securing peace and good order, has been due, not merely to a sense of
the interest which a government has in maintaining conditions which,
because favourable to industry are favourable also to revenue, but also
to the high ideal of the duties of a ruler which both nations have set
before themselves. Earlier Empires, like those of the Persian
Achaemenids or of the successors of Alexander, had been content to tax
their subjects and raise armies from them. No monarch, except perhaps
some of the Ptolemies in Egypt, seems to have set himself to establish a
system from which his subjects would benefit. Rome, with larger and
higher views, gave to those whom she conquered some compensations in
better administration for the national independence she extinguished.
Her ideals rose as she acquired experience, and as she came to feel the
magnificence of her position. Even under the Republic attempts were made
to check abuses of power on the part of provincial governors. The
proceedings against Verres, which we know so well because Cicero’s
speeches against that miscreant have been preserved, are an instance of
steps taken in the interests of a province whose discontent was so
little likely to harm Rome that no urgent political necessity prescribed
them. Those proceedings showed how defective was the machinery for
controlling or punishing a provincial governor; and it is clear enough
that a great deal of extortion and misfeasance went on under proconsuls
and propraetors in the later days of the Republic, to the enrichment,
not only of those functionaries, but of the hungry swarm who followed
them, including men who, like the poet Catullus, were made for better
things[7]. With the establishment of a monarchy administration improved.
The Emperor had a more definite responsibility for securing the welfare
and contentment of the provinces than had been felt by the Senate or the
jurors of the Republic, swayed by party interest or passion, not to
speak of more sordid motives. He was, moreover, able to give effect to
his wishes more promptly and more effectively. He could try an
incriminated official in the way he thought best, and mete out
appropriate punishment. It may indeed be said that the best proof of the
incompetence of the Republican system for the task of governing the
world, and of the need for the concentration of powers in a single hand,
is to be found in the scandals of provincial administration, scandals
which, so far as we can judge, could not have been remedied without a
complete change either in the tone and temper of the ruling class at
Rome, or in the ancient constitution itself.
-----
Footnote 7:
Poems x and xxviii. It is some comfort to know that Catullus obtained
in Bithynia only themes for some of his most charming verses (see
poems iv and xlvi). Gains would probably have been ill-gotten.
-----
On this point the parallel with the English in India is interesting,
dissimilar as the circumstances were. The English administration began
with extortions and corruptions. Officials were often rapacious,
sometimes unjust, in their dealings with the native princes. But the
statesmen and the public opinion of England, even in the latter half of
the eighteenth century, had higher standards than those of Rome in the
days of Sulla and Cicero, while the machinery which the House of Commons
provided for dealing with powerful offenders was more effective than the
Roman method of judicial proceedings before tribunals which could be,
and frequently were, bribed. The first outbreak of greed and corruption
in Bengal was dealt with by the strong hand of Clive in 1765. It made so
great an impression at home as to give rise to a provision in a statute
of 1773, making offences against the provisions of that Act or against
the natives of India, punishable by the Court of King’s Bench in
England. By Pitt’s Act of 1784, a Special Court, consisting of three
judges, four peers, and six members of the House of Commons, was created
for the trial in England of offences committed in India. This singular
tribunal, which has been compared with the _quaestio perpetua_ (_de
pecuniis repetundis_) of Senators created by a Roman statute of B.C. 149
to try offences committed by Roman officials against provincials, has
never acted, or even been summoned[8]. Soon after it came the famous
trial which is more familiar to Englishmen than any other event in the
earlier relations of England and India. The impeachment of Warren
Hastings has often been compared with the trial of Verres, though
Hastings was not only a far more capable, but a far less culpable man.
