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Lushington, Henry,
AUTHOR 21812-1855.

The dovble government,
TITLE :the civil service, and
the Indian reform agitation.

PLACE :london

DATE : 1853 VOLUME :

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et

THE

DOUBLE GOVERNMENT,

THE

CIVIL SERVICE,

AND THE

INDIA REFORM AGITATION.

BY

HENRY LUSHINGTON,

AUTHOR OF

¢ , GREAT COUNTRY’S LITTLE WARS; OR, ENGLAND, AFFGHANISTAN, AND SCINDE.”

LONDON:
wu. HL ALLEN & CO,

7, LEADENHALL STREET.

1863.

 
THE

DOUBLE GOVERNMENT,
&e.

I sHALL not be alone in acknowledging that the
first impression which I received from the announce-
ment of the intentions of her Majesty’s Government
towards India, was the negative feeling of relief—
NICLE. ] relief from the not inconsiderable danger of a post-

ponement of legislation on the one side, or of a
sweeping demolition and reconstruction of the Indian
home government on the other. The general course
of things, judged of at a distance from England, not
orally as one could judge it in London, but by that
current of printed talk which flows into and fills the
remote corners of the world, had led me to fear the
effects of a clamour not without points of plausi-
bility. It was not a trifle that India should be
made the watchword of a Tory-Liberal ery. There
was no doubt that evils could be pointed out, and
for every evil a redress could be promised, and a
revenge taken, to the great satisfaction of a wrathful
sense of justice, if not to the benefit of India. It is
but to say that people die in India of famine, and to
head your pamphlet “India under a Bureaucracy,”
B

r . . .
[The earlier portion of this Pamper has already appeared in

the form of Letters to the Morning (‘HRO

4450
_7 .4

A LA
d=

 
9

and half the world will believe that the evils of
India not only are what you describe, but are one
and all caused by those to whom you attribute them,
under the unpopular title of bureaucrats. Give a
dog, or a director, a bad name, and there are plenty
who will complete for you the operation of the pro-
verb. It looked, in short, as if the India Reform
Society and the 7%mes might, between them, stimu-
late the British community into one of those pe-
riodical states of high moral excitement, in which,
through the medium of a proper combination of
ignorance as to facts, recklessness as to assertions,
and thoughtlessness as to consequences, something
memorably disastrous and unwise is triumphantly
attained.

One paper stood almost alone in the press as the
advocate of a more cautious proceeding. But I am
inclined to think that this isolation was far more
apparent than real; and that while that public
opinion which makes a noise was against it, that
public opinion which is made up of many private
and independent judgments, was altogether with it.
Those who assail in a high state of moral indignation,
are naturally more vociferous than those who defend
on the low grounds of prudence and experience.

First of all, the system of double government is
retained. This, as it is the main point assailed, so
it is the main point with me recommendatory of the
measure. Why I think the Court of Directors,
modified or not, a highly desirable part of the go-
vernment of India, may appear hereafter ; but it will

 

3

be, first, as well to examine the grounds on which
the assault has been vindicated.

To string together against any given government
a considerable number of charges, based alike on
sins of omission and of commission, is not a very
difficult task, provided the accuser goes far enough
back, and is not too particular either as to the
quality or the relevance of his facts. Accordingly,
passages descriptive of the blunders of a young judi-
cial civilian in 1853 are read side by side with pas-
sages descriptive of the crimes of perhaps his grand-
father in 1763. The India Nabob of Foote and of
Burke is mirrored on the Parliamentary stage, in all
his rapacity, cruelty, and fraud, only with slight
change of costume: the whole condition of India is
described as one of unmitigated oppression and
misery ; and when the “agony ”—to use a Yankee-
ism—has been “piled high enough,” an inference is
drawn, requiring after all considerable powers of
inferring, even from the allowed premises. India,
under the double government, is atrociously mis-
governed ; therefore the double government is a
bad thing, and should be destroyed by the annihila-
tion of its second branch, the Direction.

It is almost amusing, were there a less serious
matter at stake, to contemplate the deliberate un-
fairness with which everything that is wrong is laid
upon the shoulders of the Company, i. e., of the
directors. And this, in spite of the infinite self-
contradiction in which every speech starting with
this principle is sure to land the orator before its

 
4

conclusion ; the self-contradiction, that is, of a ver-
dict which, acquitting the directors on every count
of the indictment, nevertheless declares them to be
guilty of the whole.

There is a double government, and of course the
blame lies among or between the two elements of
which it is composed, or nowhere. It might, how-
ever, have been worth while to try to apportion it
with some degree of justice. The question being
whether you shall reduce the dual to the singular
person, by destroying one of its branches, it might
have been worth while to see whether the subject of
the proposed operation were really the peccant part.
Some things in the Indian Government are good—
some things bad. Here are two parties implicated :
which of them is responsible for the bad ? Perhaps
both—perhaps in great part neither; but that it
should be one only of the two seems unlikely. Such
a result should be deduced from proofs ; but, as far
as I can judge, it has been assumed without any. It
has been by deliberate selection guided by no “prin-
ciple whatever, by a sheer exertion of will, that the
culprit has on this occasion been designated to the
indignation of mankind. Revivers of Burkian
wrath, scourgers of public delinquents, Mr. Bright
and Mr. Phillimore, must have something to flagel-
late ; and in accordance with the practice of ancient
wisdom, they have chosen the plebeian back. Sir C.
Wood and his predecessors are the erudite King
James. Sir J. Hogg takes the part of Sir Malachi
Malagrowther; the directors are the collective
whipping-boy of the Board of Control.

 

0

It might lead one too far into speculation to
attempt to discuss from what quality or tendency in
our institutions arises this partiality towards the
Minister, and against “ bankers, merchants, and
that class of people,” on the part of the middle-
class-representing Quaker and the high Roman
Republican, rather than Radical, scholar and jurist.
It is enough to point to the tone of discussion on
this subject, as a most marked instance, among
others, of that deep-rooted influence which makes
the roturier sneer at his brethren.

But it is not for this purpose that I have referred
to the point. It is simply to appeal to any person
of moderate candour, whether the iniquities charged
against the Indian Government have been traced, in
any degree whatever—whether the attempt has
ever been made to trace them in the main, to that
branch of the Government which it is sought to
annihilate ? Whether, on the contrary, the whole
tenor of the argument against the directors has not
been to state the case, and assume their responsi-
bility. India is in debt; therefore cashier her
stewards—the directors. The Indian Government
is constantly at war or constantly aggressive; there-
fore dismiss the directors. India is backward in
public works, because of her wars; therefore
“ honour more the governor-general who comes
home without adding an acre to our dominions,
than him who adds a kingdom or a province "—and
dismiss the directors.

“ But we (say the Company) did not create the
necessity of the debt; we protested against the

 
6

aggressions ; we have done what we could in public
works, but the money was laid out in the wars we
could not prevent ; and for your ideal of a governor-
general, is it not ours, almost too em phatically ours 2”

“Oh, I know all that,” is virtually the answer of
the member of Parliament whose talent, vigour, and
bitterness, have made him the virtual leader of the
attack on the Company ; “but the fault is all yours,
notwithstanding. Let us have a minister for India
responsible to Parliament. Who would have thought
of your system of government beforehand, if it had
not existed? You have been oppressors from the
beginning, winning your power by crime, and using
it for evil.”

Such, in the true spirit of the old fable, is the
resolutely criminating assault of the wolfish Quaker
on the lamb of the Direction. If it was not Hogg
(which is the Scotch for lamb, I believe), it was his
grandfather—the directors that were before him, in
some parts of the eighteenth century.

One of Mr. Bright's philosophical objections to
the Government of India is, that it is one of com-
plication and checks—a hocus-pocus government,
as he epitomizes the accusation. Our institutions,
it would seem, as a somewhat peculiar experience
has taught Mr. Bright, do not grow, but are made.
Hence it comes that they are marked by a unity,
centralization, and simplicity, which proverbially per-
mit the enlightened foreigner to judge them with a
facile rapidity, an unfailing and justified confidence
in the correctness of his conclusions, hardly second

7

to those exhibited by the India reformers, in their
single and sweeping dicta upon that congeries of not
more than forty nations and languages which they
are pleased to unify as the people of India.

This being the usual English system, it is natural
to be prejudiced against this confused Hocus-pocus ;
but still let his component portions have fair play.
Of this swindling and composite entity, this Hocus-
pocus, which, according to Mr. Bright, governs
India, why should Hocus be immaculate, and Pocus
alone found guilty? Is it because Hocus lives in
the west-end, and Pocus, like a merchant, lives, as
becomes him, in the east? Is it because, in the
worst acts charged against the twain, Pocus cannot
only plead, but prove, either an absolute alii, or a
presence indeed in the body, but one subject to the
mere will of Hocus, without sense or motion : that,
for instance, in the worst of all the cases, the great
Affghan burglary, Pocus was, as Hocus himself even
boastfully avers, a mere muta persona, or less, a
dead protesting weight, unable to be more, being,
so to speak, literally hocussed by Hocus? Of all
the monstrous cases of Indian maldistribution of
criminal justice, this conviction of Pocus, and ac-
quittal, with an admonition, of Hocus, appears to
be the most glaring. Mr. Bright and his comrades
on the bench claim to take their places in the pages
of Mr. Norton, side by side with the most famous
instances therein contained of judicial inconsecu-
tiveness and irrelevance.

I lay this stress on this error or deliberate mis-

 
8

representation, because, obvious as it is, there is not
one hostile argument on the subject which it does
not pervade ; because, though noticed often, and
crushed as often as noticed, it revives with the reso-
lute vitality of obstinate prejudice, and because we
cannot hope to have heard the last of it. The
double government will be again assailed, and every
assault will be backed by the unjust fallacy which
points straight to the Directorate, as of necessity,
and without proof being required, the source of
whatever is wrong. It lies at the bottom of the
whole question ; and when India is next in her
“perihelion,” be it in two years or in twenty, we
shall have it again. Let at least a mark be set on
it, that we may know our old fallacious friend.
With this concluding protest against the distri-
bution of the charge, let us pass to its subject-
matter—the alleged sufferings of India. Tt is true
that we must, in some degree, and even in a great
degree, judge by results ; and were the condition of
India to-day such as it has been described by some
of the enemies of the directors, we might admit that
lo system from which such results flowed could
be defensible—that we must either abandon that
system or abandon India. In the rulers, more
than the imputed tyranny, and none of the ability,
of Warren Hastings ; in the ruled, more than the
misery, and little of the hope of those over whom
he ruled—a hatred of the English name, a horror
of the English dominion as of the worst of curses—
robbery, and murder almost unchecked, war, bank-
ruptey, famine—in fact, a practice of Thuggee on a

9

large scale applied, for the benefit of the English
plunderer, to the throat of India; if this be what
we have realized during the century in which British
dominion has been growing, we may well despair of
the future. So many great men and great things,
So many noble and thoroughly well-intentioned
efforts to benefit that people as well as ourselves,
and this the end! Let it, then, be the end; let us
wash our hands of an empire which is one crime.
It had been better that our Indian Empire had
never been: better that place of savage murder
which has been called its cradle, the Black Hole,
had been also the grave of such a detestable abortion,
if this were true—one could almost say, if any man
believed it to be true.

But there are honourable men who say it, and we
must, therefore, simply put them aside. Declama-
tion is easy for those who have learned nothing of
the India of to-day, and forgotten nothing of the
India of Burke. But no combination of intensity
of wrath and classicality of rhetoric can make such
declamation other than irrelevant. We must ask
of other witnesses what is the condition of India.

The inquiry into her alleged sufferings would
prove itself to be not of genuine Indian character
at all, if the answers were at first other than utterly
discordant. Any coincidence would create a natural
suspicion that none of them were genuine. As in
Mr. Campbell's lively account of the ecivilian’s day,
where the complaint «that the villagers have utterly
without provocation broken the heads of the grass-
cutters,” is followed as a matter of course by the

Cc

 
10

demand, on the part of the villagers, of justice
against the grass-cutters, who have “invaded their
grass, despoiled the village, and were with difficulty
prevented from murdering the inhabitants” even
80, whatever be the matter in question, contradictory
statements seem essential to an Indian fact. Never-
theless, by listening and looking, something may be
arrived at. Backwardness in public works; slowness
in codification and instruction ; mismanagement, and
consequent indebtedness, of finances generally; gene-
ral poverty, absence and decline of prosperity, and,
if not corrupt, imperfect administration of Jjustice—
such, perhaps, are the heads of the charges, when
reduced out of mist into tangibility.

On such of these points as admit of being weighed
and numbered, statistics have had their say, pro-
ducing their usual mixed growth of cavilling and of
conviction. “Look how little we export to India,”
is the argument on one side. “ Little enough ; but
look how much more it is than it used to be,” is the
answer. Mr. Bright takes issue on salt—¢ even the
consumption of that necessity of life has decreased.”
“On the contrary,” is the reply, “the duty has been
lowered, and the revenue has increased neverthe-
less—more, therefore, is consumed.” “ How few you
educate,” is another charge. “Too true—but do
you educate so many even in England ? and we both
are improving.” “Why do you not grow more
cotton ?” asks Manchester. “Why do you not buy
more ?” is the reply. “Give us a more certain mar-
ket; turn a little of your philanthropic zeal from
the animating pursuit of director-hunting to that of

11

making bargains, philanthropic yet profitable, with
the Indian planter, to take his growth off his hands ;
and we will grow more cotton.” Let us hope that
the expansion of the cotton trade may content Man-
chester, when the duty of 15 per cent. on Indian
manufactures is removed in England.

“ Codification?”  « Doubtless it becomes you to
twit us with that,” is the answer—of somewhat
limited force, indeed, but pretty complete ad hom:-
nem. “The rapidity of English code-making is a pro-
verb, and a world’s wonder. We began, you say, in
1835; when did You begin? And when, oh when,
will you end? ¢ Peace, peace; for shame, if not
for charity.” Perhaps we English are emphatically
gifted with only one side of the Napoleon faculty—
are by nature better road-makers than code-makers.
It may be a short-coming, but scarcely a crime, or
even a criminal neglect in us, to have made little
progress in an enormous task, while you, in one of
parallel but scarce equal difficulty, with incompara-
bly greater means at your call, have made almost
less. Once, again, your censure is unjust to us
personally, and at best irrelevant to the question
whether India should be taken from our steward-
ship and handed over to yours.”

“ During these sixteen years,” says Mr. Bright,
taking his figures from Mr. Prinsep, “they had
expended in public works near £5,000,000, and
paid in dividends to the proprietors of East-India
Stock £10,080,000; together £15,080,000. During
that time they had contracted loans to the extent of
£16,000,000; so that every farthing, during the last

 
12

sixteen years, that had been expended in improve-
ments—every farthing that had been paid to the
800 amiable ladies and gentlemen that elected the
directors, had been actually borrowed.” I see that
the cheers of the India reformers of course followed
this pointed statement ; and its effect satisfied the
orator so much, that he returned to it once and again.
“The sixteen millions borrowed to pay your divi-
dends in England.” It is cleverly said; but what
does it mean? Whose fault is it that £16,000,000
have been borrowed? Was it, or was it not, neces-
sary, or financially prudent, to borrow the money ?
It is, of course, as observed by Sir J. Hogg, an utter
fallacy to represent it as having been borrowed for
the purpose of paying the dividends, which form the
first charge on the territorial revenue. But, waiving
that once again, what did the Affghan war cost ?
And which of the two objects to which, on Mr.
Bright’s way of putting it, the loan was devoted,
would he have dispensed with? Would he have
left the public works untouched, or would he have
repudiated the dividends? Of course, he would
accept neither alternative. He would neither vio-
late the faith of the State of India nor deny to the
people of India the one thing they most need—this
one item of expenditure. It is the main point in
his arraignment against the Company, that they have
been niggardly in this. No; he would, unless the
Quaker pugnacity overpowered at once the Quaker
principles and the English sense of Justice, have
denied himself the useless luxury of a gratuitous
and wicked war; and so would the directors.

