painfully near the limit of her taxable resources. There too the salt
tax presses hard upon the peasant; and the number of fortunes from which
much can be extracted by an income or property tax is, relatively to the
population, very small. Comparing her total wealth with her population,
India is a poor country, probably poorer than was the Roman Empire in
the time of Constantine[15]. A heavy burden lies upon her in respect of
the salaries of the upper branches of the Civil Service, which must of
course be fixed at figures sufficient to attract a high order of talent
from England, and a still heavier one in respect of military charges. On
the other hand, she has the advantage of being able, when the guarantee
of the British Government is given for the loan, to borrow money for
railways and other public works, at a rate of interest very low as
compared with what the best Native State would be obliged to offer, or
as compared with that which the Roman Government paid.
-----
Footnote 15:
The total revenue of British India was, in A.D. 1840, 200,000,000 of
rupees, and in 1898-9, 1,014,427,000 rupees, more than a fourth of
which was land revenue and less than one-fourth from railways. (The
exchange value of the rupee, formerly about two shillings, is now
about one shilling and four pence.) £190,000,000 has been expended
upon railways in British India and the Native States. The land revenue
is somewhat increasing with the bringing of additional land under
cultivation. It is estimated that forty-two per cent. of the
cultivable area is available for further cultivation. The funded debt
of India is now £195,000,000, the unfunded about £12,000,000.
-----
Under the Republic, Rome levied tribute from the provinces, and spent
some of it on herself, though of course the larger part went to the
general expenses of the military and civil administration. Under the
Emperors that which was spent in Rome became gradually less and less, as
the Emperor became more and more detached from the imperial city, and
after Diocletian, Italy was treated as a province. England, like Spain
in the days of her American Empire and like Holland now, for a time drew
from her Indian conquests a substantial revenue. An inquiry made in 1773
showed that, since 1765, about two millions a year had been paid by the
Company to the British exchequer. By 1773, however, the Company had
incurred such heavy debts that the exchequer had to lend them money: and
since that time Britain has drawn no tribute from India. She profits by
her dominion only in respect of having an enormous market for her goods,
industrial or commercial enterprises offering comparatively safe
investments for her capital, and a field where her sons can make a
career. Apart from any considerations of justice or of sentiment, India
could not afford to make any substantial contribution to the expenses of
the non-Indian dominions of the Crown. It is all she can do to pay her
own way.
Those whom Rome sent out to govern the provinces were, in the days of
the Republic and in the days of Augustus, Romans, that is to say Roman
citizens and natives of Italy. Very soon, however, citizens born in the
provinces began to be admitted to the great offices and to be selected
by the Emperor for high employment. As early as the time of Nero, an
Aquitanian chief, Julius Vindex, was legate of the great province of
Gallia Lugdunensis. When the imperial throne itself was filled by
provincials, as was often the case from Trajan onwards, it was plain
that the pre-eminence of Italy was gone. If a man, otherwise eligible,
was not a full Roman citizen, the Emperor forthwith made him one. By the
time of the Antonines (A.D. 138-180) there was practically no
distinction between a Roman and a provincial citizen; and we may safely
assume that the large majority of important posts, both military and
civil, were held by men of provincial extraction. Indeed merit probably
won its way faster to military than to civil distinction, for in
governments which are militant as well as military, promotion by merit
is essential to the success of the national arms, and the soldier
identifies himself with the power he serves even faster than does the
civilian. So, long before full citizenship was granted to the whole
Roman world (about A.D. 217), it is clear that not only the lower posts
in which provincials had always been employed, but the highest also were
freely open to all subjects. A Gaul might be sent to govern Cilicia, or
a Thracian Britain, because both were now Romans rather than Gauls or
Thracians. The fact that Latin and Greek were practically familiar to
nearly all highly educated civil servants, because Latin was the
language of law as well as the tongue commonly spoken in the West, while
Greek was the language of philosophy and (to a great extent) of letters,
besides being the spoken tongue of most parts of the East, made a
well-educated man fit for public employment everywhere, for he was not
(except perhaps in Syria and Egypt and a few odd corners of the Empire)
obliged to learn any fresh language. And a provincial was just as likely
as an Italian to be highly educated. Thus the officials could easily get
into touch with the subjects, and felt hardly more strange if they came
from a distance than a Scotchman feels if he is appointed to a
professorship in Quebec, or an Irishman if he becomes postmaster in a
Norfolk village. Nothing contributed more powerfully to the unity and
the strength of the Roman dominion than this sense of an imperial
nationality.