Hastings, like Verres, was not punished. But the proceedings against him
so fixed the attention of the nation upon the administration of India as
to secure for wholesome principles of conduct a recognition which was
never thereafter forgotten. The Act of 1784 in establishing a Board of
Control responsible to Parliament found a means both for supervising the
behaviour of officials and for taking the large political questions
which arose in India out of the hands of the East India Company. This
Board continued till India was placed under the direct sway of the
British Crown in 1858. At the same time the appointment of
Governors-General who were mostly men of wealth, and always men of rank
and position at home, provided a safeguard against such misconduct as
the proconsuls under the Roman Republic had been prone to commit. These
latter had little to fear from prosecution when their term of office was
over, and the opinion of their class was not shocked by offences which
would have fatally discredited an English nobleman. The standard by
which English public opinion judges the behaviour of Indian or Colonial
officials has, on the whole, risen during the nineteenth century; and
the idea that the government of subject-races is to be regarded as a
trust to be discharged with a sense of responsibility to God and to
humanity at large has become generally accepted. Probably the action of
the Emperors, or at least of such men as Trajan and his three
successors, raised the standard of opinion in the Roman Empire also. It
was, however, not so much to that opinion as to their sovereign master
that Roman officials were responsible. The general principles of policy
which guided the Emperors were sound, but how far they were applied to
check corruption or oppression in each particular case is a matter on
which we are imperfectly informed. Under an indolent or vicious Emperor,
a governor who had influence at Court, or who remitted the full tribute
punctually, may probably have sinned with impunity.
-----
Footnote 8:
See Sir C. P. Ilbert’s _Government of India_, p. 68. The provision
creating this Court has never been repealed.
-----
The government of India by the English resembles that of her provinces
by Rome in being thoroughly despotic. In both cases, whatever may have
been done for the people, nothing was or is done by the people. There
was under Rome, and there is in British India, no room for popular
initiative, or for popular interference with the acts of the rulers,
from the Viceroy down to a district official. For wrongs cognizable by
the courts of law, the courts of law were and are open, doubtless more
fully open in India than they were in the Roman Empire. But for errors
in policy or for defects in the law itself, the people of a province had
no remedy available in the Roman Empire except through petition to the
sovereign. Neither is there now in India any recourse open to the
inhabitants except an appeal to the Crown or to Parliament, a Parliament
in which the Indian subjects of the Crown have not been, and cannot be,
represented. This was, and is, by the nature of the case, inevitable.
In comparing the governmental systems of the two Empires, it is hardly
necessary to advert to such differences as the fact that India is placed
under a Viceroy to whom all the other high functionaries, Governors,
Lieutenant-Governors and Chief Commissioners, are subordinated, whereas
in the Roman world every provincial governor stood directly under the
Emperor. Neither need one dwell upon the position in the English system
of the Secretary of State for India in Council as a member of the
British Cabinet. Such details do not affect the main point to which I
now come.
The territories conquered by the Romans were of three kinds. Some, such
as Egypt, Macedonia, and Pontus, had been, under their own princes,
monarchies practically despotic. In these, of course, there could be no
question of what we call popular government. Some had been tribal
principalities, monarchic or oligarchic, such as those among the Iceni
and Brigantes in Britain, the Arverni in Gaul, the Cantabrian
mountaineers in Spain. Here, again, free institutions had not existed
before, and could hardly have been created by the conqueror. The third
kind consisted of small commonwealths, such as the Greek cities. These
were fitted for self-government, which indeed they had enjoyed before
they were subjected by Rome. Very wisely, municipal self-government was
to a large extent left to them by the Emperors down till the time of
Justinian. It was more complete in some cities than in others; and it
was in nearly all gradually reduced by the equalizing pressure of the
central authority. But they were all placed under the governor of the
province; most of them paid taxes, and in most both the criminal and the
higher civil jurisdiction were in the hands of imperial officials. Of
the introduction of any free institutions for the empire at large, or
even for any province as a whole, there seems never to have been any
question. Among the many constitutional inventions we owe to the ancient
world representative government finds no place. A generation before the
fall of the Republic, Rome had missed her opportunity when the creation
of such a system was most needed and might have been most useful. After
her struggle against the league of her Italian allies, she consented to
admit them to vote in her own city tribes, instead of taking what seems
to us moderns the obvious expedient of allowing them to send delegates
to an assembly which should meet in Rome. So it befell that monarchy and
a city republic or confederation of such republics remained the only
political forms known to antiquity[9].
