ancient world. There were no missions, neither foreign missions nor home
missions. If a man did not sacrifice to the gods of his own country, his
fellow citizens might think ill of him. If he was accused of teaching
that the gods did not exist, he might possibly, like Socrates, be put to
death, but nobody preached to him. On the other hand, if he did worship
them, he was in the right path, and it would have been deemed not only
impertinent, but almost impious, for the native of another country to
seek to convert him to another faith, that is to say, to make him
disloyal to the gods of his own country, who were its natural and
time-honoured protectors. The only occasions on which one hears of
people being required to perform acts of worship to any power but the
deities of their country are those cases in which travellers were
expected to offer a prayer or a sacrifice to some local deity whose
territory they were traversing, and whom it was therefore expedient to
propitiate, and those other cases in which a sort of worship was
required to be rendered to the monarch, or the special protecting deity
of the monarch, under whose sway they lived. The edict attributed to
Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel may in this connexion be compared
with the practice in the Roman Empire of adoring the spirit that watched
over the reigning Caesar. To burn incense on the altar of the Genius of
the Emperor was the test commonly proposed to the persons accused of
being Christians.
All this is the natural result of polytheism. With the coming of faiths
each of which claims to be exclusively and universally true, the face of
the world was changed. Christianity was necessarily a missionary
religion, and unfortunately soon became also, forgetting the precepts of
its Founder, a persecuting religion. Islam followed in the same path,
and for similar reasons. In India the strife of Buddhism with Hinduism
gave rise to ferocious persecutions, which however were perhaps as much
political as religious. When the Portuguese and Spaniards began to
discover and conquer new countries beyond the oceans, the spread of
religion was in the mouths of all the adventurers, and in the minds of
many of the baser as well as of the better sort. Spain accordingly
forced her faith upon all her subjects, and found no great resistance
from the American peoples, though of course their Christianity seldom
went deep, as indeed it remains to-day in many parts of Central and
South America, a thin veneer over the ancient superstitions of the
aborigines. Portugal did the like, so far as she could, in India and in
Africa. So too the decrees by which the French colonizing companies were
founded in the days of Richelieu provided that the Roman Catholic faith
was to be everywhere made compulsory, and that converted pagans were to
be admitted to the full civil rights of Frenchmen[22]. But when the
English set forth to trade and conquer they were not thinking of
religion. The middle of the eighteenth century, when Bengal and Madras
were acquired, was for England an age when persecution had died out and
missionary propagandism had scarcely begun. The East India Company did
not at first interfere in any way with the religious rites it found
practised by the people, however cruel or immoral they might be. It gave
no advantages to Christian converts, and for a good while it even
discouraged the presence of missionaries, lest they should provoke
disturbances. Bishops were thought less dangerous, and one was
appointed, with three Archdeacons under him, by the Act of 1813. A sort
of miniature church establishment, for the benefit of Europeans, still
exists and is supported out of Indian revenues. After a time, however,
some of the more offensive or harmful features of native worship began
to be forbidden. The human sacrifices that occasionally occurred among
the hill tribes were treated as murders, and the practice of Sutti—the
self-immolation of the Hindu widow on her husband’s funeral pyre—was
forbidden as far back as 1829. No hindrance is now thrown in the way of
Christian missions: and there is perfect equality, as respects civil
rights and privileges, not only between the native votaries of all
religions, but also between them and Europeans.
-----
Footnote 22:
I owe this fact to Sir A. C. Lyall (_op. cit._ p. 66).
-----
So far as religion properly so-called is concerned, the policy of the
English is simple and easy to apply. But as respects usages which are
more or less associated with religion in the native mind, but which
European sentiment disapproves, difficulties sometimes arise. The
burning of the widow was one of these usages, and has been dealt with at
the risk of offending Hindu prejudice. Infanticide is another; and the
British Government try to check it, even in some of the protected
States. The marriage of young children is a third: and this it has been
thought not yet prudent to forbid, although the best native opinion is
beginning to recognize the evils that attach to it. Speaking generally,
it may be said that the English have, like the Romans but unlike the
Spaniards, shown their desire to respect the customs and ideas of the
conquered peoples. Indifferentism has served them in their career of
conquest as well as religious eclecticism served the Romans, so that
religious sentiment, though it sometimes stimulated the valour of their
native enemies, has not really furnished any obstacle to the
pacification of a conquered people. The English have, however, gone
further than did the Romans in trying to deter their subjects from
practices socially or morally deleterious.
As regards the work done by the English for education in the
establishment of schools and Universities, no comparison with Rome can
usefully be drawn: because it was not deemed in the ancient world to be
the function of the State to make a general educational provision for
its subjects. The Emperors, however, appointed and paid teachers of the
liberal arts in some of the greater cities. That which the English have
done, however, small as it may appear in comparison with the vast
population they have to care for[23], witnesses to the spirit which has
animated them in seeking to extend to the conquered the opportunities of
progress which they value for themselves.