13

The truth seems to be, that the finances of India,
not exactly unprosperous, have, nevertheless, been
within the last twenty years, as before, so pressed
and pinched by war after war, that—first, what
would have been a surplus capable of being repro-
ductively laid out to the great advantage of the
revenue, and the still greater advantage of the
people, has once and again become a deficit, not,
certainly, by the especial fault of the Direction :
secondly, that, besides the check thus given to im-
provement by the absence of means, there is another
and constantly operative check in the limitation of
local power.

It seems that for every outlay beyond very narrow
limits, of however promising a character, the sub-
ordinate governments have to apply to that of Ben-
gal; and probably there often follows a further
reference to the authorities at home. For distant
authorities, who can judge imperfectly of the bene-
fits, perfectly only of the amount, of the proposed
expenditure, the natural bias is to doubt of the
first, and to be frightened at the second ; and they
doubtless answer in the inactive sense, sometimes,
when action were more prudent; declining or de-
ferring action with a “No,” or “Not just at pre-
sent,” or some other form of “ Le Roi s’avisera.”
It seems that the remedy for this would be the
remedy for a great deal else—a judicious trust re-
posed in the trustworthy. Do not trust either the
Direction or the Board, separate or combined,
through the medium of encumbering checks and
references, to relieve you from the duty of selecting

 
14

the best depositaries of local power. Choose such,
and then confide largely. It will be long before the
Indian Reform Society will be worth, in the line of
local rule and improvement, one Thomason.

That we have blundered in the matter of land-
revenue, is most true. We have, indeed, grievously
blundered. Mr. Campbell has told us all about it;
and as every school-girl could now tell Kepler that
“the world is like an orange,” so every Mr. A. or
Mr. B. who has crammed «India as it may be” for
the edification of his constituents, could now tell
Sir Thomas Munro, “ My dear Sir, you are incurring
an error equal in amount, though opposite in direc-
tion, to that incurred by Lord Cornwallis.” Alas!
so itis. Haperientia docet—not everything to every-
body, it is true; but many things to many men.
But of things which nothing short of the actual
fact could have led one to believe and think pro-
bable, certainly this is one—that this error should
be imputed as a crime to the directors. Neither
does it hold a high place in the scale of probabilities
that a minister for India, responsible to Parliament,
or that Parliament itself, would have avoided a
similar error. In the Cornwallis case, the Company
and its servants, though imperfectly enlightened on
the subject, yet demurred ; but the resolution of the
Governor-General enabled him to carry through a
scheme, alike great, well meant, and irreparable.
The Government sacrificed much to which they had
a good title, in favour of the supposed landowners,
who had none; and yet they have ever since been
abused for the imaginary offence of destroying India,

15

socially and politically, as well as materially, by con-
fiscating the rents of its landlords ; or—as Mr.
George Thompson used to put the charge, with a
yet wider misapprehension of the truth—for im-
poverishing the country by the imposition of their
monstrous land-tax! Let the late Protectionists
look to this. If they succeed in establishing the
principle that rent is land-tax, more things than the
double government of India will be in danger. I
trust, however, that the Indian reformers have left
behind them, to a certain extent, this error, and are
prepared to admit that, at least in the absence of a
corn-law, rent is not taxation.

In the Madras case, again, the then Government
of India acceded to advice tendered by irresistible
authority. Had the ryotwar system not been tried
by experience, one can fancy how the proposal
would have been dug up now, and what service it
would have done as a weapon of attack in the hands
of the successors of Mr. Thompson. It would have
been irrefragably shown how Sir Thomas Munro's
neglected advice would have relieved the finances of
the presidency; how, through the means thus fur-
nished, the Western Ghauts might before now have
exchanged their precipitous tracks, down which the
cotton-laden mule staggers with cost and pain, for
roads covered with vehicles—the plains their roads
for a network of rails; and the Company’s rejec-
tion of the opinions of their wisest servant would have
been attributed to little short of a deliberate pre-
ference for evil over good. It was not to be so;
the experiment has been tried, and has not suc-

 
16

ceeded. One lesson which the result seems ecalcu-
lated to teach, is the only one which the reformers
absolutely reject, viz. “Do not fancy that you can
understand India in a day.”

On the whole, the respondents have the best of
the argument. It is easy to show that, with our
present knowledge, we could do better than we did,
wanting it, thirty years ago—easy to complain that,
though there are roads in province A, there are none
in province B. Nevertheless, facts and figures ap-
pear to demonstrate, to the conviction of the con-
vincible, that India is, in material aspects, improving
in our hands ; that she is also—though this is a mat-
ter more difficult, in proportion to its greater im-
portance, to judge with confidence—morally im-
proving; that much honest and even noble effort is,
and has been, making towards both these ends; that
she is further improvable to an unlimited extent;
that she wants, above all things, peace and railroads.
There is one notion which, to avoid endless mistakes,
should be firmly grasped—that India is a poor
country—poor essentially in herself, and not merely
by former plundering. It is not there that, for one
generation at least, the golden fleece is to be sought.
We have inherited an empire and a destiny almost
awful in its grandeur, but we have not inherited
wealth. A community, of which perhaps four-fifths,
some say nine-tenths, have been from time imme-
morial occupied in producing from the earth little
beyond a sufficiency of food for themselves and for
the remaining fifth, is essentially a poor community ;
and such is the case with a great part of India.

17

Still, the resources are there. It appears to be
proved by universal agreement, that there never was
a country in which there was more opening for pub-
lic works, or a more certain reproduction of judicious
expenditure of that class, than there is in India now.
Of irrigation it is hardly necessary to speak. To
encourage cultivation and commerce by facilitating
the conveyance of man and produce; to diminish,
possibly, the burden of our vast army, by making it
comparatively ubiquitous, by reducing a month’s
toilsome march to an easy journey of twenty-four
hours—this is a part of what railroads can and will
do for us. The mission of Stephenson, Brunel, and
their compeers to the nineteenth century, is incom-
plete, until it has been planted and has spread
widely in India.

“ The shortcomings noticed are, so far as they are
real, chiefly shortcomings in money. All these
things”—says Mr. Campbell, in the last two lines
of his book, after enumerating a series of benefits
capable of being conferred on India,—%“all these
things can be done if we have money, but without
money we can do nothing.” This truism in words
is, like many other truisms, a truth in action, and
should be stamped as such on the heart of every
Indian statesman. Money is needed; and for
money, peace is needed. We might hope, but for
previous disappointments, that we are at last in
sight of something like a promise of permanent
peace in India. If the necessity for war arises, it
must be met ; for there are things greater even than
the improvements of peace. But in itself the

D

 
18

Indian statesman should * seek peace, and ensue it”
above all things except duty. Whether the di-
rectors have been especially wanting in a perception
of this truth, let their opponents tell us.

I do not invoke on behalf of the double govern-
ment. the testimony even of cautious eulogists.
Though the philosophic, thoughtful, certainly neither
partial nor enthusiastic, historian of the Company
has characterized theirs as the one Government on
earth most anxious to promote the welfare of its
subjects, and most uniformly labouring to that end,
I do not think the case at present stands upon such
a footing that it is necessary to call even such a
witness to character as Mill. To some this praise
will convey chiefly a high compliment to the direc-
tors; to others, a bitter satire on the Governments
of the world. Believing it to be true to a very
considerable extent in the first aspect, and perhaps
not without truth in the second, I do not yet feel
bound to insist on it. Tt is enough to have main-
tained that such as are evil among the results of the
Present Government, are not so traceable to the
directors, nor are those results, taken altogether,
by any means so flagrantly bad as to Justify the
condemnation and destruction of the present system
without further inquiry—without, at least, com-
paring what we now have with what we intend to
place in its stead. We have at least a Government
of India, and we may have a worse; the onus lies
upon the projectors to prove that they are offering
us a better.

“A better!” is the answer, coupled with the

19

stereotyped scream of declamation against imaginary
atrocities; “what can fail to be better than such a
monstrous anomaly as you are? You, who have
robbed and murdered your way this century past,
from the counting-house of a company of money-
making traders up to the chairs of a feeble but
irresponsible despotism? You, a self-convicted
solecism in existence as a Government? What
account can you give of yourselves, poor creatures
that you are, in the slightest degree in accordance
with any one of our theories? A separate Board,
a partly independent power, the rulers in part of
140 millions of men, and with no rationale to give
of yourselves or your descent, except one merely
historical! Was there ever so base, so empirical an
origin? ‘Who would ever have thought of your
system of government if it had not existed 2”

“We arean anomaly,” is the reply—<“a very absurd
one, if you like ; but to this anomaly you owe India.
Through destiny, or Providence, and not through
your forethought or ours, a few Englishmen, and
not all England, have been the origin, and, in the
main, the instrument of this great thing. The
United Company of Merchants trading to the East
Indies has been the instrument of giving India to
England. Do you think you would have won it for
yourselves? At any rate, it was won for you, and
we lineally represent its winners. It appears to us
that you find us where we are by a tolerable right
of possession and acquirement. We are content
with our history.”

The reply is at least as good as the attack. But

 
20

the case merits stating more fully. Even if the
separate existence of the Company had been essen-
tial to the gaining India, we are not now either
bound to maintain, or justified in maintaining, its
separate authority, except it be conducive to the
interests of India.

It will be some day a strange thing that this
should have been doubted. All theorists, it is true,
are for concentrating power; but the experience of
England, in every part of the national life, is so em-
phatically against them, that they make but little
way among us. This particular question, especially,
however, need not be looked at on general grounds.
No one proposes to give India over to the Direc-
tion. A double Government we must have, unless
we can give the whole government over to the
Crown ; that is, to a Minister for India, with or
without a council, and (what is called) responsible
to Parliament. This, or the double Government, is
the alternative.

That a minister may know nothing about India,
and is very likely, judging from previous experience,
not to know much, it is almost superfluous to say;
but it is by no means from mere ignorance or even
mere carelessness on the part of a minister, that evil
may be apprehended.

But it is said, “ We do not propose to have only a
minister unassisted and unguided ; a minister with
a council—that is the alternative. A council, say
of eight persons, permanently appointed, selected
for their experience, knowledge, and ability, capable
of advising the minister, and through the authority

21

of knowledge, naturally, to a great extent, con-
trolling him ; only not separated from him, in your
present stupid fashion, nor acting as an independent
check, whether to prevent or delay. Of course he
must have the final power of deciding against them,
of overruling their opinion; but then he should
answer it to Parliament. A council and parlia-
mentary responsibility — what more would the
strongest-headed, the most untamed president or
secretary that ever crashed his way through jungles
of Indian correspondence require to keep him
straight?” This is a serious proposal, and deserves
consideration. It is tacitly admitted or loudly pro-
tested by all—though that does not always imply
real, unreserved admission — that Indian govern-
ment should be preserved as much as possible from
contact with English politics — a contact which in
this case is inevitable contamination. Our politics
are very good things for ourselves; but, by universal
confession, they are not the rule for India. We
must, indeed we do assume, absolutely and finally,
that for them England is, or should be, very much
the same, whether the ministerial colour be Trojan
or Tyrian; that by India, Derby or Aberdeen nullo
discrimine habetur. Ministries may rise or fall;
but across half the world, England is and should be
neither Whig England nor Tory England, but
simply and ever England. This presumed, let us
suppose a responsible minister, with his able Indian
council of eight, bound, as proposed by Lord Ellen-
borough and, I believe, by most of the speculators,
to appeal to Parliament whenever he overrules them.

 
22

Let us suppose a case in which the minister has
overruled his council, and has to appeal to Parlia-
ment to confirm the step taken by him. It is per-
haps a matter admitting of a question ; at least it
becomes known, let us suppose, that three of the
council are with the minister and five against him.
Let us assume, too, that such a point comes to be
decided, not by a House of Commons of the ordi-
nary appearance, with a Government safe in a recog-
nized majority, but that it is thrown, as a bone of
contention, before a shaking ministry face to face
with a hopeful Opposition. The necessary result is,
that once again an Indian question is made, not the
theme of enlightened discussion, but the battle-
ground of faction. Three hundred or more gentle-
men on each side go to hear reasons assigned—
and doubtless reasons can be assigned—for the votes
which they are about to give. The bare fact is,
that the minister has overruled the majority of the
council, but the thing in view is not whether India
has been injured thereby, but whether the ministry
shall stand. The opinion of the majority of the
council is appealed to. The Indian council becomes
a power in English politics, ipso facto, and at such a
crisis a most weighty power; and the Indian coun-
cillors become English politicians. Again the rela-
tion of the minister to his council js affected exactly
by that which ought not to affect it—the relation of
himself and his colleagues to Parliament. With a
narrow majority the Cabinet is endangered by that
which with a stronger it might do with impunity ;
and thus the strength of the permanent Indian

23

council, as a power in Indian affairs, varies inversely
as the strength of the British ministry. When
strong in Parliament, the Indian Minister may with
impunity overturn his council; when weak, he will
perhaps unduly defer to them. At every step, do
what you will, English polities will thus react on
India.

In these remarks I assume, what might be dis-
puted, that the council will be well chosen, and
intended to be serviceable; yet I confess I see no
way out of this difficulty, if it be supposed that the
council is intended to be anything of a reality, and
not merely a sham. It appears more probable, since
the tendency of Parliament would be to support the
minister when there was not the reason of a strong
and expectant Opposition to the contrary, that the
council, however well selected, would soon lose the
independent tone with which perhaps it would begin.
It is not in the nature of men and of things, but that
eight men sitting round a table must be influenced
by the president, who can overrule them all, annul
their decision, and place his in its stead as the Seat
of the council, in quite a different manner from that
in which they would be affected by his exercising
even a parallel power of ultimate rejection, as the
superior of a board independent of him in some
things, and at least expressing a separate judgment
of its own upon almost all. By the separate board,
opinions are better formed, more independently, and
expressed more fully and freely, and the checking
power is exercised at once more naturally and less
offensively, yet in a manner more difficult to evade.

 
24

You may, in a way more or less civil, pooh-pooh a
gentleman across the table, or be conveniently deaf;
but you must, unfortunately, attend to him if he
writes you a letter which you are bound to answer.
It seems in conformity with human nature to
expect that, after the opinion of such a council had
been several times set aside by the minister, and his
decisions, if appealed against, confirmed by Parlia-
ment, its members would lose all the inclination for
subjecting themselves to a useless slight. Their
opinions would be given when asked for, honestly,
let us believe, but not pressingly or earnestly; their
rejection would be submitted to ; in time the function
of the Indian Council would be limited to playing the
neither brilliant nor very useful part of the judicious
elderly adviser, whose advice you need not take, and
do not, except when it suits you. It would be a check
against glaring iniquities of the class which no
minister is likely to propose; hardly against the
showy follies of half-knowledge, the plausible wrongs,
justifiable by talk, but not just, whether of the mo-
destly veiled, or of the dashing order. It might
sink into a collective first clerk, something short of a
political under-secretary, the useful sensible walking
lexicon of official facts—the receptacle and bringer
forthof needed information—the unobtrusivetenderer
of opinions, indifferent, because without power of en-
forcing them, to their rejection, as to their acceptance.
Being this, the council would be a convenient help,
and no great trouble, to an able despotic Minister
of India; and this, and not a check with an inde-
pendent power, is what, no doubt, Lord Ellenbo-

25

rough thinks it should be, and knows well that, once
constituted, it would be. The Minister then, while
within certain limits, is absolute. You have deli-
berately flung away your present anomalous acci-
dental absurd home process, most irrational in the
world, inconceivable but nevertheless really existing
and perfectly effective security against the adminis-
tration of India becoming the capital of political
kite-fliers; and India is at the mercy of him and of
his parliamentary responsibility.

