WHAT INDIA PAID
India pays for English Hospitality—Royal English generosity
to India paid for by India—How to deal with an angry
opponent—Indian Finance and the poor Ryot—Gratitude from
India—How Fawcett prepared his Speeches.
[Sidenote: The Sultan’s Ball.]
The purpose of this chapter is not to comment on the condition of India,
and of its government in Fawcett’s time, but through these new labours
of his to know him better, to show how gallantly he fought for a poor
remote people, and how poignantly he brought their needs before their
English fellow-subjects. It was a work he was peculiarly fitted to do.
His vigorous action, his picturesque personality, his gift for singling
out a weak point, perhaps trifling in itself, and making it a vivid
symbol of wrong policy, all helped Englishmen unfamiliar with India to
realise better their responsibilities to a country in whose destinies
they were so closely concerned.
Fawcett once said that in his undergraduate days he had picked up a book
on India which attracted him to the subject. His comments in his
schoolboy essays have been noted. It is possible that Mill and other
friends of his closely connected with India stimulated his interest. He
referred to the country a good deal in his _Manual of Political
Economy_.
He first dealt with Indian affairs publicly in 1867, and in most
characteristic fashion. The Sultan of Turkey was about to visit England,
and it was proposed to give a ball in his honour at the India Office.
Fawcett demanded who was to foot the bill. He was told that India was to
pay for this courtesy offered to the Sultan by the British, because the
Sultan had been courteous in the matter of telegraphic communication
between India and Europe.
[Sidenote: India pays for English Hospitality.]
Though Mill urged Fawcett not to protest, as there were greater abuses
to be found, Fawcett could not quiet his resentment at this unfair
distribution of the burden. Had not England benefited equally by the
telegraphic communication, and should it not at least pay equally? So,
when a motion was made for the list of invitations, with the usual
Parliamentary pleasantries about the unfair selection of guests, Fawcett
rose with true reluctance to strike a discordant note. He urged that the
really important question was to determine by what justice the Secretary
for India could tax the people of India for this entertainment. It might
be proper for the officials themselves to give the entertainment. But
why should the toiling peasant pay for it? At that very time there was
famine in India, and the Indian press complained of the slowness of
relief measures. It would have new occasion for sarcasm, when a part of
the much-needed Indian revenue was voted for an entertainment of smart
folk in London.
His protest against this ‘masterpiece of meanness,’ as he afterwards
called it, had little effect for the time being. But it aroused the
attention of many in India, and began to make known to them the man whom
they learned to call almost affectionately the ‘Member for India.’
[Sidenote: An Insolent Meddler.]
When presenting a petition to the House of Commons from European
residents and natives of India, who complained of the expenditure on
public works and asked for greater economy, Fawcett moved that a
commission be sent to India to obtain evidence on the spot—a motion that
he afterwards withdrew. During the debate arising out of his motion, he
was attacked with such asperity and lack of civility by one of the Under
Secretaries of State, that it aroused the protest of other members.
Fawcett was content to reply with a very characteristic maxim. ‘Five
years’ experience in the House,’ he said, ‘had taught him that a member
was always right in bringing forward a question, when the fact of his
bringing it forward caused the minister concerned to lose his temper.’
On another occasion the same antagonist warned Fawcett that his love of
competition was becoming a fetish. But Fawcett smilingly retaliated,
‘Beware of the fetish of officialism.’ Good advice for many!
Fawcett’s stand from the first was taken so surely and firmly, that his
ground could not be cut from under him. His success was merely a
question of work and time. Part of his power lay in his frank
realisation of his own limitations.
[Sidenote: Supporting a family on fourpence halfpenny a day.]