-----
Footnote 23:
There are in India five examining and degree-granting Universities,
with about 8,000 matriculated students, nearly all of them taught in
the numerous affiliated colleges. The total number of persons returned
as receiving instruction in India is 4,357,000, of whom 402,000 are
girls.
-----
The question how far the triumphs of Rome and of England are due to the
republican polity of the one, and the practically republican (though not
until 1867 or 1885 democratic) polity of the other, is so large a one
that I must be content merely to indicate it as well deserving a
discussion. Several similar empires have been built up by republican
governments of the oligarchic type, as witness the empire of Carthage in
the ancient, and that of Venice in the later mediaeval world. One can
explain this by the fact that in such governments there is usually,
along with a continuity of policy hardly to be expected from a
democracy, a constant succession of capable generals and administrators
such as a despotic hereditary monarchy seldom provides, for a monarchy
of that kind must from time to time have feeble or dissolute sovereigns,
under whom bad selections will be made for important posts, policy will
oscillate, and no adequate support will be given to the armies or fleets
which are maintaining the interests of the nation abroad. A republic is
moreover likely to have a larger stock of capable and experienced men on
which to draw during the process of conquering and organizing. The two
conspicuous instances in which monarchies have acquired and long held
vast external dominions are the Empires of Spain and Russia. The former
case is hardly an exception to the doctrine just stated, because the
oceanic Empire of Spain was won quickly and with little fighting against
opponents immeasurably inferior, and because it had no conterminous
enemies to take advantage of the internal decay which soon set in. In
the case of Russia the process has been largely one of natural expansion
over regions so thinly peopled and with inhabitants so backward that no
serious resistance was made to an advance which went on rather by
settlement than by conquest. It is only in the Caucasus and in Turkistan
that Russia has had to establish her power by fighting. Her conflicts
even with the Persians and the Ottoman Turks have been, as Moltke is
reported to have said, battles of the one-eyed against the blind. But it
must be added that Russia has shown during two centuries a remarkable
power of holding a steady course of foreign policy. She sometimes trims
her sails, and lays the ship upon the other tack, but the main direction
of the vessel’s course is not altered. This must be the result of wisdom
or good fortune in the choice of ministers, for the Romanoff dynasty has
not contained more than its fair average of men of governing capacity.
There is one other point in which the Romans and the English may be
compared as conquering powers. Both triumphed by force of character.
During the two centuries that elapsed between the destruction of
Carthage, when Rome had already come to rule many provinces, and the
time of Vespasian, when she had ceased to be a city and was passing into
a nation conterminous with her dominions, the Romans were the ruling
race of the world, small in numbers, even if we count the peoples of
middle Italy as Romans, but gifted with such talents for war and
government, and possessed of such courage and force of will as to be
able, not only to dominate the whole civilized world and hold down its
peoples, but also to carry on a succession of bloody civil wars among
themselves without giving those peoples any chance of recovering their
freedom. The Roman armies, though superior in discipline to the enemies
they had to encounter, except the Macedonians and Greeks, were not
generally superior in arms, and had no resources of superior scientific
knowledge at their command. Their adversaries in Africa, in Greece, and
in Asia Minor were as far advanced in material civilization as they were
themselves. It was their strenuous and indomitable will, buoyed up by
the pride and self-confidence born of a long succession of victories in
the past, that enabled them to achieve this unparalleled triumph. The
triumph was a triumph of character, as their poet felt when he penned
the famous line, _Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque_. And after
the inhabitants of the City had ceased to be the heart of the Empire,
this consciousness of greatness passed to the whole population of the
Roman world when they compared themselves with the barbarians outside
their frontiers. One finds it even in the pages of Procopius, a Syrian
writing in Greek, after the western half of the Empire had been
dismembered by barbarian invasions.
The English conquered India with forces much smaller than those of the
Romans; and their success in subjugating a still vaster population in a
shorter time may thus appear more brilliant. But the English had
antagonists immeasurably inferior in valour, in discipline, in military
science, and generally also in the material of war, to those whom the
Romans overcame. Nor had they ever either a first-rate general or a
monarch of persistent energy opposed to them. No Hannibal, nor even a
Mithradates, appeared to bar their path. Hyder Ali had no nation behind
him; and fortune spared them an encounter with the Afghan Ahmed Shah and
the Sikh Ranjit Singh. Their most formidable opponents might rather be
compared with the gallant but untrained Celtic Vercingetorix, or the
showy but incompetent Antiochus the Great. It was only when Europeans
like Dupleix came upon the scene that they had men of their own kind to
grapple with; and Dupleix had not the support from home which Clive
could count on in case of dire necessity. Still the conquest of India
was a splendid achievement, more striking and more difficult, if less
romantic, than the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortez or the conquest
of Peru by Francisco Pizarro, though it must be admitted that the
courage of these two adventurers in venturing far into unknown regions
with a handful of followers has never been surpassed. Among the English,
as among the Romans, the sense of personal force, the conscious
ascendency of a race so often already victorious, with centuries of fame
behind them, and a contempt for the feebler folk against whom they were
contending, were the main source of that dash and energy and readiness
to face any odds which bore down all resistance. These qualities have
lasted into our own time. No more brilliant examples were ever given of
them than in the defence of the Fort at Lucknow and in the siege of
Delhi at the time of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8. And it is worth noting
that almost the only disasters that have ever befallen the British arms
have occurred where the general in command was either incompetent, as
must sometimes happen in every army, or was wanting in boldness. In the
East, more than anywhere else, confidence makes for victory, and one
victory leads on to another.