Perfectly effective safeguard, I have said.

As an illustration of the possibility, under the
existing constitution of the Home Government of
India, of keeping the thread of Indian and Home
politics from fatal intertwisting, let us take the most
memorable instance that modern times can furnish.
A vigorous ministry of conservative reforming ten-
dency is in power, untouched by the Opposition, and
backed by the country. It has the éclat, among
other things, of one or two Indian victories to aid
it ; and is understood to be on the best terms with
its clever and able, though sometimes a little star-
tling Governor-General. The directors, among other
influential bodies of men, are considered to be well
affected to the administration of Sir R. Peel; pro-
bably three-fourths of them are Conservative of one
shade or another ; and they have certainly no wish to
embarrass him. Suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue
sky, comes on Parliament and the world the tidings
—the directors have recalled Lord Ellenborough.

Nobody can believe it for a moment ; but it is so.
The twenty-four gentlemen in Leadenhall Street

E

 
26

have made up their minds that their brilliant ser-
vant was—who knows what ?—too disrespectful in
his manner, or too little to be calculated on in his
movements—in short, not exactly suiting the place.
There is of course a stir caused by a step so unpre-
cedented and sudden, but nothing comes of it, not
even a quarrel between the India House and the
Premier. Sir R. Peel can but say, when asked,
that the East-India directors have, whether erro-
neously, as he thinks, or not, yet in the exercise of
their undoubted power, thought fit to recall the
Governor-General. The Directorate has struck down
with one blow the Indian representative of Govern-
ment; but the individual directors are neither more
nor less Peelite than they were the day before the
recalling despatch was framed. What follows?
The Ministry, with one hand, confers rewards on
Lord Ellenborough ; with the other combines with
the Court to send out in his place the man that
can be found most acceptable to both, and even, as
far as possible, acceptable as a successor to the
superseded viceroy.

The transaction in a constitutional point of view
was not discreditable to England. It reminds one
of some of those marked instances of respect for
legally exercised power, which form so striking and
noble a feature in the early history of the contend-
ing factions of Rome. It made or confirmed to the
directors their most able and most respected enemy,
—the one enemy who seems to speak from thought
and from knowledge,—and who, consequently, is at
issue on most points with all the other assailants.

27

He is thus—not a host, but a single redoubted cham-
pion. His sentiments always deserve attention, and,
when free from bias, are generally convincing.

I express no opinion either as to the question
whether the directors should have this particular
power at all, or whether they exercised it rightly.
My object is to exhibit plainly in this great exam-
ple the difference between the separate Board and
the Council of the minister; to show that direct col-
lision on the one point of greatest importance in the
relations between the Cabinet and the India House,
yet did not confuse those relations for a moment
with English polities, nor make their amicable con-
tinuance doubtful or even seriously difficult. In
short, the directors are Indian only; the minister
for India cannot be Indian only, nor can the Indian
Minister’s council, if sitting in immediate connec-
tion with India, continue at once independent and
Indian only. It will not be an Indian Cabinet; it
will be a Board either of Indian clerks, or of semi-
English sub-ministers. It is not wanted as the
latter; it is meant to be the former. It remains to
inquire whether the second or parliamentary check
on the Minister’s absolute power, is more effective
than the sufficing control exercised by a Council.

We are often told that, in default of any official
limitation to the power of the Indian Minister, we
may safely trust to his constitutional subordination
to the dispensers of political power. There is
parliamentary responsibility— and what is that 2
We use many words without even doubting that we
understand them, and that we all and always under-

 
28

stand them alike ; until some day comes something
which puts our phraseology to the test, and then we
find that we are every day using the same word in
twenty different senses as speakers, and that we never
understand it twice alike as hearers. Many inter-
pretations of parliamentary responsibility might find
place in an essay (could we but have such!) from a
political Charles Lamb on popular political fallacies.
Responsible, etymologically, means answerable, lia-
ble to answer. Practically, it seems perhaps to
mean the liability to being asked questions in Par-
liament—to which you may give an answer or not,
as you please. Parliamentary questionability would
certainly be the more exact term; but some incon-
venience, not to say indecorum, might arise from
adopting it. It would not be courteous to speak of
her Majesty’s present or late questionable advisers.

Leaving this point to the curious, I admit that
the expression, parliamentary responsibility, has in
certain cases a good deal of practical force; but,
like most such words, it has a wide range, from
almost nothing up to an almost alarming quantity
of meaning. There are, for instance, three Secre-
taries of State, all alike parliamentarily responsi-
ble ; that is, all by turns subject to unlimited ask-
ings, and to graduated penalties, from laughter or
“oh, oh,” up to impeachment, in cases of unsatis-
factory answers,

These three, however, have among them at least
three different kinds of responsibility, each respec-
tively his own. Against the Home Secretary the
doctrine of parliamentary responsibility, in its com-

29

mon sense, is easily enforced. If there be a broken
head in Coldbath Fields, he is quite sure to hear of
it ; and if his answer does not satisfy the inquirer
that the head was righteously broken, or, that,
having been unrighteously broken, it is in course
to be avenged by due process of British law, consti-
tutional patriots will make him feel that, though
impeachments are out of date, sarcasms are not.
Natural, perfectly, is this preference of what is close
at hand; and .to a certain extent right. But what
of the other departments? The Foreign Minister
is seriously assailed about as often as the Indian
Charter is discussed—once in a score of years. One
such occasion is too recent for its circumstances to
have been forgotten. There is a great run upon
blue books; names of foreign sound become as
household words among the talkers of politics ; and
in fine, the great foreign question culminates in
Pacifico. The value of the wardrobe and of the
affidavit of a needy, roguish Portuguese Jew is the
one topic of London and of Europe for a day. There
is plenty to say in attack, plenty, too, in reply. The
minister surpasses himself in explanation, proving
beyond contest his incontestable talent, his mastery
of himself, of the house, and of the subject. His
responsibility is the responsibility of habitual and
easy and definite knowledge, to ignorance, or hasty
and indefinite conceptions. Nay, right or wrong,
there is a moral superiority in the tone of one whose
interest in the subject is real and permanent, when
dealing with others whose interest is but factitious
and temporary. One weighty and independent

 
30

opinion, which circumstances made sadly memo-
rable as the last counsel of a great man, is given,
though reluctantly, against the Foreign Minister,
and faction attributes even that to faction. He
triumphs, of course—his colleagues support him,
though they do not quite agree with him; and
Pacifico descends from the temporary elevation, in
which he fixed the eyes of the universe, carrying off
triumphantly so many Hellenic drachms as amount
to twenty-five pounds English, as the value finally
affixed by impartial arbitration to his feelings and
his furniture, his character and his coupons.

The fact is, that, as was most truly said by Mr.
Charles Buller, “ the British nation does not care
for foreign affairs: it does not care twopence.”
And when there is no present real care, parlia-
mentary responsibility is a name. Except in the
way of general, a very general, control on the line
of policy—a partial security against his handing
over the force of England to Absolutism or to
Communism, the Parliament has little control over
the Foreign Minister, whatever may be possessed
by his colleagues. Granting, for the sake of argu-
ment, that this kind of responsibility ought to con-
tent us as a general rule, when only the rest of the
world is concerned, is this the kind of responsibility
which we are to trust to in the case of India? And
can we expect even this ?

Again, a Colonial Minister, is he responsible?
Yes, on the same theory — no, for the same
reasons. More so than the Foreign Minister, be-
cause, after all, our colonies are more and nearer to

31

us than are our faithful allies or our enemies. They
are our own blood, they speak our own language,—
we care for them more, in short; so we ask more
questions about them, and expect more intelligible
answers. Nevertheless, to express it with the
utmost moderation, a degree of sincere interest, and
of real, though limited knowledge, have not enabled
us always either to know what was right for a
colony, or even to guide the will of the Minister in
the course which, perhaps, we guessed rather than
knew to be right. Knowledge which cannot trust
itself, and interest which after all is not vital, are
not the forces requisite to exact a rigorous respon-
sibility. Accordingly, though we have before now
been very angry, right or wrong, with our Colonial
Minister, we have never even attempted to make
him govern the colonies generally, hardly any one
colony in particular, according to any system or
plan of our own ; having, in truth, had none to give
him. And now we seem rapidly finding out that the
best use to which we can put his responsibility to
us, is to enforce upon him the propriety of leaving
the colonies as much as possible to manage for
themselves ; trusting to a certain extent his know-
ledge, which is greater than ours, and making him
trust largely in theirs, which in local matters is
greater than his.

And men who never knew the Colonial Office but
to hate it, never named it but to abuse, are anxious
to set up a Colonial Office for the great unknown of
India, and talk as if they believed that the words
“ parliamentary responsibility” contained a charm

 
32

to make a foolish minister wise, an ignorant one in-
structed, a rash one cautious, a perverse one tractable.
Who would have thought that reformers should
be so enamoured of their experience of a Colonial
Office as to go out of their way to set up another ?
Their nerves are well strung. I confess it gives me
a slight shiver to think of a possible Indian Minister
and a possible Governor-General, in combination
with a Parliament in the fifth year of its existence
(when it is thinking even less than usual of the
world beyond its respective hustings), and with no
Court of Directors.

As a curb on the Minister, the risk of an appeal
to Parliament would be generally nugatory; as
an influence on English politics, such an appeal
would be generally noxious. Nor has experience
shown us that it is calculated to be of much avail
to India. After all, is there not a responsible
Minister for India ?—is the great healing idea really
a new discovery? Until this time, I never doubted
that the President of the Board of Control, like all
other Ministers, was for every act done by him in
his ministerial character responsible to Parliament ;
that is, as responsible as the law can make him.

He is responsible, as in the case of the Foreign
Minister, for the general direction of his policy; for
peace, that is, or for war ;—other general direction
the policy of India can hardly have. Do what we
will, it is not easy to see how we can make him
responsible for more. We have yet to show that we
mean him to be even this.

It is strange enough that we should have to

33

fancy, that in declaring the responsibility of the
Minister for India we are setting up a novelty; and
yet, on the other side, not strange ; for to exact it
would be a novelty indeed. We seem to have re-
solved to forget the existence of that which in one
flagrant instance within the present Charter we
almost barefacedly ignored. Inquiry was demanded,
and there was every possible ground that could be
imagined to call for inquiry. There was a war, at
first successful, afterwards disastrous in the extreme 3
among whose disastrous concomitants perhaps the
least were the impaired finances of India, the tarnished
arms of England. There was every circumstance
of horror that could excite compassion even in
those who were careless about right ; such defeat,
such misery, such utter and ruthless destruction, as
no English army, hardly any similar force of civi-
lized men, had ever experienced. The House of
Commons had before it, not as questions to be
solved, but as facts beyond dispute, retracted policy,
shaken confidence in our strength and star, a shock
to an Empire, broken faith, violated treaties, every
combination of political crime and political blunder ;
and as the excuse for a war not mdre terribly cala-
mitous than deliberately unjust, there was a falsified
blue book on the table.

Nor is there a doubt who is responsible for this
series of offences towards India. England admits it."
Habemus confitentem rewm. What will the House of
Commons do now? The House of Commons does
exactly what might be expected, and not its duty.
Its usual leaders aid it towards that negation of

F

 
34

activity. The Ministry responsible for the war ex-
plains or declines to explain; says that it had good
reasons for mutilating the despatches, or that it did
not mutilate them; Sir Robert Peel considers it
would be an inconvenient precedent to inquire now
into the past; and so, in fine, passes over the
question of the inquiry into the Affghan war—the
Affghan war, the reason why India has a debt in-
stead of a surplus, the direct cause of the war and
annexation of Scinde, the reason, more or less,
of every other war that has since tended to deprive
India of irrigation and of railroads.

Is it to the zeal shooting up like a Jonah’s
gourd, new-born of new-born knowledge, within the
last few months, or to the ignorance and indifference
of years past, that we are to trust for the future of
India? How long has India ceased to be a tabooed
topic? Let us ask a distinguished Indian, now
resident for some time in England, anxious to direct
attention to some defects or errors in the present
Government of India, having much to say, but
having probably learnt in the meditative East that
silence is better than useless speech, and silent
accordingly for years. He shall tell us why. He is
a critic indeed of the Company’s Government, an
eager advocate, especially of the increased employ-
ment of natives; but an advocate with that real
"sympathy which needs not to lash itself by clamour
into factitious enthusiasm ; a critic with knowledge
both of India and of real habitual feeling in England
respecting India.

“If I am asked why, feeling it my duty to speak,

35

I have kept silence for nearly five years, I can only
answer, that India is a subject so uncouth to English
ears, that he who intends to be listened to when he
speaks of it must choose one of those mollia tempora
Jandi which present themselves only at intervals of
twenty years. That period has now again brought
India back into her perihelion. The rights and
interests of our Asiatic fellow-subjects are brought
so near for the moment, that they look almost as
large as our own rights and interests.”

True, Mr. Cameron—true to the letter. India
brought back to her perihelion looks large enough;
but she has been within reach of a very moderate
telescope all the time; only nobody in England would
take the trouble to use one. Spy-glasses of all
dimensions were tendered to the public to look at
the distant “ uncouth” planet, to observe the strange
flickerings of colour which passed over its disk from
time to time; but in vain. Yet the appearances
were not uninteresting. There were “ dim eclipses”
enough—disastrous twilights shed over half the
natives of Asia, perplexing more than monarchs
with more than fears of change. But curiosity was
not to be tempted, scarcely by the glaring bloody-
hued phenomenon of an Affghan war.

Nobody looked very closely, because nobody cared
very much. We care for the moment now, because
India is the subject for the day (with a reserve in
favour of table-turning), as some affaire Pacifico or
Pritchard may be the subject of to-morrow.

For years we have been deaf as well as dumb on
the subject of India, and now we have got rid of

 
36

one of the qualities. We have received the gift of
speech, unhappily not as yet sufficiently accompanied
by the counter-gift of hearing. It is one of our
tempora fandi, and we do talk to some purpose,
if not exactly to the purpose. Startled and
shocked by the discovery of how much there is
about India which we did not know, we altogether
forget that our ignorance is chiefly owing to our
indifference; and under the sway of the dominant
zeal of the moment, we persuade ourselves that our
indifference is over for ever. Would that it were
0. A real and not transitory wish for the happi-
ness of India, would not find its fitting expression in
the silence of twenty years and the clamour of a
day. Its utterance would be less striking, but more
continuous, and perhaps not less useful.