The English in India have, as did the Romans, always employed the
natives in subordinate posts. The enormous majority of persons who carry
on the civil administration there at this moment are Asiatics. But the
English, unlike the Romans, have continued to reserve the higher posts
for men of European stock. The contrast in this respect between the
Roman and the English policy is instructive, and goes down to the
foundation of the differences between English and Roman rule. As we have
seen, the City of Rome became the Empire, and the Empire became Rome.
National independence was not regretted, for the East had been
denationalized before the Italian conqueror appeared, and the tribes of
the West, even those who fought best for freedom, had not reached a
genuine national life when Spain, Gaul, and Britain were brought under
the yoke. In the third century A.D. a Gaul, a Spaniard, a Pannonian, a
Bithynian, a Syrian called himself a Roman, and for all practical
purposes was a Roman. The interests of the Empire were his interests,
its glory his glory, almost as much as if he had been born in the shadow
of the Capitol. There was, therefore, no reason why his loyalty should
not be trusted, no reason why he should not be chosen to lead in war, or
govern in peace, men of Italian birth. So, too, the qualities which make
a man capable of leading in war or administering in peace were just as
likely to be found in a Gaul, or a Spaniard, or a German from the Rhine
frontier as in an Italian. In fact, men of Italian birth play no great
part in later imperial history[16].
-----
Footnote 16:
After the fifth century, Armenians, Isaurians, and Northern
Macedonians figure more largely in the Eastern Empire than do natives
of the provinces round the Aegean.
-----
It is far otherwise in India, though there was among the races of India
no nation. The Englishman does not become an Indian, nor the Indian an
Englishman. The Indian does not as a rule, though of course there have
been not a few remarkable exceptions to the rule, possess the qualities
which the English deem to be needed for leadership in war or for the
higher posts of administration in peace[17]. For several reasons,
reasons to be referred to later, he can seldom be expected to feel like
an Englishman, and to have the same devotion to the interests of England
which may be counted on in an Englishman. Accordingly the English have
made in India arrangements to which there was nothing similar in the
Roman Empire. They have two armies, a native and a European, the latter
of which is never suffered to fall below a certain ratio to the former.
The latter is composed entirely of Englishmen. In the former all
military posts in line regiments above that of subahdar (equivalent to
captain) are reserved to Englishmen[18]. The artillery and engineer
services are kept in English hands, _i.e._ there is hardly any native
artillery. It is only, therefore, in the native contingents already
referred to that natives are found in the higher grades. These
contingents may be compared with the auxiliary barbarian troops under
non-Roman commanders whom we find in the later ages of Rome, after
Constantine. Such commanders proved sometimes, like the Vandal Stilicho,
energetic defenders of the imperial throne, sometimes, like the Suevian
Ricimer, formidable menaces to it[19]. But apart from these, the Romans
had but one army; and it was an army in which all subjects had an equal
chance of rising.
-----
Footnote 17:
Among these exceptions may be mentioned Sir Syed Ahmed of Aligurh, and
the late Mr. Justice Trimbak Telang of Bombay, both men of remarkable
force and elevation of character.
Footnote 18:
The subahdar, however, is rather a non-commissioned than a
commissioned officer, and is not a member of the British officers’
mess.
Footnote 19:
Russia places Musulmans from the Caucasian provinces in high military
posts. But she has no army corresponding to the native army in India,
and as she has a number of Musulman subjects in European Russia it is
all the more natural for her to have a Colonel Temirhan Shipsheff at
Aralykh and a General Alikhanoff at Merv.
-----
In a civil career, the native of India may go higher under the English
than he can in a military one. A few natives, mostly Hindus, and indeed
largely Bengali Hindus, have won their way into the civil service by
passing the competitive Indian Civil Service examination in England, and
some of these have risen to the posts of magistrate and district judge.
A fair proportion of the seats on the benches of the Supreme Courts in
Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, and Lahore have been allotted to
native barristers of eminence, several of whom have shown themselves
equal in point of knowledge and capacity, as well as in integrity, to
the best judges selected from the European bar in India or sent out from
the English bar. No native, however, has ever been thought of for the
great places, such as those of Lieutenant-Governor or Chief
Commissioner, although all British subjects are legally eligible for any
post in the service of the Crown in any part of the British Dominions.
Regarding the policy of this exclusion there has been much difference of
opinion. As a rule, Anglo-Indian officials approve the course which I
have described as that actually taken. But I know some who think that
there are natives of ability and force of character such as to fit them
for posts military as well as civil, higher than any to which a native
has yet been advanced, and who see advantages in selecting a few for
such posts. They hold, however, that such natives ought to be selected
for civil appointments, not by competitive examination in England but in
India itself by those who rule there, and in respect of personal merits
tested by service. Some opposition to such a method might be expected
from members of the regular civil service, who would consider their
prospects of promotion to be thereby prejudiced.