It is by these qualities that the English continue to hold India. In the
higher grades of the civil administration which they fill there are only
about one thousand persons: and these one thousand control two hundred
and eighty-seven millions, doing it with so little friction that they
have ceased to be surprised at this extraordinary fact. The English have
impressed the imagination of the people by their resistless energy and
their almost uniform success. Their domination seems to have about it an
element of the supernatural, for the masses of India are still in that
mental condition which looks to the supernatural for an explanation of
whatever astonishes it. The British Raj fills them with a sense of awe
and mystery. That nearly three hundred millions of men should be ruled
by a few palefaced strangers from beyond the great and wide sea,
strangers who all obey some distant power, and who never, like the
lieutenants of Oriental sovereigns, try to revolt for their own
benefit,—this seems too wonderful to be anything but the doing of some
unseen and irresistible divinity. I heard at Lahore an anecdote which,
slight as it is, illustrates the way in which the native thinks of these
things. A tiger had escaped from the Zoological Gardens, and its keeper,
hoping to lure it back, followed it. When all other inducements had
failed, he lifted up his voice and solemnly adjured it in the name of
the British Government, to which it belonged, to come back to its cage.
The tiger obeyed.
Now that we have rapidly surveyed the more salient points of resemblance
or analogy between these two empires, it remains to note the capital
differences between them, one or two of which have been already
incidentally mentioned. On the most obvious of all I have already dwelt.
It is the fact that, whereas the Romans conquered right out from their
City in all directions—south, north, west, and east—so that the capital,
during the five centuries from B.C. 200 (end of the Second Punic War) to
A.D. 325 (foundation of Constantinople), stood not far from the centre
of their dominions, England has conquered India across the ocean, and
remains many thousands of miles from the nearest point of her Indian
territory. Another not less obvious difference is perhaps less important
than it seems. Rome was a city, and Britain is a country. Rome, when she
stepped outside Italy to establish in Sicily her first province, had a
free population of possibly only seventy or eighty thousand souls.
Britain, when she began her career of conquest at Plassy had (if we
include Ireland, then still a distinct kingdom, but then less a source
of weakness than she has sometimes since been), a population of at least
eleven or twelve millions. But, apart from the fact that the distance
from Britain to India round the Cape made her larger population less
available for action in India than was the smaller population of Rome
for action in the Mediterranean, the comparison must not really be made
with Rome as a city, but with Rome as the centre of a large Italian
population, upon which she drew for her armies, and the bulk of which
had, before the end of the Republic, become her citizens. On this point
of dissimilarity no more need be said, because its significance is
apparent. I turn from it to another of greater consequence.
The relations of the conquering country to the conquered country, and of
the conquering race to the conquered races, are totally different in the
two cases compared. In the case of Rome there was a similarity of
conditions which pointed to and ultimately effected a fusion of the
peoples. In the case of England there is a dissimilarity which makes the
fusion of her people with the peoples of India impossible.
Climate offers the first point of contrast. Rome, to be sure, ruled
countries some of which were far hotter and others far colder than was
the valley of the Tiber. Doubtless the officer who was stationed in
Nubia complained of the torrid summer, much as an English officer
complains of Quetta or Multan; nor were the winters of Ardoch or Hexham
agreeable to a soldier from Apulia. But if the Roman married in Nubia,
he could bring up his family there. An English officer cannot do this at
Quetta or Multan. The English race becomes so enfeebled in the second
generation by living without respite under the Indian sun that it would
probably die out, at least in the plains, in the third or fourth. Few
Englishmen feel disposed to make India their home, if only because the
physical conditions of life there are so different from those under
which their earlier years were passed. But the Italian could make
himself at home, so far as natural conditions went, almost anywhere from
the Dnieper to the Guadalquivir.