But the assumption that because the House of
Commons of this year is excited on the subject of
India, the House of Commons of five years hence
will be even as competent as the present to en-
force his responsibility against the * Minister for
India,” is too absurdly gratuitous to merit demoli-
tion. Every one knows how it will be. “ The
thing that kas been, that is it what will be.” Not,
it may be hoped, exactly so. Our former utter and
most discreditable indifference is violently shaken,
and our shame or anger for it shows itself partly
in the reaction of the present excited mood. It
may be hoped that what is real in the present feel-
ing will not die with the occasion. Kindly interest,
and even zeal, may lead to infinite good, if it does
not assume to be more than it is, and think that it

37

possesses the wisdom which on the contrary it is
its practice to stimulate others to exercise. But the
more we appreciate the question, the less disposed
shall we be to conclude that the House of Commons
can with prudence or impunity assume to itself the
government of India.

If it may be laid down as a general rule that few
have cared for India, it is equally certain that the
Symptom of beginning to care is usually a fervent
indignation against somebody. This form of the India
Reform fever finds a not unamusing expression in
Mr. Dickinson’s pamphlet. « I,” says Mr. Dickin-
son, with a pleasant naivets, “ knew nothing about
India formerly, and cared very little. Now I know,
as you see, a great deal ; and you see also how much
I care; how I am angry and sin not; how my
heart burns within me against the oppressors I de-
nounce. Do you only learn as much as I have
learnt, and you will care as much and be quite as
wrathful.”

The prospect is attractive; but doubts might be
expressed whether, after all, it is so easy for every-
body to learn as much as Mr. Dickinson knows. Some
interest is for most persons essential even to learning,
some object beyond the pleasure of ineffectual anger.
How are you to bring your wrath to bear on the
welfare of India, that so much virtuous indignation
may not be wasted ? The remedy of all the other re-
formers, the parliamentary panacea, is Mr. Dickin-
son’s also. But the common fallacy appears in his
pages in rather a striking form. Nothing can be
easier than to regenerate India. Only “ make India

 
38

a political question.” Ponder that, understand it,
and do it, and then all will go well.

Can words be easier—can the thing to be done
be harder? How is it to be done? Have we but
to will that India be a political question, and forth-
with it will become so? Here, again, are several
words thrown together, including a good deal within
them. Let us look at them more closely. What is
“a political question” in a free state like ours? and
supposing us to have arrived at some conception on
this point, can any given subject, even an important
one, be made a political question? No, not even by
the House of Commons voting once for all that it
shall be. Political questions are not made but
grow, like constitutions.

Among a free people, those questions about which
the people really cares for the time, in which it is, or
sometimes only believes itself to be, interested, are
political questions. Your clamour for the day, still
less your épse dixit, will not make a new thing old,
will not make “political,” in that sense of the word,
a question for which nobody cares. A political
question! when you can hardly, as yet, even make
it an Exeter Hall question; for which, indeed, it
becomes India and her well-wishers to be thankful,
—and thankful, in part at least, to the directors.
Had India been a Government department only,
Exeter Hall would have besieged, and very possibly
stormed it, before now. India ought to be, and it
may be hoped habitually will be, a political question
then, and then only, when the people of England,

39

knowing India well, care about India greatly, and,
confident in that knowledge, as well as urged by
that care, make and unmake their rulers, to some
considerable extent, with reference to their good
intentions and skill in the management of India.
God forbid that such confidence should precede such
knowledge !

Inspire that spirit of interest. Well and good ;
but that is a work of time, not a thing to be done
by an Act of Parliament. That is not what we are
called upon to do now. India is not, and in that
sense never may be—at least, we cannot now make
it—a permanent political question; but we may
very easily make it a temporary battle-ground of
faction, if we only aim at the one result which our
utmost efforts should be directed to avoid.

In considering the proposed alternative, we have
in fact been considering the grounds on which the
present system is preferable. Did the directors, in
fact, unite all the incompatible faults with which
they have been charged by those to whom they are
not quite demons, were they, what they are not, a
set of chance rulers, none of them eminent for
ability or for experience, at once nonentities and
despots, old women and rigorous oppressors, spend-
thrifts and misers, at once un-Indian and un-
English, a dead weight and a mainspring of evil,
there would be something to say for them, so long
as they are what they are, viz., a body as such
unconnected with English politics, uninfluenced by
English majorities, giving, as none can deny, much

 
40

time and attention to the government of India, and
having no public interest which competes in their
estimation with the welfare of India.

This is what we have; we have not to create it,
but to improve it. It contains, and has generally
contained, some good men, men of considerable
Indian experience, of talent, of pure and enlightened
intentions; let us by all means insure, if possible,
that it shall in future contain more good men, and
better. Hereafter we may consider this part of the
question.

“But why these men, elected by a constituency
of elderly mortgagees of either sex? Was there
ever so ludicrous a contrivance as that by which you
create kings of India out of those ¢glasses’ which
are ‘duly closed and delivered to the scrutineers,’
with a result which no one doubts? Why these,
more than any other two dozen gentlemen taken
out of the streets?” It will sound extravagant,
paradoxical, to say, that, given the necessary con-
ditions—respectability of character, disposition to
take a deeper interest in Indian than in any other
politics, I should consider any two dozen such
gentlemen, were they but a kind of permanent
grand jury to look after the grievances of India,
infinitely better than nothing at all. The present
body, however, is greatly preferable; first, by un-
broken historical connection with their predecessors,
who gained what they only aid in governing ;
secondly, as containing, as always having contained,
and as being always likely to contain, some or many
able men, long and closely connected with India—

41

not the best that could have been got, but far from
being the worst—improvable, like the country they
govern—less able, perhaps, individually, than a
minister’s council such as could be chosen, but
better than such a council, in that they are not the
shadow of another, but themselves. Any despot
can call round him a band of able advisers. Is
there no difference, except in number and individual
ability (and then, perhaps, the advantage might not
be all one way), between Louis Napoleons Senate
and the English Parliament ?

The question of double Government, or, in other
words, the continuance of ga separate and partly
independent department for Indian affairs, by far the
most important of all questions touching the Home
Government of India, being now settled, it is well to
look a little at the constitution and mode of
creating the present Court, the merits, defeets, and
general results of the system, and whether or how
far it admits of being improved. It is one of the
points of the Indian question on which Englishmen
who have not been in India may yet hope to form a
competent opinion. Before, however, looking at
the process by which directors are made, let us
turn for a moment to two other aspects of the
question, rather Indian than English, but still within
the range of a general view—questions of which the
discussion almost needs an apology—so obvious one
should have said is the answer to each. One is,
Shall we hold India ? branching into the question,
To what end? the other, Shall we postpone legisla-
tion ¢—this last, a question indeed happily settled

le

 
42

by the determination of the Government, but upon
which it may not be unprofitable to pause for a
moment.

We find ourselves in possession of India. In
framing a government for our imperial dependency,
one might naturally enough ask, why we have it to
govern. The only reason why this question is not
the first asked, is because the answer is assumed. To
govern India and govern it well; to communicate,
so far as may be, to her countless millions the stamp
and colour of whatever is best in the English charac-
ter, and highest in the English cultivation, material
and mental ; to raise them towards our own level, in
intellectual, moral, and physical condition ; such, one
would have said, was the end of our connection with
India. According to some, it has another end. It is
curious to observe, that what may be called the two
extremes of opinion, which meet on the common
ground of hostility to the present system of govern-
ment, both take a view of our relation to India
contradicting in the strongest manner the most deep-
rooted principles and feelings of the English, as of
any other noble people, and confuted by an instine-
tive indignation which needs no aid from logic.
“Rule and retain your subjects—

“Tu re i ] los, R memento '—
gere 1mperio populos, Romane,

but do not educate them over much: once edu-
cated, as you talk of making them, they will not
endure your empire.” That is one opinion; a very
Ahitophel of a counsel. Here is his rival, the milder-
spoken Hushai of the cotton-trade : — « Educate

 

43

them at least in so much of political economy as is
needful to make them appreciate the advantages of
commerce; but do not cling to your dominion—
there is no great good in that. Let the exotic
empire wither ; only let trade flourish. To buy and
to sell, behold the great ends of humanity. Teach
India enough for that, and then reap, as merito-
rious teachers should, the profit of your labours.
Behold, in a not distant futurity, no English rulers,
no Indian subjects, but millions white and black
buyers and sellers, with a statistical result alto-
gether satisfactory. Behold the golden chain of
mutual exports and imports as the sole link con-
necting India and England.” Which of the two
programmes is the greater affront to the conscience ?
Many, perhaps, would say the first; the second is
undoubtedly more true to the smug-faced morality
of an age of shams, and, as such, the more danger-
ous. I hardly know which shows most indifference
towards human good, but I think I know which
is meanest. Somewhat as Lucifer looks down on
Mammon, does the cold-blooded haughty paradox of
the statesman look down with inexpressible scorn
on its Quaker-like ally in a common enmity, the
sleek paradox of the trader. To ignore altogether
the trust committed to us in India, is to my feeling
not less wicked, and perhaps more base, than to
misuse it. Surely there must be something true in
the old idea, that luxury, buying and selling, what
we call high civilization and comfort, tends, if not
corrected, to corrupt and enervate.

Is a corn-law the only evil thing to be enthusi-

 
44

astically assailed? Is free trade the only aim worth
a struggle and a sacrifice? Is there really nothing
to a man or a nation in being the head and leader
onward of many men or of many nations? Has
Manchester no feeling, no understanding, for in-
stance, of such words as these, not always words of
peace indeed, not always rightly used, but with a
meaning in them too, and a noble one: “ Dieu me
Pa donné 7” Such a gift, and with it such a duty—
responsibilities so great, possibilities of good to our-
selves and others so unlimited—the most wonderful,
and what might be the noblest page in the world’s
history, committed to us to make or mar; and all to
be laid down in mere faintness of heart. No won-=
der these men do not wish for the statue of Coeur=
de-Lion, renouncing so easily as they do an aim
greater than that of the Crusade. They are far
enough from the feeling with which the “ Norman
Crusader” covered his face, as unworthy to look on
the Jerusalem which his utmost efforts could not
attain. :

But, we might almost ask, were it courteous, are
men who are indifferent to the question whether we
keep India or not, provided India buys from us,
really entitled even to give an opinion on the ques-
tion how India is to be governed for the good of
England and her own? They are looking at the
thing from a different point of view; nay, they are
not looking at the thing at all; they are looking at
a different thing. These Realists are subject to one
class of illusions,—the “idola” of the market-place.
“ As’ Mallebranche saw all things in God,” said some

 

45

bitter wit, “so M. Necker sees all things in M.

Necker;” a theorem, observes Carlyle, which will
not hold.

“ Mutato nomine, de te
Fabula narratur.”

Manchester sees all things in Manchester,—another
theorem which will not hold.

No. India is to be kept; and, moreover, to be
instructed, improved, and in all things raised to the
utmost. And here we pass to a second question :—
How is India to be improved ?

It is true, that a question needing for its full
working out the labour and experience of centuries,
is not a question to be answered in a day; but it
may be easier to point out how she js not to be
improved. While I write, a striking example is
thrown in my way by the manner in which the most
difficult, as the most important, form of improve-
ment may be most effectually delayed. Lessons in
railroad-making are one form of instructive improve-
ment; lessons in truth-speaking another, and a
greater one. We are giving them railroads to-day.
Every day and all days we might be giving them
truth ; but sometimes, instead, we give them the
reverse of truth; and the inoculation takes, as we
shal see, with a lamentable facility.

It may be recollected that, some time since, a’
petition was sent home from certain natives of
Madras, which certainly merited some attention as’
an expression of opinions, and received at least as
much as it merited. The Indian reformers honoured’
or damaged it with their advocacy, and Lord Ellen-

 
46

borough with a notice and a pretty general contra-
diction. By the last Indian papers it appears that
the persons concerned in this movement have met
again, and produced another petition, which has
not had the success of the first. The report of the
meeting is worth reading, for more reasons than one.
If one observes with some amusement, and no dis-
satisfaction, the adoption of English machinery for
the expression of grievances—a meeting, with chair-
man, proposers, and seconders, whose names all ter-
minate in “gum,” “arawatty,” and « sawney,’—of
resolutions all in the Tamil language—one regrets
the more to find how much evil idle words may do
across the seas; how much the copyists of our forms
have yet to learn of our spirit. There is a reference
of unconscious humour (called forth by a proposal
of Mr. Hume's) to the almost total ignorance under
which the Parliament and people of England appear
to labour of their religious and social customs ; the
particular point being, a proposal to summon Indian
witnesses to England, whereas, as Amoogum Moo-
delliar forcibly observes, Hindoos are prohibited by
their religion from crossing the sea—a view of the
case strongly illustrating the feasibility of the plan
for governing India by parliamentary committees.
But the general result left on one’s mind by the pro-
ceedings is serious, not to say sad. The account of
what took place establishes, with almost a painful
degree of force, the deteriorating, even more than
the dangerous, tendencies of such an agitation as the
postponers of legislation wish to create in India.
Petition No. 1 had some very earnest supporters in

47

the Anglo-Indian press. This is the way in which
their supporters speak of petition No. 2. Provoked
out of well-meant, but perhaps rather flattering and
one-sided backing into sharp truths, it will be seen
that they articulate their “This is too bad!” with
considerable emphasis :—

“ Having thoroughly appreciated the great value of their
former appeal to the Legislature, it may be readily conceived
that we look on the present representation with feelings of bitter
disappointment. It will save the advocates of the present order
of things a world of trouble, for no enlightened Englishman can
peruse it without sensations of disgust and indignation. With
every allowance for the defects of translation, it is impossible not
to see that the petitioners meant to be impudent, and were utterly
careless of the truth. They know that their language conveys
insults, and that their statements are in the most important points
wholly without foundation.”

In language echoing their injudicious friends in
England, and evidently suggested by some European
agitator on the spot, our rhetorical presenters of
grievances in Teloogoo or Tamil state, among other
things, that “the interests of the people are unfor-
tunately considered of not the slightest consequence
to the Government, whose duty it is to legislate for
their sole benefit.” Referring to the recently-
granted constitutions of the Cape and of New Zea-
land in words bearing still more the stamp of the
canting professional agitators, they ‘humbly and
anxiously trust that your honourable House will
not deem the barbarians of the former, and the can-
nibals of the latter colony, more deserving or more
fitting to be intrusted with a share in the manage-
ment of their own affairs than the inhabitants of a

 
48

country which, for scores of centuries, has been re-
nowned throughout the world for its civilization,
literature, and commerce; and which had its own
sovereigns, governments, and codes of law long be-
fore the English nation had a name in history.”
(Apt learners are these Chitters and Moodelliars in
the school of constitutional agitation. Now mark
the chief grievance, and whence they have been
taught to feel it.)

“That your petitioners will consider themselves and their
community deeply humiliated and deeply aggrieved, if—after
the open acknowledgments of persons high in office in this
country and in England, that they are as capable to hold respon-
sible employments as the members of the now exclusive civil
service—that they are their equals on the bench, and successful
competitors in the study of European arts, science, and literature
—they are longer shut out from the offices for which they are
confessedly qualified, while the savage Hottentot and New
Zealander are preferred before them.”

A return of the savage Hottentots and cannibal
New Zealanders who have received appointments to
the Civil Service, would be an interesting document ;
but let that pass.