Here we touch an extremely interesting point of comparison between the
Roman and the English systems. Both nations, when they started on their
career of conquest, had already built up at home elaborate
constitutional systems in which the rights of citizens, both public and
private civil rights, had been carefully settled and determined. What
was the working of these rights in the conquered territories? How far
were they extended by the conquerors, Roman and English, and with what
results?
Rome set out from the usual practice of the city republics of the
ancient world. No man enjoyed any rights at all, public or private,
except a citizen of the Republic. A stranger coming to reside in the
city did not, no matter how long he lived there, nor did his son or
grandson, obtain those rights unless he was specially admitted to become
a citizen. From this principle Rome, as she grew, presently found
herself obliged to deviate. She admitted one set of neighbours after
another, sometimes as allies, sometimes in later days, as conquered and
incorporated communities, to a citizenship which was sometimes
incomplete, including only private civil rights, sometimes complete,
including the right of voting in the assembly and the right of being
chosen to a public office. Before the dictatorship of Julius Caesar
practically all Italians, except the people of Cisalpine Gaul, which
remained a province till B.C. 43, had been admitted to civic rights.
Citizenship, complete or partial (_i.e._ including or not including
public rights) had also begun to be conferred on a certain number of
cities or individuals outside Italy. Tarsus in Cilicia, of which St.
Paul was a native, enjoyed it, so he was born a Roman citizen. This
process of enlarging citizenship went on with accelerated speed, in and
after the days of the Flavian Emperors. Under Hadrian, the whole of
Spain seems to have enjoyed civic rights. Long before this date the
ancient right of voting in the Roman popular Assembly had become
useless, but the other advantages attached to the status of citizen were
worth having, for they secured valuable immunities. Finally, early in
the third century A.D., every Roman subject was by imperial edict made a
citizen for all purposes whatsoever. Universal eligibility to office
had, as we have seen, gone ahead of this extension, for all offices lay
in the gift of the Emperor or his ministers; and when it was desired to
appoint any one who might not be a full citizen, citizenship was
conferred along with the office. Thus Rome at last extended to all her
subjects the rights that had originally been confined to her own small
and exclusive community.
In England the principle that all private civil rights belong to every
subject alike was very soon established, and may be said to have never
been doubted since the final extinction of serfdom in the beginning of
the seventeenth century. Public civil rights, however, did not
necessarily go with private. Everybody, it is true, was (subject to
certain religious restrictions now almost entirely repealed) eligible to
any office to which he might be appointed by the Crown, and was also
(subject to certain property qualifications which lasted till our own
time) capable of being chosen to fill any elective post or function,
such as that of member of the House of Commons. But the right of voting
did not necessarily go along with other rights, whether public or
private, and it is only within the last forty years that it has been
extended by a series of statutes to the bulk of the adult male
population. Now when Englishmen began to settle abroad, they carried
with them all their private rights as citizens, and also their
eligibility to office; but their other public rights, _i.e._ those of
voting, they could not carry, because these were attached to local areas
in England. When territories outside England were conquered, their free
inhabitants, in becoming subjects of the Crown, became therewith
entitled to all such rights of British subjects as were not connected
with residence in Britain: that is to say, they had all the private
civil rights of Englishmen, and also complete eligibility to public
office (unless of course some special disqualification was imposed). The
rights of an English settler in Massachusetts in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were those of an Englishman, except that he could
not vote at an English parliamentary election because he was not
resident in any English constituency; and the same rule became
applicable to a French Canadian after the cession of Canada to the
British Crown.
So when India was conquered, the same principles were again applied.
Every free Indian subject of the Crown soon became entitled to the
private civil rights of an Englishman, except so far as his own personal
law, Hindu or Musulman or Parsi or Jain, might modify those rights; and
if there was any such modification, that was recognized for his benefit
rather than to his prejudice. Thus the process which the Romans took
centuries to complete was effected almost at once in India by the
application of long established doctrines of English law. Accordingly we
have in India the singular result that although there are in that
country no free institutions (other than those municipal ones previously
referred to) nor any representative government, every Indian subject is
eligible to any office in the gift of the Crown anywhere, and to any
post or function to which any body of electors may select him. He may be
chosen by a British constituency a member of the British House of
Commons, or by a Canadian constituency a member of the House of Commons
of Canada. Two natives of India (both Parsis) have already been chosen,
both by London constituencies, to sit in the British House. So a native
Hindu or Musulman might be appointed by the Crown to be Lord Chief
Justice of England or Governor-General of Canada or Australia. He might
be created a peer. He might become Prime Minister. And as far as legal
eligibility goes, he might be named Governor-General of India, though as
a matter of practice, no Indian has ever been placed in any high Indian
office. Neither birth, nor colour, nor religion constitutes any legal
disqualification. This was expressly declared as regards India by the
India Act of 1833, and has been more than once formally declared since,
but it did not require any statute to establish what flowed from the
principles of our law. And it need hardly be added that the same
principles apply to the Chinese subjects of the Crown in Hong Kong or
Singapore and to the negro subjects of the Crown in Jamaica or Zululand.