He had no special knowledge of Indian religion and customs, and was not
competent to judge questions of internal policy. But the financial
relations between England and India, as well as the methods of dealing
with finance in India itself, were well within the compass of his clear
mind. With these he proposed to deal exhaustively. He knew whether the
balance-sheets shown by Indian statesmen were intelligible or not,
whether charges made to India were just, and he set himself with a will
to study these questions. And to them he knew how to give a most
intimately personal touch. He was an untravelled man, and lived within
the isolation of his blindness. But he had the great gift of realising
habitually the existence of the world beyond his experience. He made
England understand that India is no rich country from the Arabian
Nights, but a poor country, where the ryot, the peasant of India, had
but fourpence halfpenny a day to keep himself and his family, where
taxes were increased only with great hardship to the poor, and where of
all places money must not be wasted.
In 1870, in a long and technical speech, he criticised the Indian
Budget. He complained that it was brought on so late in the session that
there was no time for proper discussion, and urged that a committee on
Indian finance should be appointed. In this speech, which showed his
careful study of the whole Budget, he singled out one item for especial
scorn. The Queen’s second son, the Duke of Edinburgh, had recently
journeyed through India, and had distributed royal gifts amounting in
value to £10,000. These had been paid for out of the Indian revenues,
that is to say, by the Indian taxpayers themselves!
The Prime Minister agreed that the Indian Budget should be presented
earlier in the session, and the next year adopted Fawcett’s proposal to
appoint a committee on Indian finance. It sat for four years, and
Fawcett was a hard-working member of it, and a most effective one.
The committee, urged by Fawcett, asked for native witnesses, and two
Hindoos were sent to England to give evidence, and their expenses were
paid by the Government.
Mr. Nadabhai Naoroji, one of them, said that he wrote a letter telling
of the evidence which he had to give, and then appeared before the
Finance Committee. The chairman was not sympathetic, and made things as
uncomfortable as possible for him. But when Fawcett, with whom Naoroji
had discussed matters previously, undertook the examination, by a series
of apt questions he brought out all the distinguished Hindoo had to say.
Mr. Naoroji adds: ‘This was an instance of the justice and fearlessness
with which he wanted to treat this country. As I saw him pleading our
cause, I felt awe and veneration as for a superior being.’
[Sidenote: Grateful messages from India.]
In Miss Maria Fawcett’s dining-room there hangs at this day a long
hand-written document, with a beautifully illuminated gold and coloured
border. It was sent to her brother from a remote city in India in 1873,
to thank him for the work he had done. Too long to quote in full, a
sentence from it may show how Fawcett was regarded in India. ‘We view
with feelings of inexpressible delight your efforts to enlighten your
countrymen of the wants and grievances of the millions of Her Majesty’s
subjects living in a country so far from the seat of government, and our
feeling of admiration is heightened into that of reverence on learning
that you are labouring in this cause of philanthropy under great
disadvantages, among which the great physical disability which
Providence has pleased to impose upon you is much to be regretted.’
Distinguished now as an able critic on Indian finance, Fawcett had an
extensive correspondence with residents of India, and with members of
the Indian Civil Service, and neglected no opportunity to increase his
knowledge of Indian affairs.
Appreciative resolutions were sent to him from many native Indian
associations. At a meeting in Calcutta an address was voted to him and
also one to ‘the Mayor of Brighton thanking the constituency for
returning such a worthy representative and disinterested friend of
India.’ He was frequently begged to present petitions stating the
grievances of the native and non-official community.
He helped privately, as well as publicly, as many a poor Indian student
or petitioner came to know. When, however, Fawcett was urged to
represent the grievances of certain Indian rulers, he refused, saying
quaintly that ‘he was too poor a man to have anything to do with
princes.’
[Sidenote: An Optimist.]
Mr. Justice Scott said, speaking of the ideal for which Fawcett worked:
‘It is not enough for us Englishmen to say that we have given to India
order, peace, security and justice, roads, railroads, and other material
benefits of Western civilisation, but it should be our duty to ourselves
and in co-operation with the people of India in the great task of
education, private, social and political, never to rest content till
every individual of the teeming masses of India can take an intelligent
part as a citizen in the management of their own concerns. This is a
great idea. It may seem the Utopian dream of an optimist. Mr. Fawcett
was no doubt an optimist.’