To all the greater part of this string of complaints
their friends in the Tndian Atheneum reply that it is
untrue, and that they know it to be so ; that they are
as a body unfit for the posts they speak of, unfit for
the self-government which they misapprehend, for
the franchises which they would die rather than share
with others; that the worst of our legislators has
some regard for the interests of the people ; that
the ablest of them have much to do before they are
on a level with the scholars of Haileybury ; that the

 

49

Government of India is full of faults indeed, but
that they, the petitioners, complain of evils which
they have not suffered, and claim rights which they
could not exercise. One or two allusions are made
to certain civilized practices still in vogue in Madras,
which, though appropriate enough, may as well not
be repeated.

Let it be observed that these, however Euro-
peanized, utterances of Hindoo public opinion in
Madras do not come: from a mere pamphlet or
placard written by a reckless scribbler — signed,
through canvassing or intrigue, by a few dozen
blockheads, and called a native petition. The peti-
tion was discussed and adopted at a meeting attended
by 1,500 persons, many apparently of wealth. Such
is the green sapling, two or three months old, of
Indian agitation—what would be the green tree of
two or three years’ flourishing growth? We need
not speculate on what would be done in the dry.

It is not exactly danger to our rule that is to be
anticipated from such a growth of factitious, sug-
gested, exotic falsehood. It is not that our Hindoo
friends will easily persuade their Pariah brethren,
whom they scarce regard as human, to combine with
their Mahometan brethren, whose mosques they
rejoice in occasionally Pigging, for the purpose of
asserting, in common and equal arms against their
English oppressors, the principles of civil and reli-
gious liberty; but that lies are always corrupting,
and sometimes unprofitable, even in the narrow
sense of profit. This empty and false talk of equal
rights and powers turns men’s thoughts and hearts

H

 
50

from the path of real advance ; confirms the few who
would refuse education; discourages the many who
would forward it to the utmost ; at once tends to per-
petuate every fault in the subject race, and hardens
against them and their faults the heart of the ruling
race. It is not easy to conceive a struggle worthier
of sympathy and respect,—surer of a noble success,
whether the result be complete or imperfect,—than
that of the native of India to raise himself to
the mental and moral level which he appreciates in
the European. Nor is it easy to lament a more
pitiable perversion of thought and effort than that
which would turn them aside from the strife in
which they cannot fail, to another in which they
must ;—the strife not for a real approximation, but
for a nominal and utterly false equality. Whatever
indignation the result excites, ought naturally to fall
principally upon those who teach the easily learnt
lesson. Respect and consideration in a high degree
are due, not only to the millions of India, but to
individual utterances of Indian opinion. But the
first respect due to men, is to treat them as
men: the respect of telling them the truth; the
consideration of aiding them in the right direction.
The first of all steps towards improvement is, that
the relation between us and them be not falsified,
but understood, and, at least, tacitly acknowledged.
To put it in Mr. Carlyle’s form: «Thou stronger
than I, thou wiser than I, better than I; thou king,
and subject I,”—if our rule does not rest upon this,
on what does it rest? They are very many, and
we very few, in the land where they are natives and

ol

we strangers. The continued rule of so few over
so many can only be justly warranted, as indeed
it could only be maintained, by a real superiority.
If to misuse that superiority is a crime, to deny it
is a lie, which, put in action, is a crime. He who
falsely tells the natives of India that, speaking en
masse, they are the equals of Englishmen, falsely
tells them that the English rule is the most mon-

strous of tyrannical absurdities. They are as

exempt from the dulness which would fail to draw
the inference, as they are at heart from the credulity
which would admit the premiss. The flattery which
is not believed, yet may be effectually pernicious.
Towards the extent of good, of which we may, if
we will, be the instruments to the natives of India,
it is clear that we may derive unlimited help from
themselves ; nay, that we can do little good unless

their efforts go along with ours. Their knowledge

is more direct and greater than ours, of the pressure
of particular evils, and their sagacity in devising
appropriate and possible remedies is probably not
less. But if, instead of enabling them to aid us
thus, we do what has recently been so effectually
done,—call on them for their aid in a crusade
against their rulers; confuse their perceptions of
right and of reality, by misrepresentations which
they see through and echo; tell them that they are
wronged in being denied the self-government which,
as applied to a state, is a dream to them, and the
equality which contradicts their religion ; in short,
excite among them the passions of jealous vanity
and covetous egotism, scarcely redeemed from the

 
52

degradations of conscious falsehood by even a touch
of wild and fanciful ambition ;—if we sow this seed,
we see how fast it will spring.

There may be some who think such teaching not
so false, or at least not so pernicious, as I have
represented it. Let them, however, think for a
moment, not only of those improvers, reformers,
and missionaries of the jungle, whose names and
services are known, but how every good collector or
magistrate is, in his way, what so many among them
have conspicuously been, a centre of civilization and
improvement. Take no great men—nay, take no
able man—take the mere negative side ; take what
an Englishman would blush not to be—a man who
may fail in doing justice from error, but never from
bribe ; who pays to Government every farthing he
receives on behalf of Government ; who speaks the
truth. Is such a man—a standard of a higher man-
hood, and a proof of its possibility—no better than
those around him, who will embezzle, take bribes,
and lie, almost without compunction or shame?
And is it the way to mend their morals, to tell them
that they are as fit as he for any responsibility ?
Or think of a higher class of benefactors, alike in
intellect and in morals,—such men as those through
whom Suttee, for instance, was recently abolished in
some of the states independent of our rule,—resi-
dents or agents at mative courts, who, turning the
abstruse studies of the scholar to the ends of the
philanthropist, have won for antiquarian research
surely the noblest and most practical triumph it ever
won in the world ; who, descending into the depths

 

53

of dark Indian learning, meeting Brahminical lore
and acuteness with profounder knowledge and
stronger reasoning, have confuted commentators on
the Vedas and Shasters out of the Vedas and Shas-
ters themselves, and, by moral and mental supe-
riority, at last extorted conviction from the intellects
and consciences of their hearers, and obliged them
to admit and act on the belief, that crimes which
had been perpetrated for centuries under the sanc-
tion of their religion, were NoT enjoined by its most
sacred authorities, but were the engrafted corrup-
tions of a later and more evil time. Great as is
such a service as this, I select it not because of its
greatness, which might be paralleled, but because, in
showing us what we can so seldom see,—the English
and Indian mind in direct contact and collision,—it
shows us at once, and with peculiar force, the way
in which that contact may minister to good, and also
the difference which it will assuredly not improve
the inferior to ignore. Deeply feeling how much
as a nation we owe to India, how much in the way
both of shortcoming and of practical evil we have
to redeem, and looking on acts like these as a
small earnest of what we may do towards redeeming
it, it is impossible not to view the counter-achieve-
ments of the India Reform Society with as serious
a dislike as is compatible with a keen sense of their
absurdity. :

Since the French presented a red cap to Citizen
Tippoo, and elected him a member of theJacobin Club,
and champion of the Rights of Man against the English,
nothing can have taken place in India more absurd,

 
o4

more un-Indian, more incongruous in itself, more
injurious to its dupes, than this copy of a Man-
chester agitation. The French proceeding was
not to the profit of the Citizen King of Mysore, nor
ultimately of the French themselves; still it had a
meaning in their policy, which is more than can be
said of the encouragement of “ Young Madras” by
“Young India” in Parliament. Why should our
equals learn from us? Why should an older civili-
zation degrade itself to be taught and ruled by our
newly-taught barbarism ? If there is one lie more
fatal to the hopes of India, and more monstrous
in itself, than those of their own religions, it
surely is comprised in this,—“ We are as good as the
English.”

Admit such of them as are fit, to the highest
places for which they are fit; but let them prove
their fitness. Mr. Macaulay, no enemy, certainly,
nor depreciator of the native intellect and character,
says that neither has one been appointed to the
higher line of service, nor has there, in his belief,
among so many millions, been one whom it would have
been for the advantage of the country so to appoint.
Hitherto they have not perhaps had the opportunity
of proof; now, at least, they will. Let but one of
them win in the fair field of competition one open-
ing to the highest posts of the service, and it will
be a great thing for him, and a greater thing for kis
race,—a promise and proof of their capacities, open-
ing a road to almost unlimited hopes of their ad-
vancement. But if the first of Hindoo blood who
wins a nomination to the civil service is gifted with

55

an honest open eye for truth, with sense as well as
talents, he of all men will feel that his countrymen
generally are not, and will not be for centuries,
what the flatterers to whom they are an abstraction
tell them they are already.

I should have thought that the evils of a post-
ponement of legislation for India were too manifest
to require being dwelt on,—that they might have
been assumed; but a striking illustration of them
afforded by this Madras petition, just at the right
time, seems worthy of especial notice. It awakens
a sense of thankfulness which claims expression,
towards Her Majesty's Government, for having
checked such a growth of evil at the outset. Agita-
tion has always some tendencies neither altogether
safe nor respectable, even when based on truth;
but when founded on utterances not quite meant
nor believed in England, neither understood nor
believed in India, but re-echoed back, nevertheless,
with a multiplying clamour of vague and misleading
assent, agitation is a process the reverse of improving.

Even Indian veracity might be deteriorated by a
Commission inviting local evidence on the faults of
the Company’s rule, and the desire and fitness of
the people for self-government; bringing home to
the door ‘of an inaccurate community a two years’
license of unlimited lying. 2

This is all, it may seem, a little out of our way as
to the question of the Home Government of India ;
yet it is not without its bearing on what may be called
the home politics of India, and on that which evi-
dently should be the first aim of the English public,—

 
56

the distinguishing between the points on which they
are, and are not, competent to legislate for India. If
one could entertain the fanatical hope that one
Indian agitator would be startled into enlightenment
by this Madras petition, would bethink himself
whether he was in or out of the right road,—the
Madras petition would have done more good than
was intended by its framer or framers.

An apology seems almost due for bringing forward
so many considerations which might have been
thought obvious and inevitable; but if such they
are, it is the more unfortunate that they have not
been acted on. They are truisms, I admit; but as
truisms in words are sometimes truths in action, so
neglected truisms may give rise to falsehoods in
action. But it is time, after this long digression,
to return from the sheep of India to the shepherds
of Leadenhall Street—those mysterious potentates,
whom the author of the “ Coming Struggle” has
recently promoted to the position, I am told, of certain
lions in the Revelations. Others,as Lord Ellenborough
and Hadgi Baba, they have affected less imposingly.

Some of our readers will recollect, in “ Hadgi
Baba in England,” a visit paid in due form by the
Chairman and Deputy-Chairman to the distinguished
chief of that distinguished Persian writer. When
they were gone, says Hadgi, in words to the follow-
ing effect (the Frank memory can but imperfectly
recall his charming Orientalisms), « We could only
sit and look at each other, putting the finger of
Wonder into the mouth of Astonishment, and ex-

57

claiming, Allah! Allah! that India, that great and
magnificent country, should be ruled by two unclean
and ill-dressed infidels, who came in a hackney-
coach, and went away on foot.”” Much of what has
been launched against the directors is about equally
philosophical with our Ispahan friend's view of
these inconceivable successors of Aurungzebe, and
considerably less amusing. However, it is now neces-
sary to examine what they are, and how they come
to be what they are.

The very first question is, whether they are any-
thing or nothing; which need not take many words.
In the preceding remarks I have taken it for
granted that they are not nothing, but much; that
the directors do exercise a considerable share in the
government of India. It is curious, and an illustra-
tion of the difficulty which besets the whole subject,
that even on this point we should be met by diame-
trically opposite statements;—it is the climax of
the great universal India contradiction. Lord
Ellenborough says they have no power,—it is all in
the President of the Board of Control :—“ I know
I ruled India.” The directors quietly shrug their
mercantile shoulders, are not forward to force their
pretensions on the world; but, nevertheless, on
occasion, are ready to state, through their mouthpiece,
their contrary version of the case :—* We know that
the Board of Control can do things which we cannot
prevent; but in matters of ordinary government, we
know that we rule India.” It is clear from the
nature of the case, and from facts, that this must be

I

 
58

go-to a great extent,—how great, we need not here

define. The mutual contradiction, though direct, is
doubtless sincere and explicable. Lord Ellenborough
sees the Cannon Row side of the shield : he sees that
large question of policy. What he firmly wished,
was -done. On the other hand, the initiators of
despatches, of which only five per cent. are altered,
must, to go no further, have a great deal to say in
the government of India. Let the now famous
anonymous striker-off of the six Bramah locks
exercise his functions with what vigour he will, no
reasonable man can seriously doubt that the directors
are and have been a substantial power.

I presume Aristotle would have put the constitu-
tion of the India House among Timocracies ; cer-
tainly the proprietors, in other words the mortga-
gees on the Indian revenue, are a very quiet Demos.
They are, not to speak disrespectfully, the drones of
the - Leadenhall Street hive; their active functions
being limited to consuming the honey of their divi-
dends, and generating working directors. On the
understanding that nothing is to come of it, they are
permitted occasionally to have a talk. It usually
takes the form of a dialogue between proprietor and
director, approximating to a monologue by the for-
mer,—a drama made up of speeches of very dispro-
portionate lengths, yet strictly corresponding to the
aims of the parties ; the proprietor’s object being to
say as much, the director’s as little, as he possibly
can. To canvass this constituency, mainly through
various forms of that influence which gods and men
call interest and patronage, and Mr. Drummond

59

corruption, is a task neither pleasant nor brief; for
it is said that seven years’ apprenticeship to the
trade of making promises is needful to win the
favours of this elderly Leah. Where much is given
in the way of patronage, much is required. The
proprietors give much and require much. Hence
follows a degrading and wearisome process, to which
it is said the best men of India cannot condescend,
and which, consequently, is left to the second or
third best. Soliciting, waiting, promising, explain-
ing, self-praising, complaining, and soliciting again—
« Rather than fool it so, * :

Let the high office and the honour go

To one that would do thus.”

« Canvassing,” — hereupon say many virtuous
M.P.’s for populous towns,—* what a source for a
government, and how likely to fail, as yon see it
does, in giving you the men you want most.”

Canvassing cai never be pleasant, any more than
anything else made necessary by the shortcomings
and weaknesses of men. There is no canvassing In
Utopia; still in practical England men are found
patriotic enough to undertake it. A man often will
not, even though he agrees with you, give you his
vote unless it is asked as a favour, which, by minds
with any touch of the Caius Marcius stamp, is ever
felt as a wrong and degrading thing; though many
of them do it every day, repaying themselves, not
nobly, with a deeper contempt for the expenditure
of outward condescension.

It shows at least a pleasing candour in members
of Parliament to dilate on the many canses inherent

 
60

in an elective system, which tend, in a most regret-

able degree, to the exclusion of the best men. It is

not otherwise surprising that the House of Commons

should be sensitive on the topic of the inconveni-

ence and awkwardness of the system by which

directors are made.—Non ignara mali, miseris
succurrere discit.

The members know what a canvass is, and can feel
for the directors. Not the less so, because in the lot of
the canvassing would-be director there is a woe from
which the would-be M.P. is as yet at least exempt.
It might move the sternest anti-directorist to pity,
to think of having to win votes from free and in-
dependent electresses, — essentially invincible by
logic, exempted by nature from the troublesome and
unfeminine gift of a sense of Justice, pressing with
the most honest simplicity for the most impossible
abuses of patronage, feeling an outrage to the
affection of the aunt in the refu$al or delay of a
cadetship to the nephew, and with memories ever
tenacious of expectations, though sometimes obli-
vious of promises.