In this respect at least England has worthily repeated the liberal
policy of Rome. She has done it, however, not by way of special grants,
but by the automatic and probably uncontemplated operation of the
general principles of her law.
As I have referred to the influence of English constitutional ideas, it
is worth noting that it is these ideas which have led the English of
late years not only to create in India city municipalities, things
entirely foreign to the native Indian mind, but also to provide by
statute (in 1892) for the admission of a certain number of nominated
non-official members to the legislative councils of the Governors in
Bengal, Bombay, Madras, the North-West Provinces and Oudh, and the
Punjab. These members are nominated, not elected, because it has been
found difficult to devise a satisfactory scheme of election. But the
provision made for the presence of native non-officials testifies to the
wish of the English Government to secure not only a certain amount of
outside opinion, but also a certain number of native councillors through
whom native sentiment may be represented, and may obtain its due
influence on the conduct of affairs.
The extension of the civil rights of Englishmen to the subjects of the
Crown in India would have been anything but a boon had it meant the
suppression and extinction of native law and custom. This of course it
has not meant. Neither had the extension of Roman conquest such an
effect in the Roman Empire; and even the grant of citizenship to all
subjects did not quite efface local law and usage. As the position and
influence of English law in India, viewed in comparison with the
relation of the older Roman law to the Roman provinces, is the subject
of another of these Essays, I will here pass over the legal side of the
matter, and speak only of the parallel to be noted between the political
action of the conquering nations in both cases.
Both have shown a prudent wish to avoid disturbing, any further than the
fixed principles of their policy made needful, the usages and beliefs of
their subjects. The Romans took over the social and political system
which they found in each of the very dissimilar regions they conquered,
placed their own officials above it, modified it so far as they found
expedient for purposes of revenue and civil administration generally,
but otherwise let it stand as they found it and left the people alone.
In course of time the law and administration of the conquerors, and the
intellectual influences which literature called into play, did bring
about a considerable measure of assimilation between Romans and
provincials, especially in the life and ideas of the upper classes. But
this was the result of natural causes. The Romans did not consciously
and deliberately work for uniformity. Especially in the sphere of
religion they abstained from all interference. They had indeed no
temptation to interfere either with religious belief or with religious
practice, for their own system was not a universal but a strictly
national religion, and the educated classes had begun to sit rather
loose to that religion before the process of foreign conquest had gone
far. According to the theory of the ancient world, every nation had its
own deities, and all these deities were equally to be respected in their
own country. Whether they were at bottom the same deities under
different names, or were quite independent divine powers, did not
matter. Each nation and each member of a nation was expected to worship
the national gods: but so long as an individual man did not openly
reject or insult those gods, he might if he pleased worship a god
belonging to some other country, provided that the worship was not
conducted with shocking or demoralizing rites, such as led to the
prohibition of the Bacchanalian cult at Rome[20]. The Egyptian Serapis
was a fashionable deity among Roman women as early as the time of
Catullus. We are told that Claudius abolished Druidism on account of its
savage cruelty, but this may mean no more than that he forbade the
Druidic practice of human sacrifices[21]. There was therefore, speaking
broadly, no religious persecution and little religious intolerance in
the ancient world, for the Christians, it need hardly be said, were
persecuted not because of their religion but because they were a secret
society, about which, since it was new, and secret, and Oriental, and
rejected all the gods of all the nations alike, the wildest calumnies
were readily believed. The first religious persecutors were the Persian
Fire-worshipping kings of the Sassanid dynasty, who occasionally worried
their Christian subjects.
-----
Footnote 20:
Constantine prohibited the immoral excesses practised by the Syrians
of Heliopolis.
Footnote 21:
‘Druidarum religionem apud Gallos dirae immanitatis et tantum civibus
sub Augusto interdictam penitus abolevit.’—Sueton. _Vita Claud._ c.
25.
-----