-----
Footnote 9:
The nearest approach to any kind of provincial self-government and
also the nearest approach to a representative system was made in the
Provincial Councils which seem from the time of Augustus down to the
fifth century to have existed in all or nearly all the provinces. They
consisted of delegates from the cities of each province, and met
annually in some central place, where stood the temple or altar to
Rome and Augustus. They were presided over by the priest of these
divinities, and their primary functions were to offer sacrifices,
provide for the expense of the annual games, and elect the priest for
next year. However they seem to have also passed resolutions, such as
votes of thanks to the outgoing priest or to a departing governor, and
to have transmitted requests or inquiries to the Emperor. Sometimes
they arranged for the prosecution of a governor who had misgoverned
them: but on the whole their functions were more ceremonial and
ornamental than practically important; nor would the emperors have
suffered them to exert any real power, though they were valued as
useful vehicles of provincial opinion (see Marquardt, _Römische
Staatsverwaltung_, vol. i, and an article in _Eng. Hist. Review_ for
April, 1893, by Mr. E. G. Hardy.)
-----
India is ruled despotically by the English, not merely because they
found her so ruled, but because they conceive that no other sort of
government would suit a vast population of different races and tongues,
divided by the religious animosities of Hindus and Musulmans, and with
no sort of experience of self-government on a scale larger than that of
the Village Council. No more in India than in the Roman Empire has there
been any question of establishing free institutions either for the
country as a whole, or for any particular province. But the English,
like the Romans, have permitted such self-government as they found to
subsist. It subsists only in the very rudimentary but very useful form
of the Village Council just referred to, called in some parts of India
the Panchayet or body of five. Of late years municipal constitutions,
resembling at a distance those of English boroughs, have been given to
some of the larger cities as a sort of experiment, for the sake of
training the people to a sense of public duty, and of relieving the
provincial government of local duties. So far the experiment has in most
cities been only a moderate success. The truth is that, though a few
intelligent men, educated in European ideas, complain of the despotic
power of the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy, the people of India generally do
not wish to govern themselves. Their traditions, their habits, their
ideas, are all the other way, and dispose them to accept submissively
any rule which is strong and which neither disturbs their religion and
customs nor lays too heavy imposts upon them.
Here let an interesting contrast be noted. The Roman Emperors were
despots at home in Italy, almost as much, and ultimately quite as much,
as in the provinces. The English govern their own country on democratic,
India on absolutist principles. The inconsistency is patent but
inevitable. It affords an easy theme for declamation when any arbitrary
act of the Indian administration gives rise to complaints, and it may
fairly be used as the foundation for an argument that a people which
enjoys freedom at home is specially bound to deal justly and
considerately with those subjects to whom she refuses a like freedom.
But every one admits in his heart that it is impossible to ignore the
differences which make one group of races unfit for the institutions
which have given energy and contentment to another more favourably
placed.
A similar inconsistency presses on the people of the United States in
the Philippine Isles. It is a more obtrusive inconsistency because it
has come more abruptly, because it has come, not by the operation of a
long series of historical causes, but by the sudden and little
considered action of the American Republic itself, and because the
American Republic has proclaimed, far more loudly and clearly than the
English have ever done, the principle contained in the Declaration of
Independence that the consent of the governed is the only foundation of
all just government. The Americans will doubtless in time either
reconcile themselves to their illogical position or alter it. But for
the present it gives to thoughtful men among them visions of mocking
spirits, which the clergy are summoned to exorcize by dwelling upon the
benefits which the diffusion of a pure faith and a commercial
civilization will confer upon the lazy and superstitious inhabitants of
these tropical isles.