Such is the unfavourable view of director-making,
—the wrong side of the woof. Much of it is appli-
cable to every kind of election; some part to this in
particular. An election, however, after all, is some-
thing. If it will not, except under certain rare
circumstances, give us the best men, it will never-
theless generally give us men rather better than the
average; if not, as has been said, the ablest men,
yet the men ablest to be chosen. Grant that, in
the case of the directors, the ‘ability to be chosen

61

lies in fact in the power of promising ; that the vote
is oftener the effect of that praiseworthy gratitude,
which has been defined as a lively sense of future
favours ; yet after all, other considerations come in.
The choice of the proprietors has a tendency to-
wards that at which it theoretically aims. The
proprietor and parent naturally follows a mixed
course of reasoning: ¢“ How desirable would be a
writership or a cadetship for Tom or Charles; and
how desirable a member of the Direction too would
this eminent and experienced person be. Myself,
in the person of Tom, first; but Themistocles, or
in this case, India, second.” And so the result is
attained in a respectable degree. The standard
of action and of choice which the proprietors set
up before themselves is not of the highest, yet it
produces a body of men including some of marked
ability ; and in the mass by no means dishonest,
foolish, or idle. Many of the directors undoubtedly
do to the very utmost of their power, precisely what
they are by hypothesis chosen to do; that is, they
endure with what philosophy they may the intole-
rable nuisance of being plagued for their patronage,
and on the other hand, devote themselves without
reserve to the administration of India, making their
share in it the serious business of their lives; not
without effect, nor, it may be said, without merited
honour. After all, the proprietors might do worse.
Compare the limited elderly (it is always assumed
that they are all elderly) and epicene constituency of
the directors with the mass of life, energy, masculine
ability, and wealth employed in returning the repre-

 
62

sentatives of the railway interest to Parliament.
Yet the heads of the East-India House,—their
leaders in and out of Parliament, will surely bear a
comparison as speakers, and as doers too, with the
heads of the railway world; though they too are
generally men of ability.

It is very well to say, “ There is a certain banker
in the city of London who can return a director
when he pleases.” A few years ago there were a
certain number of lords and gentlemen who could
return a large proportion of the House of Commons.
We did not therefore abolish the House of Com-
mons, but we reformed it. We then took the power
from the units to give it to the thousands, and
some of these days, it seems, we shall be giving it
amongst tens of thousands. That there is no question
of doing for India, unless the Madras Petition No. 2
finds a sincere advocate in Parliament, which will
be on the day of the Sanscrit calends. But if the
proprietors are defective as a constituency, and yet
there are advantages in an elective system, why not
think of some of the plans for enlarging and im-
proving that constituency ?

It may be easily fancied that this canvass, such
as it has been described—hard in any case to the
natural man, is a harder thing to our Indian Corio-
lani, fresh perhaps from the uncontrolled rule of
nations, and from great and unacknowledged deeds ;
unacknowledged, that is, because unknown in Eng-
land. It is all written down for us in Shakspeare,
like almost everything else on almost every subject.

Merit, justly conscious of itself, and reluctant

63

even to tell its story, is hardly brought to compete
with London wealth and insignificance in applying
for votes to those who answer with the citizens—

“ You must think, if we give you anything,
We hope to gain by you.”

It seems an eminent civilian told Mr. Bright, on
finding what canvass for the Direction was, that he
« would rather sweep a crossing than be made direc-
tor on those terms.” Yes!

« Better it is to die, better to starve,
Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.

Far be it from us to depreciate a feeling so closely
allied with nobleness. Still we may as well remem-
ber that Coriolanus himself is thought to have car-
ried his sensitiveness a little too far; and that
though the Czar considers a representative system
the basest of governments, it is not every one, like
Mr. Danby Seymour, who prefers his government,
even in Asia, to ours. Let us not say too much
against elections, recollecting that we ourselves have
votes ; but let us regretfully admit that, in this case,
the canvass keeps out many whom we would wish to
admit, and that on this ground there is a justifica-
tion for the proposal of the Government to nominate
some of the excluded. The evil is undoubtedly a
real one; and we grasp at the offered remedy. j
. There is no passage in Mr. Campbell’s book which
commands a heartier assent than that in which he
expresses the regret naturally arising from what it is
so common to see with regard to men of the India
service. ¢ The very best men of a great profession,

 
64

trained to business from their youth upwards—men

who have ruled kingdoms, and determined the destinies
of millions of their fellow-creatures,—to see them at
five-and-forty sinking down into small country gen-
tlemen, with nothing ‘to do, or into careless water-
drinking old Indians. One feels that there must be
something wrong when one reads—obscure among

obscure Buckinghamshire magistrates—such a name

as that of Robert Mertius Bird, familiar as their
household gods to some five-and-twenty millions of
Asiatics, whose all-important interests have been
regulated by him, but whose existence is almost
unknown in this country.” Certainly, there is some-
thing wrong. These are the men whom we ought
to have, and whom, by the plan of the Government,
partly in accordance with Mr. Campbell’s suggestion,
it is intended to obtain by nomination. The Govern-
ment promises for itself and its successors, to intro-
duce into the Direction the élite of the men fitted to
take a share in governing India. A serious respon-
sibility lies on the present and on succeeding minis-
tries, by performing the promise, to Justify this part
of their plan.

We are warranted in being sanguine, but not in
being too utterly confident, in the expectation that
the Government nominations will correct the evil,
and permanently give us the best men. Except in’
the spirit of the times and the limitation to the
service—should this point be finally passed—what
security is there that the nominee directorships
would be given better than the minor Indian
Governments have usually been? The case of

65

judges, quoted by Mr. Campbell, as a proof of the
confidence which may be reposed in Government
selection from a profession, is to the point, yet
hardly parallel. The appointment of an inefficient
judge reflects an immediate and sensible discredit
on the appointing minister; for the judge works in
the sight of all men, and under the immediate daily
observation of competent critics at the bar. A
scandalous appointment is impossible, for it would
ruin the minister who made it; even a bad one is
unlikely, for it would be very damaging. But the
Crown nominee director might be, behind the offi-
cial screen, either a cipher or a torment: there is
no direct test of professional knowledge to try him
by; and all that could be said by those who knew
it, would be, that the Government might have
appointed a better man: to which the Government
would probably reply, that such was not their
opinion. Mr. Campbell quotes another case, a
much closer parallel than that of judge, vindicating
the results of Government selection :—* Have not
even bishops,” says he, “been generally considered
respectable men, until they reached that elevation,
so dangerous to human frailty?” Certainly; but
then the character which the bishops possessed, and,
as Mr. Campbell profanely insinuates, lost, was, by
confession, not the character of being the dest men,
but of being respectable men. Respectable directors
we ean get without going to the Government. It
is because they are supposed likely to give us the
real élite, that we are to go to them. There can be
no doubt of the intention of the proposal, and little
K

 
66

fear of the qualifications of those first appointed
under it. The only thing is, that we cannot rely
with absolute certainty, and ought not, if possible,
to rely exclusively, on this source of meritorious
directors. Moreover, as these directors also are to
go out in rotation, and may therefore be re-named,
or not, by a Government perhaps different from that
which named them, it is impossible not to see in
them an increase of Government influence, admit-
ing of being abused. In any case, even supposing
the nomination power to be exercised properly, six
eminent men do not exhaust the celebrities of the
Service. Let them, at least all such men, and the
class to which they belong, be of right electors,
and eligible to a share in the home government
of India.

This is the proposal of Lord Ellenborough,—to
add to the present constituency of the proprietors
the retired servants, civil and military, of the Com-
pany. Unless there are objections to his proposal,
which do not appear on the surface, it seems to me
to merit more attention than it has hitherto re-
ceived. It was a matter almost of natural right ;
and as such, the onus lies upon the objectors to show
that it is inexpedient. The leading objection made,
as far as I have seen any, is that the new coustitu-
ency would swamp the old, and that the military,
being far the more numerous service, would swamp
the civil. In the sense of adding largely to the old
in numbers and in character, the first objection is
an eulogy; the second seems to depend entirely

67

on the line of service and of rank at which we
choose to draw the qualification. There are 800
civil servants in India, and 5,000 officers, &ec.;
but the proportion between the retired members of
each service must be very different; and the line
should should be drawn so as to secure something like
a balance. Asa general rule, the young Indian
officer is scarcely more fit for such a franchise than
his contemporary in the Queen’s army serving in
India,—and unfitness could not be more strongly
expressed ; — equally careless of the wants, pre-
judices, and even existence of the people of India.
But it is quite different with the experienced field-
officer or colonel, who has spent half a life in India,
and learnt sympathy and respect from knowledge.
On the other hand, the vote should be given to every
civilian, whether retired or on furlough. The last
class would be a very safe one, and often contains
the very men who might give the most useful infor-
mation about contemporary India. Lord Ellenbo-
rough talks of the whole number as 1,250, but does
not give the proportions. Were it necessary to
reduce it to half that number, the addition would
still strongly affect the character of the constituency.
It would, moreover, be in analogy with the present
framework, to give a plurality of votes, in proportion
to length of service. When, e. g., ten years’ service
gave one vote, the full service of twenty-five years
might give, say three; and this might be an ad-
ditional means of righting the balance between the
services. Nor must we forget that among those

 
68

military men who have discharged civil duties, are
to be found many of the most valuable servants of
the Company. The numerical preponderance still
left to the Proprietors is a very sufficient security
against the exclusion of English ideas being carried
too far. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted
that the part taken in an election by this portion of
the constituency would be important, more than in
proportion to their numbers; and it appears proba-
ble that it would be as beneficial as important.
Constituencies are surely seldom so well adapted
for their object, so well acquainted with the subject-

matter of their decision,—with the questions at

stake,—with the qualification and characters of the
candidates ; have seldom an interest so genuine, yet
so unfactious, and a character generally so apart
from lower influences. I do not say that the influ-
ence of patronage would be unfelt: of course it
would be felt; for retired Indians, too, are péres
de famille. But the motives of choice would be
higher, and the wish to make a right choice infi-
nitely stronger, than in the present constituency.
Moreover, so far as the measure bore directly on the
distribution of patronage, it would be good ; it would
tend directly towards what is so much desired, giving
an increased share in appointments to the sons of
old servants of the Company. In short, any one
might be proud of the choice of the Services of India ;
and that choice would have a tendency to give us
the men whom the present system excludes.

There might of course be differences of opinion
amongst them. But the men towards whom their

69

choice would incline would almost invariably be
among the eminent and able of their service. With
military men for instance, and with civilians who did
not diametrically differ on points of Indian opinion
with that illustrious soldier, no London banker
would stand much chance against the honourable
poverty of Outram, were he resident in England.
No debasing canvass needed here—the name would
be the canvasser ; it would carry its own story; and
sometimes, to those who knew the story, with an
emphasis recalling the epitaph of the great Floren-
tine :—TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR ELOGIUM.

Lord Ellenborough anticipates, as an effect of the
system of partial nomination by Government, that it
would lead the proprietors to be more indifferent than
now to the qualifications of those whom they elected.
“ As you are an eminent man, go to her Majesty’s
Government to be appointed by them: they take
the meritorious share of the business; we vote for
our own hands.” It may perhaps be doubted whether
this would be the case; whether the higher cha-
racter of the nominated members might not tend at
least equally to raise the standard aimed at by the
electors; but at any rate it can hardly be doubted
that the enlargement of the constituency in the
proposed direction would be a corrective of this
tendency. The proprietors might perhaps vote
selfishly, if alone ; but they would be ashamed that
their choice should stand in a uniformly marked
contrast of inferiority to that of their co-electors of
the Service : they would be ashamed to refuse their
voices to the very best men selected by the very

 
70

portion of the constituency qualified to judge of
their claims. With the example of the Services
before them, they would feel with our honest
friends in Coriolanus. One can fancy Proprietors
1, 2, discussing at their club the question whether
they should vote for the candidate of the Civil
Service, very much after this fashion.

Lst Proprietor. Once, if he do require our voices,
we ought not to deny him.

2nd Proprietor. We may, Sir, if we will.

3rd Proprietor. We have power in ourselves
to do it; but it is a power that we have no power
to do.

How many of this portion of the constituency
would deny their votes to a Clerk or an Elphinstone ?
In short, the Court of Proprietors, thus modified,
might in part do what Mr. Campbell proposes to do
by his, Court of Experts,—become something of a
mouthpiece and representation of different shades of
Indian opinion. Only it would have over Mr.
Campbell’s Court the great advantage of having the
power of doing, if not much, yet something,—of
giving votes, that is, as well as of giving an opinion.
No great weight will ever attach to the presentations
of a body which only exists to present, and has no
other function. On the one hand, no man expect-
ing re-election will meet the remonstrances of con-
stituents, however steady-going and quiet, with the
succinct “ Protest, and go about your business,” with
which, as it is told, Lord Ellenborough—not the
Governor-General, but the J udge—contented, or at

 

71

least silenced, a patriot clamorously and distract-
edly anxious to perform that limited duty.

It is a further advantage that, under the proposed
system, the Court of Proprietors, or rather of elect-
ors, inevitably would have to become something of a
reality. From a body, tempered by such an infusion
as that recommended, even if its powers remained
exactly as at present, a serious expression of opinion
would command attention even from those who did
not seek its votes. It would not become a clamor-
ous and talkative, yet powerless democracy ; for your
real Indians are not of that turn, and reserve speech
for occasions when something requires to be spoken.
But it might be anticipated, without a great nmpro-
bability, that discussions of real interest would take
place occasionally on such points of difference of
opinion as might reasonably exist among experi-
enced Indians. Those who must now write a book,
if they wish to tell the world what they think of
the Burmese war and annexation, would do so vivd
voce, and might find a reporter. Around the nucleus
of real knowledge and interest in Indian subjects,
there might grow up a real English interest ; gra-
dually the Court of Proprietors would be itself the
mouthpiece of a wider English public knowing
something about India,—and who knows but that the
recentagitationonthe subject of India mi ghtnot be an
utter fiction; but something bearing a relation to facts;
whetherit mightnot take up some real grievances,and

even hit upon a real remedy. Altogether this pro-
posal has so much to recommend it, that I cannot

 
72

but hope some means may be found of overcoming its
difficulties, or at any rate that it will not be rejected
without careful consideration.

On the question of the election of directors, the
diminution of patronage by opening the civil service
and scientific branches to competition has an im-
portant bearing. Not so much as a mere reduction
of the rewards which the directors have it in their
power to offer, but because these rewards would be
more equalized. Regard the Proprietors, if you
will, in the light of freemen; then the Government
measure at least limits the exercise of “influence ”
within a kind of head-money system, which in
some of our boroughs was deemed, and was by
comparison, a perfectly immaculate system of elec-
tion. A cadetship is the most that can be given:
no electioneering service can win more. Looking
at the matter practically, it seems likely that, taking
away the exceptional and higher patronage will
even, without an infusion of new constituents, tend
to make elections turn more on qualities, and less
on promises or hopes.

The question of a reduction in the number of the
directors is so entirely one of practical convenience,
that it is almost out of place for any one not prac-
tically conversant with the working of the system
to form upon it a decided opinion. The directors,
it appears, object strongly to it, not only as tend-
ing to diminish their power, but to render inconve-
nient the consequent distribution of duties. The
point, as compared with that of the double govern-
ment, is not vital, and there would certainly be

73

nothing contrary to the principles of the measure
in the proposal; with which, as a suggestion, I
conclude.