Fawcett most powerfully influenced people by his speeches. His
appearance was arresting and interesting, while his brave disregard of
his blindness claimed instant sympathy and admiration. His voice, which
was unusually powerful, softened in tone with years, and his language
grew less severe; he uttered each word clearly, and what he said was
clearly thought out. What he wanted was never for himself. What he
fought for was invariably to help some one less fortunate, less free,
less happy, than the blind man who pleaded so earnestly.
He delivered two speeches in 1872 and 1873 on the Indian Budgets of
those years which an adversary said ‘he considered to be the most
remarkable intellectual efforts he had ever heard.’ Of course Fawcett,
unlike other speakers, had no notes to help him, yet he gave an
exposition of complex questions with a clearness which might have raised
the envy of the most accomplished Chancellor of the Exchequer.
[Sidenote: How Fawcett prepared his Speeches.]
The way he prepared his speeches is interesting. First, he would master
the vital facts and figures he wanted. Then he would press into his
service some friend well up on the subject with which he wished to deal,
and together they would go over the ground until Fawcett felt that the
facts were arranged so as to express most clearly and pithily his
contention.
Lucid arrangement helped his memory. His object was primarily to be
clear, to say a thing as well as he could. He did not hesitate to repeat
the same illustrations and statements, and paid little attention to
rhetoric, epigram or elegance. He wished to hammer certain leading
principles into people’s heads, and he did this so effectively that they
stuck there, and he pressed his points so vividly and insistently that
he made his audiences, no matter where he found them, usually become his
supporters, and even workers for his policy.
[Illustration: _Photo. Mansell_
HENRY FAWCETT From a painting by Sir Hubert von
Herkomer ]
On one occasion Fawcett spoke on India for nearly two hours. He had the
House absolutely in his hand the whole of that time, and never once had
to hark back. The figures that he dealt with were exceedingly
complicated and numerous. Later an M.P. congratulated him and expressed
his surprise at his wonderful memory. Fawcett, with his habitual
modesty, said, ‘There is nothing strange about it. You know I see the
thing mentally as I suppose you see whatever you are looking upon now;
really that is the difference.’ The M.P. replied, ‘Yes, but it doesn’t
account for it at all. I see and forget—you see and don’t forget,
there’s the difference.’
[Sidenote: Sympathy from Suffering.]
A Cambridge professor said of Fawcett when he began to make those
remarkable speeches on Indian affairs: ‘We, I think, were mainly struck
with the extraordinary intellectual feats that they were for a man under
his calamity; but the effect produced in India was of a different and
profounder kind. There was the sense of the largeness of heart of the
statesman who had known suffering, and a gratitude for his broad
sympathy with all whom he could protect against what he conceived to be
oppression of any kind.’
[Sidenote: No time in Parliament for India.]
He did not hesitate to speak on Indian affairs to his constituency, and
to ask of them their sympathy and interest. At a meeting in Brighton he
said that the most trumpery question ever brought before Parliament, a
wrangle over the purchase of a picture or a road through a park excited
more interest than the welfare of the many millions of our Indian
fellow-subjects. Constituencies were said to take no interest in the
subject. They would be some day forced to take an interest, if affairs
were neglected in the future as they had been in the past. ‘The people
of India have not votes; they cannot bring so much pressure to bear upon
Parliament as can be brought by one of our great railway companies; but
with some confidence I believe that I shall not be misinterpreting your
wishes if, as your representative, I do whatever can be done by one
humble individual to render justice to the defenceless and powerless.’
That last sentence could be taken as his policy and motto through life.
Could there be a more valiant one for a blind man, or for any one
fighting against great odds for the right? ‘I do whatever can be done by
one humble individual to render justice to the defenceless and
powerless.’ He does not limit whom or where. There are no limitations.
That they are defenceless and powerless is all the recommendation which
they need to claim his warmest interest and ceaseless effort to help
them to find the way out of their misery.