Subject to the general principle that the power of the Emperor was
everywhere supreme and absolute, the Romans recognized, at least in the
earlier days of the Empire, considerable differences between the methods
of administering various provinces. A distinction was drawn between the
provinces of the Roman people, to which proconsuls or propraetors were
sent, and the provinces of Caesar, placed under the more direct control
of the Emperor, and administered in his name by an official called the
_praeses_ or _legatus Caesaris_, or sometimes (as was the case in
Judaea, at the time when it was ruled by Pontius Pilate) by a
_procurator_, an officer primarily financial, but often entrusted with
the powers of a _praeses_. Egypt received special treatment because the
population was turbulent and liable to outbursts of religious passion,
and because it was important to keep a great cornfield of the Empire in
good humour. These distinctions between one province and another tended
to vanish as the administrative system of the whole Empire grew better
settled and the old republican forms were forgotten. Still there were
always marked differences between Britain, for instance, at the one end
of the realm and Syria at the other. So there were all sorts of
varieties in the treatment of cities and tribes which had never been
conquered, but passed peaceably through alliance into subjection. Some
of the Hellenic cities retained their republican institutions till far
down in imperial times. Distinctions not indeed similar, yet analogous,
have existed between the different parts of British India. There is the
old distribution of provinces into Regulation and Non-Regulation. The
name ‘Province,’ one may observe in passing, a name unknown elsewhere in
the dominions of Britain[10] (though a recent and vulgar usage sometimes
applies it to the parts of England outside London) except as a relic of
French dominion in Canada, bears witness to an authority which began, as
in Canada, through conquest. Though the names of Regulation and
Non-Regulation provinces are now no longer used, a distinction remains
between the districts to the higher posts in which none but members of
the covenanted service are appointed, and those in which the Government
have a wider range of choice, and also between those districts for which
the Governor-General can make ordinances in his executive capacity, and
those which are legislated for by him in Council in the ordinary way.
There are also many differences in the administrative systems of the
different Presidencies and other territories, besides of course all
imaginable diversities in the amount of independence left to the
different ‘Protected States,’ some of which are powerful kingdoms, like
Hyderabad, while many, as for instance in Gujarat, are petty
principalities of two or three dozen square miles.
-----
Footnote 10:
The use of the word to denote the two great ecclesiastical divisions
of England (Province of Canterbury and Province of York) is a relic of
the Roman imperial system.
-----
The mention of these protected States suggests another point of
comparison. Rome brought many principalities or kingdoms under her
influence, especially in the eastern parts of the Empire; and dealt with
each upon the basis of the treaty by which her supremacy had been
acknowledged, allowing to some a wider, to some a narrower measure of
autonomy[11]. Ultimately, however, all these, except a few on the
frontiers, passed under her direct sway: and this frequently happened in
cases where the native dynasty had died out, so that the title lapsed to
the Emperor. The Iceni in Britain seem to have been such a protected
State, and it was the failure of male heirs that caused a lapse. So the
Indian Government was wont, when the ruling family became extinct or
hopelessly incompetent, to annex to the dominions of the British Crown
the principality it had ruled. From the days of Lord Canning, however, a
new policy has been adopted. It is now deemed better to maintain the
native dynasties whenever this can be done, so a childless prince is
suffered to adopt, or provide for the adoption of, some person approved
by the Government; and the descendants of this person are recognized as
rulers[12]. The incoming prince feels that he owes his power to the
British Government, while adoption gives him a title in the eyes of his
subjects.
-----
Footnote 11:
For instance, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Commagene were left as subject
kingdoms till 17 A.D., 63 A.D., and 72 A.D. respectively.
Footnote 12:
‘The extent to which confidence has been restored by Lord Canning’s
edict is shown by the curious fact that since its promulgation a
childless ruler very rarely adopts in his own lifetime. An heir
presumptive, who knows that he is to succeed and who may possibly grow
restive if his inheritance is delayed, is for various obscure reasons
not the kind of person whom an Oriental ruler cares to see idling
about his palace, so that a politic chief often prefers leaving the
duty of nominating a successor to his widows, who know his mind and
have every reason for wishing him long life.’—Sir A. C. Lyall in _Law
Quarterly Review_ for October, 1893.