Retain the numbers of the directors; enlarge the
constituency; nominate, as proposed, six, and elect
eighteen.

THE CIVIL SERVICE.

How to dispose of the India patronage is, as it
always has been, one of the recurring difficulties of
the Indian question. Of course it is also a point
of attack against the present system. « Look,” it is
said, “at the way in which the directors have prosti-
tuted their patronage—filling India with nephews
and sons and cousins. No wonder it is misgoverned
under a system of such flagrant nepotism. ”

I confess this is a hard case : nepotism is a serious
offence: so unprecedented too. It was an evil
heart in these bankers, merchants, and that class of
persons, that could lead them into this sin, warned
against it and dissuaded from it as they were by so
many and high examples of virtue and forbearance.
Could not the very members of their body suggest
the revered example of another bench, the members
of what many may deem a yet higher Directorate,
conspicuous among whose many excellencies has ever
been an almost prudish avoidance of preferring to
posts destined for zealous and lofty service, even

L

 
74

their own nearest and dearest, before a meritorious
stranger, except in the naturally very frequent
case of their being even more meritorious? Whereas
the directors, without respect of merit, to which
indeed they were not strictly bound to attend by
the existing law, gave what they had to give to
those whom they wished to benefit. It was heinous
enough, but what would you? < Ces péres,” and not
less “ ces oncles de famille, sont capables de tout,”
as Talleyrand said of French providers for their
own households. Be it recorded for the warning of
a pure-minded posterity, that in the middle of the
nineteenth century there was still one class of men
in ‘England, and not more, who, having to give
appointments, not among tried men whose compara-
tive abilities and characters were known to them by
the test of years of trial (as is so fortunately the case
with the patronage of, say, Lords of the Admiralty
and Bishops, whose judgments are thus insured
from error), but among boys, any one of whom
might be as good as any other, too often avowedly
gave them—profligate nepotists—by favour.

But let it be said for the Directorate, after all,
that it gave some things not to relations, satiate
recessit, though in great part Scotch. Of a given
considerable number of appointments, it appeared
that less, if I mistake not, than a quarter were
given to mere relatives, more than a third to the
sons of those who, in connection with the directors,
had served the Company well. There is something
to be said for the last item, after all. And in short,
this last attack exhibits hypocrisy as well as injus-

 

79

tice: it is a piece of unadulterated cant. The
directors have given their patronage in a manner
which may well bear the test of comparison, and
rather better than was to have been expected.

The patronage difficulty takes two forms: one
is, how to get rid of the patronage with the least
injury to England ; another, to get it given for the
best advantage of India. The first has generally
been the more prominent head of the question;
and in the time of the India Bill all turned upon
it. The dangerous power which the patronage of
India would confer upon a minister of the Crown
was, and perhaps is even now, an objection more
appreciated than the misuse which, as regarded
India itself, he might make of that patronage. The
argument for the first source is not so strong as it was
seventy years ago; but still it is strong enough to
command a very general assent.

We have a great mass of appointments, and we
have to get rid of it somehow. We might give it
through her Majesty's Government; or we might
give it by tossing up. Most people are very glad that
between the first course, which is dangerous, and the
second, which would be perhaps rather startlingly
novel than in itself irrational, a mezzo termine has
been found in handing it over to the directors. It
is a very brief argument. Either the Queen or the
Company, either A. or B., if anybody, must be
charged with this duty of giving. It cannot be A.
then it must be B. B. we doubt not, will find
recipients. And so B. has done. And as long as
we can find no better way of distributing it, let B.

 
76

keep it by all means. Part of it we now propose
to take away, because we think that we can, and
there can be no doubt that if we can we ought to do
so, assure higher qualifications for important posts in
the service, than chance and the exclusion of the
very worst will give us: and the experiment is at
least worth trying.

Hitherto, however, B. has had to fill year after
year, by nomination to the Services, some 5,000
military and rather more than 800 civil appoint-
ments, and he has done so too with results not
altogether unsatisfactory. Taken pretty much at
random from all educated classes of England, sub-
Jected to slight tests of ability and acquirement
scarce sufficient to secure a kind of average fitness,
the officers of the Indian army are, to say the least,
very far from a discredit to the Company that fur-
nishes such an average. There are ordinary and
extraordinary men among them, of course. Some
have raised the objection, that the high aristocracy
have hardly their share in the nominations of the
merchant kings. Doubtless, if her Majesty's minis-
ters had the patronage, we might expect to see
more Honourables decorating the list of the Services.
But that advantage, however great, may be relin-
quished with endurable regret, so long as it may be
said with truth of the Services, as it is now said by the
only formidable assailant of the Company, that the
members of both are one and all gentlemen. High
birth would not always give that, and could not give
more. That is the only chivalrous title which has
retained, and until every man is a gentleman will

 

77

retain, its meaning. Admitting, moreover, if only
on the experience of Affghanistan, that the son of a
saddler or the son of an innkeeper may be a brave
man, a good man, and a gentleman, and fit to com-
mand gentlemen, we may be well content to
leave in the hands, which certainly have not misused
it, the patronage of most of the nominations to the
Indian army. It must have been the simplest part
of the problem to be solved by Government, to
determine whether they should leave with the
directors the nomination to posts requiring only
a passable share of average legs, arms, moral and
mental qualities.

The case is different when we look at posts
confessedly requiring more than average ability to
fill them thoroughly well, such as the scientific
branches of the military service, and high civil
appointments generally. And with regard to the
latter, the question is, first, whether we are to have
a covenanted Service, that is, one limited in num-
bers, separately trained from youth, and exclusively
eligible to certain offices; second, how that service
is to be filled ; these are certainly among the most im-
portant questions which can be asked and answered
in England regarding the internal administration of
India.

Let us look for a moment at what, between
favouritism, tests, and education, the Indian Govern-
ment has given us in this line. If, examining India
through the by no means achromatic glass of Mr.
Phillimore, you could see the directors turning loose,
year by year, upon the land, a swarm of youthful

 
78

Verres, fresh from Haileybury, not to govern, but
to plunder, you might hesitate in your indulgence
to nepotism. But the case is not exactly so. It
may or may not be by any merit of theirs, it may
but be by the marvellous fortune of themselves, and
through them of England, that they have been led
to an opposite result. It was by no deliberate fore-
sight of their own that through the paths of com-
merce they almost unwillingly stumbled on empire ;
and the character of the chief instruments of their
rule has been framed by the same marvellous and
providential destiny. It was their constitution as a
trading Company, which, through the natural instru-
ments of such a Company, its young adscript,
covenanted apprentices of the desk or writers,
rising to be factors and merchants, gave them an
institution like no other existing among English-
men—the Indian Civil Service. How remote, how
incapable of anticipation, yet how certain, is the
connection of cause and result. It is because India
was conquered by traders, that in India alone of the
British dominions we see a class of rulers trained
from boyhood to govern. It is worth thinking of;
it is worth understanding, if we can: perhaps it
may have a lesson for us some day. If Manchester
can for a moment see through the « atmosphere of
cotton flakes ” which hides from her, but after all
is not, the universe, let gigantic Manchester, taking
the opportunity of a strike, look for a leisure hour
at tiny Haileybury, and try to comprehend the
meaning and results of that ugly little barrack.
The Indian Civil Service, as all the world knows,

79

has had, and has, its great men, and so has its military
brother; but to go through a list of illustrious
known, and perhaps equally illustrious unknown,
were useless. The praise of such men is remem-
bered when their services are needed, and only for-
gotten when the Government of India is to be
abused. The Home Government shows its sense of
the value of a Clerk or of a Metcalfe when it bor-
rows them for the Cape or for Canada, paying
economically for the loan in Falklands. But I
speak not of such great men, but of the class of
which they are the supreme expression, and at a
somewhat earlier stage of their progress. The type
of the young “Indian” home on furlough is as dis-
tinct in our days as that of the old nabob; though
of course less broadly marked, Joe Sedley is an
impossible caricature of one side of him—of a very
indifferent bargain of the Company. There is room
for a very different picture.

We have seen them,—and to have seen them is
among our pleasantest reminiscences,—these vice-
kings of India, returned to England for their three
years’ furlough, the English boys of eighteen ex-
panded into the experienced Indians of thirty-two
or thirty-three, with that unmistakable mark upon
them of the man who has dealt with and ruled
other men, blended with a kind of shy simplicity
and anxious correctness of manner, as of one in a
new world not quite familiar to him—full of sense
and confident knowledge on their own subjects; by
no means ashamed of them, but keeping them a
little in the background, being especially anxious,

 
80

as it were, to reassert their rights of English citizen-
ship—say rather, gentlemanship ; and in so doing to
be supported by your countenance and opinion,
which, as that of a man who has lived all his life in
England, is treated with a deference which you feel
to be embarrassingly beyond your merits: men,
wise as serpents, harmless as doves—men, with the
mysteries of the finances of half a dozen provinces,
or the ravelled skeins of the intrigues of half a
dozen native Courts, clear and producible at a mo-
ment’s notice, in their heads; yet anxious that you
should advise them as to the correct stall at the
Opera, or make them happy by approving their
choice of a tailor. What shall Isay? Men at whom
you slightly smile, and whom you earnestly admire.
English before all things—resolute that they will
look, be, and ever be English—with a serious reso-
lution, of which these trifles are but the trifling
unconscious indication ; yet next to English, Indian ;
men, whose real sympathy with the people, whom the
Indian reformers accuse them of habitually oppress-
ing, exceeds that of the Reform Society very nearly
as much as their knowledge of them exceeds that
of the Reform Society. They will not bore you
with their subject—they are afraid of your Bond
Street or Temple indifference; perhaps they are
afraid of being supposed to know nothing about
any other subject. But let them get together!
Let two or three be gathered together in the name
of Agra or of the Deccan, and do you, if you are
wise, sit and listen to them. You will hear them
talking as men only talk of ‘what they care about

S1

and understand. Hard words—jummabundies, ta-
looks, zemindarries—cannot disguise from you the
fact that these men have dealt with serious interests,
have done serious things, have earnestly, and in
general wisely, put their hands to a work in which
they felt no factitious or passing interest.
It is the rarest of things to trace in them indif-
ference to their work or its results. Like other
mortals, they grumble; but their grumblings are
certainly the least selfish to be heard from any class
of officials. It is twenty to one but that each of them
has his grievance; and that grievance generally is
not that A. or B. had this or that collectorate which
ought to have been mine, but that, « do what I
could, I could not get Government to see the im-
portance of such and such improvements,—to appre-
ciate the demerits of that embezzling rogue of a
Bramin, who, for the benefit of the community,
really ought to have worked on the roads as a con-
viet, instead of being merely dismissed;—or to
appreciate the amount of the return which, as I
demonstrated in not more than six hundred pages,
was inevitably to follow on the completion of such or
such a work.” These, and such, are their grievances.
—Of course I do not mean by this statement to
prejudge the question between the Civil Serviee
gentlemen and the Government: it merely illus-
trates the interest felt by the former in his duty.
What will strike an observer among, and perhaps
above, all things, is the tone in which they speak of
the natives of India as a class; a genuine, not a cant-
ing tone: not complimentary, often decidedly the
M

 
82

reverse; but never sneering or contemptuous ; sym-
pathetic, without sentimental falsehood : never other
th Oy practical, appreciating. To describe it
gative. If you are fortunate enough to have
a young acquaintance in Her Majesty’s army who
has been stationed some two or three years in India
you may find the opposite of it in him, Good
fellow and gentleman as he is, it is painful to hear
him speak of the natives of India. A flippant indif-
ference and contempt are the main characteristics:
perilously relieved, if he be a serious young man
with a dash of missionary fanaticism. The conti
may make you think twice before you assent to the
common abuse of the monopoly of the Civil Service.
And, on the whole, it is strange if you do not feel
some national pride, as well as the satisfaction, con-
sequent on seeing the tools in the right hands, when
you say to yourself, “ Who are the rulers, in the
main, of India? Eight hundred men, most of them
such as these.”

A class of men like these, as good as these, and
as much better than these as possible, is what you
must still get, if you intend to continue to hold
India. If you do not get something nearly as good
you will lose it, and you ought to lose it. A ois
class you might very easily get, if you chose on
grounds of theoretic preference to abolish a pro-
fession, and substitute for it a scramble.

But if there is one point on which argument is
superfluous, or nearly so, it is perhaps this, that the
Indian Civil Service should be maintained separate

and exclusive; exclusive, that is, in the sense that
certain appointments are only to be filled by persons
taken from it—persons who have undergone its
training and passed its trials. In any other sense
certainly the less exclusive it is the better.

There are reasons enough in the nature of things
for attempting to create such a class: reasons in the
infinite possible abuses of a patronage unchecked in
its choice, in the necessity of limiting to at least
tolerably qualified persons, the selection of the
Governors-General and local governors; in the need
of a complete security, in short, against such pleasant
incidents as that which Mr. Macaulay has immorta-
lized in his perhaps apocryphal account of the inter-

view between Lord Clive and the recommended Euro-

pean adventurer, cheaply bought off from doing more
mischief by the «black mail” of a £10,000 bribe out
of the revenue of India. In this respect the exist-
ence of the covenanted service has been absolutely
efficient. But that which above all recommends
the system of a regularly trained and exclusive
Service is, on the whole, simply its unparalleled
success ; naturally unparalleled because we have
nothing else like it; but singularly striking. The tes-
timony of so competent a judge as Mr. Campbell
will doubtless convince many who might not have
admitted the result @ priori, of the fact, that be-
tween instruction and practice, and, the essential
item to all real excellence, real interest in their
work, a degree of general ability is developed which,
considering the original materials, is as remarkable
as the fact is instructive—< The greater part by

 
84

far,” he says, * are or have been, at some time of
their career, marvellously efficient.”

Nor is the general conclusion shaken at all by the
fact, that in the judicial branch the service has been
less successful than the administrative, and needs
improving. Considering that the proposed composi-
tion of the Service is average, or only raised above
the average by the professed exclusion of incapa-
bles who nevertheless are not always excluded,
the wonder is, that the “fools,” as Mr. Campbell
briefly calls them, should be decided exceptions.
The admitted solution of the deficiencies of the
bench is that, besides the absence of regular legal
training, under present circumstances, the thick-
heads or weaker energies tend naturally towards the
Judicial posts; and doubtless, though it sounds
strange to English ideas, it is better that it should
be so. A bad Collector is a worse thing than a
bad judge : and accordingly the bad bargains are
shelved on the bench, comparatively out of harm’s
way. This is no argument against the principle of
a covenanted Service; but it is an argument for
taking further securities against unfit persons enter-
ing that Service.

Neither should we admit too entirely the sweep-
ing deduction against the Judicial branch to be
drawn at first sight from a number of somewhat
outrageous blunders collected in a pamphlet. In
England, the administration of justice is generally
thought not to be one of the points on which we are
deficient, at least so far as our law will permit jus-
tice to be done; yet have we not heard of Arabi-

85

niana ? and who can doubt that a satirical research
into the records of Quarter Sessions might produce
an amusing and instructive set of Collectanea? a
singular “ corpus juris,” to be entitled, perhaps, the
Institutes of Chairmen? However, the evil is
admitted, and ought to be corrected, if corrigible.
Some infusion of law into education may do some-
thing, but not much; neither is it possible or desi-
rable to make proficiency in legal studies a conspicu-
ous branch in early education. The real thing is to
prevent the entrance of unfit men; to admit none
but really able men. How is this to be done? By
competition, if at all. The Government are right
in despairing of any other way.

