. The Company must be sustained as the 
 one bulwark of our Indian empire till we are sure we 
 have provided ourselves with a better. 
 
 It is in all men's mouths that Lord Palmerston 
 cannot be aware of what he is doing in attempting to 
 extinguish, without notice, such a national power as 
 the East India Company. Certainly, he is not aware ; 
 and who can be surprised ? He is not a reader of 
 such books as give light on the history and policy of 
 the empire ; and his intercourses do not extend beyond 
 the class, or perhaps the clique, with reference to 
 whom his scheme of Indian Government in England 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 149 
 
 is framed. He is not easily impressed with astonish- 
 ment or any other youthful emotion ; therefore he may 
 not be so amazed as the rest of the world when the 
 real scope of the question comes to be revealed ; nor so 
 ashamed at the relation his hasty scheme cannot but 
 bear to such a department of the national policy. It 
 is the more necessary that the legislature and the 
 constituencies should be prepared to judge him, and 
 analyze his scheme in such a season of peril and 
 disturbance. The great duty of the hour is for all 
 citizens, in and out of Parliament, to show that they 
 insist on taking time. If the people of England 
 will but see that the public servants lose no time in 
 administering the pressing practical affairs of India, 
 and that their representatives gain time for legislating 
 on India, all may yet turn out well. But we must 
 lose no chances, and run no risks. 
 
 Probable tendency of reforms. — It would be pre- 
 sumptuous to speak with any confidence about the 
 scheme in which a due inquiry would issue. The 
 strongest probability seems to be that more weight 
 will be assigned to the Anglo-Indian element than 
 at present, and that all administration, and some 
 minor legislation in India itself, will be confided 
 exclusively to Anglo-Indians and natives, that is, 
 to men who have gone through the requisite train- 
 ing, and proved a certain amount of qualification. 
 The most important consideration of all will be 
 the appointment of the head of the Government, 
 and the Governors of the presidencies ; and we may 
 then hope to see an end of the desperate practice 
 
150 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 of sending out as Governor- General an Englishman, 
 not only wholly unacquainted with life in Hindostan, 
 but absorbed, during his foregoing years, in a 
 kind of life most opposite to that of India. It will 
 probably be admitted hereafter that, of all English- 
 men, a nobleman who has not been from his youth 
 up an active professional man, and largely conversant 
 with various nations, must be most unfit for the 
 responsibilities of Indian government ? and that the 
 only order of men from which the ruler of such an 
 empire can properly be taken is that of Indian 
 officials who have won their eminence by desert. 
 The present universal suggestion of Sir John Law- 
 rence for the post is an illustration of what is felt 
 to be needed. 
 
 In the next place, it will probably be determined 
 to assign to the Council in India (under whatever 
 name it may then exist) such legislative powers 
 about purely Indian affairs of minor importance as 
 may obviate the delays, uncertainties, and mistakes, 
 which at present paralyse much of the action of the 
 authorities at all the presidencies. It is true the 
 establishment of the electric telegraph will do away 
 with much of the delay and difficulty incessantly 
 complained of; but there will always be emergen- 
 cies to be provided for ; and there will always be 
 departments of purely Indian affairs of which Par- 
 liament must be an inferior judge to the authorities 
 on the spot. 
 
 The constitution of that Indian Council will be an 
 object of high importance, under the danger of the 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 151 
 
 purely English element abounding too much on the 
 one hand, and the narrowness of the Anglo-Indian 
 official element on the other. Possibly there may be 
 an admission of Anglo-Indians from outside the official 
 class ; and also of natives of adequate character and 
 attainments. If this is not practicable, there may 
 perhaps be two Chambers of Council ; and their 
 business may consist of something more than of advice 
 and suggestion, and extend to legislation below the 
 line of primary institutions. If so, one of the two 
 must be to a certain extent representative by election, 
 and will include more or less representation of 
 native interests, together with the Anglo-Indian, and 
 in due proportion to it. The great interests in- 
 volved in the development of the country will have 
 their expression in such a local council and adminis- 
 tration ; and then the public works of India will be 
 carried out with more vigour and good sense than 
 they could easily be by a divided authority in 
 England. Such a mode of government would faci- 
 litate the protection of the country by its native 
 forces, without running the risk of a new Bengal 
 army at all resembling the old. Such a mode of 
 government would produce more and more adminis- 
 trative ability within itself, so as to lessen perpetually 
 the danger and mischief arising from the inexperience 
 and misconceptions of British strangers entering the 
 country only to rule it. Such a mode of government 
 would increase perpetually the intimacy between the 
 native and the immigrant races, now too much 
 checked bv the exclusiveness of the British element, 
 
152 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE 
 
 and sure to be rendered altogether impossible, if 
 India were brought under the direct government of 
 the Crown and Parliament, in the sense contemplated 
 at the present moment. 
 
 It will be said that such a scheme will not bring 
 India more closely under British control, but rather 
 remove her further from it. It may, nevertheless, be 
 found to be the best policy. India can never become, 
 more or less, another England ; and her welfare, as 
 India, is the consideration to which all others must 
 give way. By practically admitting this, England 
 will profit to the utmost, as well as India, as our 
 greatest gain must arise from the fullest development 
 and contentment of our dependency. If England 
 remains the fountain of honour, and the source of 
 law, the ultimate authority, and the aristocracy of 
 nature, from which the guiding, controlling, and 
 educational influences of Indian society are derived : 
 if England supplies a perpetual influx of knowledge 
 and of arts, and sustains a commerce which will 
 continuously develope and enrich the country, this is 
 surely sufficient honour and profit for the proprietary 
 country. It is all that a conscientious, honourable 
 and disinterested European nation ought to desire ; 
 and it is all that the nineteenth century of Christian 
 civilization ought to award. It will not satisfy the 
 low-minded, who are using an hour of national 
 calamity to appeal to popular vindictiveness and 
 aristocratic cupidity ; and it may surprise thoughtless 
 and ignorant people, who fancy that the more directly 
 any country in the world is brought under our King, 
 
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 153 
 
 Lords, and Commons, the happier it must be : but a 
 due inquiry may convince a good many minds that 
 there are strong limitations to that patriotic doctrine. 
 Let us have the inquiry, in the first place ; and, till 
 we are in possession of its results, let us appreciate 
 the advantage of having in the midst of us, in the 
 East India Company, a body organized for the 
 government of the most difficult empire in the world, 
 — a ruling body which has done more for its 
 clients than any other form or body, of government 
 ever did before. It may be time to modify it : but, 
 till it is ascertained how that had best be done, it 
 will be wise to use its influence and its experience, 
 and to enhance rather than lessen its authority. 
 This must be the safest immediate course, whatever 
 may be the ultimate decision. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London: Smith, Elder & Co., Little-Green Arbour-Court. 
 
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