-----
The differences I have mentioned between the British provinces are
important, not only as respects administration, but as respects the
system of landholding. All over India, as in many other Oriental
countries, it is from the land that a large part of revenue, whether one
calls it rent or land tax, is derived. In some provinces the rent is
paid direct to the Government by the cultivator, in others it goes to
intermediary landlords, who in their turn are responsible to the State.
In some provinces it has been permanently fixed, by what is called a
Land-settlement[13], and not always on the same principles. The subject
is far too large and intricate to be pursued here. I mention it because
in the Roman Empire also land revenue was the mainstay of the imperial
treasury. Where territory had been taken in war, the fact of conquest
was deemed to have made the Roman people ultimate owners of the land so
acquired, and the cultivators became liable to pay what we should call
rent for it. In some provinces this rent was farmed out to contractors
called _publicani_, who offered to the State a sum equivalent to the
rent of the area contracted for, minus the expense of collection and
their own profit on the undertaking, and kept for themselves whatever
they could extract from the peasantry. This vicious system, resembling
that of the tithe farmers in Ireland seventy years ago, was regulated by
Nero and abolished by Hadrian, who placed the imperial procurator in
charge of the land revenue except as regarded the forests and the mines.
It exists to-day in the Ottoman Empire. Convenient for the State as it
seems, it is wasteful, and naturally exposes the peasant, as is
conspicuously the case in Asiatic Turkey, to oppressions perhaps even
harder to check than are those of State officials. When the English came
to India they found it in force there; and the present landlord class in
Bengal, called Zemindars, are the representatives of the rent or land
tax-farmers under the native princes who were, perhaps unwisely,
recognized as landowners by the British a century ago. This kind of
tax-farming is, however, no longer practised in India, a merit to be
credited to the English when we are comparing them with the Romans of
the Republic and the earlier Empire.
-----
Footnote 13:
One finds something similar to this Land-settlement in the Roman plan
of determining the land revenue of a province by what was called the
_lex provinciae_.
-----
Where the revenue of the State comes from the land, the State is obliged
to keep a watchful eye upon the condition of agriculture, since revenue
must needs decline when agriculture is depressed. There was not in the
Roman world, and there is not in India now, any question of agricultural
depression arising from foreign competition, for no grain came into the
Empire from outside, or comes now into India[14]. But a year of drought,
or, in a long course of years, the exhaustion of the soil, tells heavily
on the agriculturist, and may render him unable to pay his rent or land
tax. In bad years it was the practice of the more indulgent Emperors to
remit a part of the tax for the year: and one of the complaints most
frequently made against harsh sovereigns, or extravagant ones like
Justinian, was that they refused to concede such remissions. A similar
indulgence has to be and is granted in India in like cases.
-----
Footnote 14:
Rice, however, is sent from Lower Burma into India proper.
-----
Finance was the standing difficulty of the Roman as it is of the
Anglo-Indian administrator. Indeed, the Roman Empire may be said to have
perished from want of revenue. Heavy taxation, and possibly the
exhaustion of the soil, led to the abandonment of farms, reducing the
rent derivable from the land. The terrible plague of the second century
brought down population, and was followed by a famine. The eastern
provinces had never furnished good fighting material: and the diminution
of the agricultural population of Italy, due partly to this cause,
partly to the growth of large estates worked by slave labour, made it
necessary to recruit the armies from the barbarians on the frontiers.
Even in the later days of the Republic the native auxiliaries were
beginning to be an important part of a Roman army. Moreover, with a
declining revenue, a military establishment such as was needed to defend
the eastern and the northern frontiers could not always be maintained.
The Romans had no means of drawing a revenue from frontier customs,
because there was very little import trade; but dues were levied at
ports and there was a succession tax, which usually stood at five per
cent. In most provinces there were few large fortunes on which an income
or property tax could have been levied, except those of persons who were
already paying up to their capacities as being responsible for the land
tax assessed upon their districts. The salt tax was felt so sorely by
the poor that Aurelian was hailed as a benefactor when he abolished it.