The second contrast is in the colour of the races. All the races of
India are dark, though individuals may be found among high-caste
Brahmins and among the Parsis of Poona or Gujarat who are as light in
hue as many Englishmen. Now to the Teutonic peoples, and especially to
the English and Anglo-Americans, the difference of colour means a great
deal. It creates a feeling of separation, perhaps even of a slight
repulsion. Such a feeling may be deemed unreasonable or unchristian, but
it seems too deeply rooted to be effaceable in any time we can foresee.
It is, to be sure, not nearly so strong towards members of the more
civilized races of India, with their faces often full of an intelligence
and refinement which witnesses to many generations of mental culture, as
it is in North America towards the negroes of the Gulf Coast, or in
South Africa towards the Kafirs. Yet it is sufficient to be, as a rule,
a bar to social intimacy, and a complete bar to intermarriage.
Among the highest castes of Hindus and among the most ancient princely
families, such as those famous Rajput dynasties whose lineage runs back
further than does that of any of the royal houses of Europe, there is a
corresponding pride of race quite as strong as that felt by the
best-born European. So, too, some of the oldest Musulman families,
tracing their origin to the relatives of the Prophet himself, are in
respect of long descent equal to any European houses. Nevertheless,
although the more educated and tactful among the English pay due honour
to these families, colour would form an insurmountable barrier to
intermarriage, even were the pride of the Rajputs disposed to invite it.
The oldest of the Rajput dynasties, that of Udaipur, always refused to
give a daughter in marriage even to the Mogul Emperors.
There was no severing line like this in the ancient world. The only dark
races (other than the Egyptians) with whom the Romans came in contact
were some of the Numidian tribes, few of whom became really Romanized,
and the Nubians of the Middle Nile, also scarcely within the pale of
civilization. The question, therefore, did not arise in the form it has
taken in India. Probably, however, the Romans would have felt and acted
not like Teutons, but rather as the Spanish and Portuguese have done.
Difference of colour does not repel members of these last-named nations.
Among them, unions, that is to say legitimate unions, of whites with
dark-skinned people, are not uncommon, nor is the mulatto or quadroon
offspring kept apart and looked down upon as he is among the
Anglo-Americans. Nothing contributed more to the fusion of the races and
nationalities that composed the Roman Empire than the absence of any
physical and conspicuous distinctions between those races, just as
nothing did more to mitigate the horrors of slavery than the fact that
the slave was usually of a tint and type of features not markedly unlike
those of his master. Before the end of the Republic there were many
freedmen in the Senate, though their presence there was regarded as a
sign of declension. The son of a freed-man passed naturally and
easily—as did the poet Horace—into the best society of Rome when his
personal merits or the favour of a great patron gave him entrance,
though his detractors found pleasure in reminding one another of his
origin. In India it is otherwise. Slavery, which was never harsh there,
has fortunately not come into the matter, in the way it did in the
Southern States of America and in South Africa. But the population is
sharply divided into whites and natives. The so-called Eurasians, a
mixed race due to the unions of whites with persons of Indian race, give
their sympathies to the whites, but are treated by the latter as an
inferior class. They are not numerous enough to be an important factor,
nor do they bridge over the chasm which divides the rulers from the
ruled. It is not of the want of political liberty that the latter
complain, for political liberty has never been enjoyed in the East, and
would not have been dreamt of had not English literature and English
college teaching implanted the idea in the minds of the educated
natives. But the hauteur of the English and the sense of social
incompatibility which both elements feel, are unfortunate features in
the situation, and have been so from the first. Even in 1813 the
representatives of the East India Company stated to a committee of the
House of Commons that ‘Englishmen of classes not under the observation
of the supreme authorities were notorious for the contempt with which,
in their ignorance and arrogance, they contemplated the usages and
institutions of the natives, and for their frequent disregard of justice
and humanity in their dealings with the people of India[24].’ And the
Act of 1833 requires the Government of India ‘to provide for the
protection of the natives from insult and outrage in their persons,
religions, and opinions[25].’
-----
Footnote 24:
See Ilbert’s _Government of India_, p. 77.
Footnote 25:
Ibid. p. 91.
-----
It may be thought that, even if colour did not form an obstacle to
intermarriage, religion would. Religion, however, can be changed, and
colour cannot. In North America blacks and whites belong to the same
religious denominations, but the social demarcation remains complete.
Still it is true that the difference of religion does constitute in
India a further barrier not merely to intermarriage but also to intimate
social relations. Among the Musulmans the practice, or at any rate the
legal possibility of polygamy, naturally deters white women from a union
they might otherwise have contemplated. (There have, however, been a few
instances of such unions.) Hinduism stands much further away from
Christianity than does Islam; and its ceremonial rules regarding the
persons in whose company food may be partaken of operate against a form
of social intercourse which cements intimacy among Europeans[26].
-----
Footnote 26:
The number of Hindus in all India is estimated at 207 millions, that
of Musulmans at fifty-seven millions, aboriginal races nine millions,
Christians two millions.
-----