Much might be said in favour of tests of absolute
rather than comparative fitness ; of the propriety of
not going out of your way on a search perhaps delu-
sive, after a better man when you have a man good
enough : but it is needless to dwell on what Mr.
Macaulay has exhausted, were it not the case that
competition is really the only way in which the
maintenance of a high standard, that is, a standard
excluding many, has been found possible. : In one
way or other, all simple tests of fitness fail. Per-
haps no duty requires a sterner effort of conscience
than that of the examiner whose rejection is “to
ruin the prospects” of a poor dull lad, and half-
break the hearts of a family. And in fact, the con-
science of man is not stern enough for the duty.
From the slight indulgence of examiner after exa-
miner, all tending in the same direction, the inevi-
table result follows. The standard is lowered for

 
86

the average capacity; or by skilful “cramming” at
it, the clumsy leaper is, one way or other, after
trials, blundered over the bar.

It is a singular thing that the question, whe-
ther, in a handful of boys, the choice resulting from
competition is likely to fall on the cleverest, or not,
should ever have been raised at all. It is not
unamusing to see Mr. Macaulay called upon to
defend the claims of scholarship, in the face of a
House of Commons reverent even to superstition
of a Latin quotation, if it be but from the Eton
grammar.

The right divine to govern has been asserted for
kings; but that is an old fashion now. Lord Ellen-
borough, one of the cleverest men in the House
of Lords, is the first to assert a parallel right for
blockheads. A little dulness suiteth well in a
master of a college, says Fuller. A little absence
of literature, says Lord Ellenborough, consorteth
well with the qualities of a ruler. Certainly, if a
little learning is dangerous, and much learning dis-
qualifying, as tending to make its possessor, if not
mad, imbecile, it is rather difficult to assign a pro-
per scope to education. In Bacon’s time it was dif-
ferent. Raleigh was scholar as well as soldier; but
now, it seems, knowledge is the absence of power.
Bene natus, bene vestitus, if you will; but, above all,

mediocriter doctus—that is the qualification for a
man of action.

‘ Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam,”

our edition of Horace used to read; Lord Ellen-

87

borough's had it, we presume, submovet. Like other
men, Lord Ellenborough pines for the quality which
he has not—deficiency in book-learning, freedom
from the niceties of a cultivated intellect. Were a
scholarship to be given by competition among the
enemies of the Company in both Houses of Parlia-
ment, I should feel greatly disposed to bet on Mr.
Phillimore for the first place, and on Lord Ellen-
borough for the second. Yet, in spite of Cambridge
and Somnauth odes, the ex-Governor-General was
undoubtedly an able administrator; and though he
occasionally committed an escapade, which duller peo-
ple would have avoided, yet can there be no greater
error than to suppose that dulness is safe. Much
duller men have made much greater blunders. In
any view, I protest against this theory, as an en-
croachment. The blockheads have a fair inheritance
already ; the world, in how many senses, is practically
theirs, and constructed for their benefit. Let not
their indefeasible right to sit in its highest chairs
of rule be theoretically conceded.

The overwhelming mass of instances adduced by
Mr. Macaulay does not accord with what, but for
paradox, would have been naturally expected. Why,
after all, should not an examination be a test?
What makes a clever boy, or a clever man? Mens
sana in corpore sano: let that be assumed as your
starting-point ; add to it a little more quickness of
perception, a little more clearness of head, a little
more energy of character than are common, and
you have a boy superior to the average of his neigh-
bours—one who will beat them in everything, and

 
88

as much in one thing as in another, where phy-
sical “deficiencies or strong peculiar bent of cha-
racter do not interfere. Such, generally speaking,
is the mould of an able—what we call a superior
man ; not a man of genius, not one in whom some
peculiar faculty is preternaturally developed,—but
one in whom faculties, balanced in the proper
proportion, are raised somewhat above the common
standard. Not unfrequently this depends even
more on the energy with which the faculties are
applied, than on their natural superiority. In such
a case, talent, as it is called, is the direct result of,
and in fact is one with, character. This, or something
like this, is the comparative rationale—the relation
to others—of the men who, with fair chances, attain
comparative success. These are the successful bar-
risters—the useful leading members of Parliament
(when their kind destiny has conferred upon them,
besides a well-constituted brain and nerves, some
thousands a year) ; and these are the men whom a
well-planned and well-conducted examination would
eliminate from the average mass. Genius, limited
and intense in one direction, is another thing ; the
grand practical genius resulting from a happy

balance of separate qualities, each carried to an

uncommon height, is, though nearly allied in kind

to practical ability, still distinguished from it by its

rarity. ~ Such genius would sometimes, but not

always, be detected by such an examination; but

no process that you could invent would be sure to

detect it ;—even a lottery is not infallible. After all,
the highest of all men in this kind,—Casar, Hanni-

89

bal, Alexander, nay, Octavius, excel alike late
and early. In rulers of this stamp, the vivid fire
burns through life, and they unquestionably would
beat their boyish competitors. Cases undoubtedly
there are of superior minds slow in development,
with whom the bent to noble things, the serious
and manly turn from boyhood to manhood, comes
later than to their contemporaries. It may be by
chance, and lack of sphere or opportunity ; it may
be, too, in such cases, that up to three, four, or
five and twenty, the body was too strong for the
slowly-developing mind; it may be that, in Clive
or Cromwell, Alma ascends slowly { or that, to quote
the more modern and finer image,

« He rode a winged horse, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down.”

Yet the balance is righted at last, and the great
soul makes its way to greatness. To say that an
examiner cannot pick us out these men, is simply to
say that he is not prophetic and infallible. We
must trust men to the chances of life: if they live,
we shall hear of them. The chance which might
have given them a nomination to the Civil Service,
may now give them a cadetship; and they may find
their way to posts of rule, through that which for
each “young gentleman's right education” is a
school certainly not destitute of merit, the army.
It need scarce be added, that such men are not the
depreciators of early knowledge; on the contrary,
it is often an instructive and almost touching fea-
ture in their greatness, that they are disposed to

N

 
90

look not with contempt or dislike, but with simple

and boyish reverence, upon the superior cultivation

of men essentially far inferior to themselves. It is
not a real objection to competition, that it does not
distinguish early from the mass men who are really
not distinguished from it early. It is surely enough
that it excludes all the dull men, and gives us most
of the clever. The contrary belief is a paradox
founded on misrepresentation of a few exceptions

adopted by clever men, to hurt the feelings of other
clever men ; by mediocrity, as a comfort to its vanity;
and by very few, after all.
: By all means, shen, let competition be tried. In
introducing it as the test of admission to Indian
civil employment, we may be taking a greater step
than we knew. If it answers in giving us the fittest
men for one kind of rule and business, we may try
it for another Service. England, too, may be des-
tined to see reopened in a better form, perhaps a
very different one, the carriére aux talens, which
was, rightly, perhaps, but not without serious and

evil consequences, shut by the Reform Bill to talents
not aided by wealth or connection. Competition
then fairly conducted does away with certain evils:
it may introduce others. I by no means doubt that
it will give, on the whole, a superior set of men; it
will exclude all the dull men; perhaps some of the
clever too; but that cannot be helped.

If] as may be expected, the greatness of the India
prizes tempts a very large competition, those ulti-
mately named will be selected from a very large
number. When Mr. Campbell, for instance, says

 

91

that he wishes not as now 4 in 6 to pass, but 2 in
6, the proportion given by competition will be more
truly 2 in 16 or in 60. Supposing the system to
answer, they will be, on the whole, a very clever set
of young men ; and they will be emphatically told as

“much, between the ages of, say, seventeen to twenty-

one, by the very fact of their election. A system
which gives us young men selected from boyhood as
an élite body, may bring serious results. It is nota
trifling experiment. It is certainly possible that
the management of such a body may have moral
difficulties of its own. Were the training exclu-
sively professional, the difficultieS would be less.
There is no reason for apprehending any very
marked effect on the character of the young engineer
or physician. The limited and definite nature of
their pursuits is a safeguard. It is otherwise when,
side by side with the process of education, moves
the vague yet exalting idea, “ You are one out of
many, chosen for higher qualities, to aid in the
business of ruling.” Such a class would have been
a class of exclusive priests in the old world; in two
centuries before our own time, they would have
been Jesuits; to-day they will still be, with the
blessing of Heaven, English gentlemen of a high
order, mentally and morally. To say that this
difficulty is to be met by the cultivation of a high
sense of duty, of a noble and humble spirit, is to
say nothing directly practical. Possibly Mr. Camp-
bell’s suggestion of attaching the East-India College
to Cambridge may be found important in this point
of view, as bringing the elected in contact with

 
92

many among whom they would find their equals.

I doubt not thatthe connection will be possible

but the difficulty should not be forgotten.

Other questions of great importance, but inca-
pable of solution by Parliament, connect themselves
with the scheme of competition. It is difficult to
overrate for instance the importance due to the
character of the examination itself. It should be a
test of talent rather than of amount of acquirement ;
of capacity and cultivation, not of cramming It
should moreover be, not in studious learning “ e-
cially on their future career, but rather in the et
branches of a gefleral education. Paley appears to
be an item in the present preliminary examinations
which might be discontinued with decisive advan-
tage. Who cannot get up a book in the way of
question and answer? Classical scholarship, as many
people may think, has no peculiarly dives bearin
on an Indian career; but between a copy of Latin
verses and a paper of Paley questions, as alternative
tests of talent, I prefer unhesitatingly the former
But it is impossible to do more than indicate die
principle which shonld be aimed at.

On the whole, then, I adhere with hope to the
plan of the Government for the future supply of
the Civil Service, perhaps, in its direct and indirect
consequences, the most important point in their
measure. There are but few other points of the
subject which can be noticed, and those briefly.

Whether the circuitous intercourse between the
Board of Control and the directors can be simpli-
fied; piles of correspondence got rid of’; referchees

93

home made on fewer, and those essential points, and
the comprehension of such points facilitated by
condensing rather than copying, by substituting, as
Mr. Campbell says, one secretary to compile in the
place of fifty clerks to copy; these are questions
not unimportant, but certainly not insurmountable
by common executive sense, and absolutely nothing
in comparison with the general questions already dis-
cussed: whether the Home Government should be
double ; if double, how the second branch shall be
constituted ; and what we are to do with the patro-
nage, and especially with the Civil Service.

To these questions, comprising almost the whole
aspect of the Indian question on which at present
English opinion can be profitably employed, I have
thought it better to limit most of the preceding
remarks.

They are perhaps the most important of all the
questions which can come within the scope of Eng-
lish legislation on the subject of India. And if
superfluous care may be thought to have been spent
on points like that of the double government, set-
tled for the time by the ministerial bill, it is because
the same reasons which led to so much error being,
as it appears to me, put forth on these topics, are
still in operation, and may lead to the renewal of
the attempts whenever time shall bring another
opportunity. The enemy is repulsed, and perhaps
more easily than was expected, yet let the garrison
of Leadenhall Street look well to their walls, for

they have not had the last of him.
I do not mean to detract from the importance of

 
94

the question which comes next in order: the rela-
tion of the Government in India to the Home
Government. Doubtless it is true to a great ex-
tent, that India must in the main be governed in
India. And if the resolution were ever taken to
annihilate the check of the directors, the heart of
the present system, which rightly managed may
secure for India a great part of the advantage of
representation in England, and to hand over India
to a ruler under no check but that of parliamentary
responsibility, it would not be in London that I
should wish to place that ruler. The President of
the Board of Control should in that case be nothing,
or a mere link to connect the Governor-General
with England. He, with the more immediate facul-
ties for doing good, more of the knowledge and
capacity which comes from actual eyesight and
handling, more of that interest in the well-doing of
the country under his control of which a local ruler,
if he be not a thoroughly bad or thorougly feeble
man, can hardly divest himself; which, if he be an
able man, whether good or bad, he will certainly
feel strongly. He should be as far as possible abso-
lute and uncontrolled in India. Of course he would
be ultimately responsible to Parliament —respon-
sible as Warren Hastings was, if that is wished for.
It would not be difficult to devise on paper
some way by which it might be arranged that
he should “give his accounts” at the end of his
stewardship. A viceroy almost uninitiated has
some powers of good as well as evil, which a
Minister has not. He is more open to local ex

95

perience, and less to home politics. It is only,
however, as an alternative that I should prefer this
course. If India is to have a nominally respon-
sible, and actually irresponsible despot, let that
despot be the Governor-General, and not the Min-
ister. But at present we are dealing with a state of
things in which the Home Government retains, and,
constituted as it is, should retain, a substantial con-
trol. Viewed in this light, it yet seems probable
that the interference from home, as hitherto ex-
ercised, is too minute. It seems probable that the
great functionary to whom perforce and from the
nature of the case the decision of peace or war is
left, that is, of expenditure counted by millions, is
too limited in his present power of dealing with ex-
penses for public works counted by thousands. It
would be absurd to attempt, without knowledge of
details, to name a limit; but it is easy to see in
what direction to look for a principle. An excessive
caution in financial matters is an error on the right
side for a government, considering what unlimited
evil is implied in financial embezzlements. Still it
is clear that not only the central, but the local
governments, should have their hands as free as
possible for improvements. The aim should be to
give them as much freedom, not as little, as possible.
It is true, too, that one inevitable result of what is
itself inevitable — government by governors-—is
likely to be here, as elsewhere, the mis-spending of
a good deal of money ; each successive ruler having
generally his own crotchet better or worse: Ais
work, which is more important and more useful

 
96

than the works of all his predecessors. But
so many of the wants of India must be of a
class so patent and indisputable, that it might be
hoped a less proportion than is usual would be mis-
spent. Roads and railroads, irrigation and educa-
tion ; there seems no mistaking these, though, of
course, the question where to make the railroads
leaves the requisite margin for human blundering.

These things cannot be fully regulated by Acts
of Parliament; much must be left floating to be
settled by the joint discretion of the Home and of
the Indian authorities. We must not confuse this
case with the questions which may arise between a
colony and the mother-country, as to the degree
of legislative and financial power to be vested in
the Local Parliament. There the power given is
parted with and transferred; here it is still dele-
gated. Parliament may properly interfere with the
decision of the question affecting the amount of
power which the mother-country is to give away ;
for in this case, a State deals with a separate though
dependent State. Parliament, however, does not
settle the relations between the Colonial Office and
the Governor; neither can Parliament minutely re-
gulate the relations between the Home Government
and the Governor-General.

The degree of power exercised by a Governor or
Governor-General in a country where within limits
he is despotic, will depend on many things, but
most of all on individual caprice or character. You
may fix the numbers and powers of the Legislative
Council for India, but you cannot enact wisdom in

97

a Governor-General. Neither can you, with what-
ever checks, do more than palliate the consequences
of unwisdom. The experiment of guarding against
the consequences of a careless choice by careful
checking has often been tried ; and we ought to
know by this time that it has never succeeded. To
choose as carefully, and to treat as liberally as pos-
sible, is a vague rule; but it embodies the right
inciple to follow.
Pe can be more aware than I, that I have
touched but a few points of the vast subject which I
now relinquish. Many have gone more deeply into
its details, with, and without, accurate and exten-
sive information ; many have echoed a cry, and have
fancied they were expressing a judgment. I may
at least claim, in contrast with some of the latter
class, credit for a degree of humility, which has
limited my disquisition to points on which I have,
not perhaps knowledge, but an opinion.

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