Free states, like all others, may possess dependencies, acquired
either by conquest or by colonization, and our own is the greatest
instance of the kind in modern history. It is a most important
question how such dependencies ought to be governed.
It is unnecessary to discuss the case of small posts, like
Gibraltar, Aden, or Heligoland, which are held only as naval or
military positions. The military or naval object is in this case
paramount, and the inhabitants can not, consistently with it, be
admitted to the government of the place, though they ought to be
allowed all liberties and privileges compatible with that restriction,
including the free management of municipal affairs, and, as a
compensation for being locally sacrificed to the convenience of the
governing state, should be admitted to equal rights with its native
subjects in all other parts of the empire.
Outlying territories of some size and population, which are held as
dependencies, that is, which are subject, more or less, to acts of
sovereign power on the part of the paramount country, without being
equally represented (if represented at all) in its Legislature, may be
divided into two classes. Some are composed of people of similar
civilization to the ruling country, capable of, and ripe for,
representative government, such as the British possessions in America
and Australia. Others, like India, are still at a great distance from
that state.
In the case of dependencies of the former class, this country has at
length realized, in rare completeness, the true principle of
government. England has always felt under a certain degree of
obligation to bestow on such of her outlying populations as were of
her own blood and language, and on some who were not, representative
institutions formed in imitation of her own; but, until the present
generation, she has been on the same bad level with other countries as
to the amount of self-government which she allowed them to exercise
through the representative institutions that she conceded to them. She
claimed to be the supreme arbiter even of their purely internal
concerns, according to her own, not their ideas of how those concerns
could be best regulated. This practice was a natural corollary from
the vicious theory of colonial policy--once common to all Europe, and
not yet completely relinquished by any other people--which regarded
colonies as valuable by affording markets for our commodities that
could be kept entirely to ourselves; a privilege we valued so highly
that we thought it worth purchasing by allowing to the colonies the
same monopoly of our market for their own productions which we claimed
for our commodities in theirs. This notable plan for enriching them
and ourselves by making each pay enormous sums to the other, dropping
the greatest part by the way, has been for some time abandoned. But
the bad habit of meddling in the internal government of the colonies
did not at once die out when we relinquished the idea of making any
profit by it. We continued to torment them, not for any benefit to
ourselves, but for that of a section or faction among the colonists;
and this persistence in domineering cost us a Canadian rebellion
before we had the happy thought of giving it up. England was like an
ill brought-up elder brother, who persists in tyrannizing over the
younger ones from mere habit, till one of them, by a spirited
resistance, though with unequal strength, gives him notice to desist.
We were wise enough not to require a second warning. A new era in the
colonial policy of nations began with Lord Durham's Report; the
imperishable memorial of that nobleman's courage, patriotism, and
enlightened liberality, and of the intellect and practical sagacity of
its joint authors, Mr. Wakefield and the lamented Charles Buller.
[11]
It is now a fixed principle of the policy of Great Britain, professed
in theory and faithfully adhered to in practice, that her colonies of
European race, equally with the parent country, possess the fullest
measure of internal self-government. They have been allowed to make
their own free representative constitutions by altering in any manner
they thought fit the already very popular constitutions which we had
given them. Each is governed by its own Legislature and executive,
constituted on highly democratic principles. The veto of the crown and
of Parliament, though nominally reserved, is only exercised (and that
very rarely) on questions which concern the empire, and not solely the
particular colony. How liberal a construction has been given to the
distinction between imperial and colonial questions is shown by the
fact that the whole of the unappropriated lands in the regions behind
our American and Australian colonies have been given up to the
uncontrolled disposal of the colonial communities, though they might,
without injustice, have been kept in the hands of the imperial
government, to be administered for the greatest advantage of future
emigrants from all parts of the empire. Every colony has thus as full
power over its own affairs as it could have if it were a member of
even the loosest federation, and much fuller than would belong to it
under the Constitution of the United States, being free even to tax at
its pleasure the commodities imported from the mother country. Their
union with Great Britain is the slightest kind of federal union; but
not a strictly equal federation, the mother country retaining to
itself the powers of a federal government, though reduced in practice
to their very narrowest limits. This inequality is, of course, as far
as it goes, a disadvantage to the dependencies, which have no voice in
foreign policy, but are bound by the decisions of the superior
country. They are compelled to join England in war without being in
any way consulted previous to engaging in it.
Those (now happily not a few) who think that justice is as binding on
communities as it is on individuals, and that men are not warranted in
doing to other countries, for the supposed benefit of their own
country, what they would not be justified in doing to other men for
their own benefit, feel even this limited amount of constitutional
subordination on the part of the colonies to be a violation of
principle, and have often occupied themselves in looking out for means
by which it may be avoided. With this view it has been proposed by
some that the colonies should return representatives to the British
Legislature, and by others that the powers of our own, as well as of
their Parliaments, should be confined to internal policy, and that
there should be another representative body for foreign and imperial
concerns, in which last the dependencies of Great Britain should be
represented in the same manner, and with the same completeness as
Great Britain itself. On this system there would be a perfectly equal
federation between the mother country and her colonies, then no longer
dependencies.
The feelings of equity and conceptions of public morality from which
these suggestions emanate are worthy of all praise, but the
suggestions themselves are so inconsistent with rational principles of
government that it is doubtful if they have been seriously accepted as
a possibility by any reasonable thinker. Countries separated by half
the globe do not present the natural conditions for being under one
government, or even members of one federation. If they had
sufficiently the same interests, they have not, and never can have, a
sufficient habit of taking council together. They are not part of the
same public; they do not discuss and deliberate in the same arena, but
apart, and have only a most imperfect knowledge of what passes in the
minds of one another. They neither know each other's objects, nor have
confidence in each other's principles of conduct. Let any Englishman
ask himself how he should like his destinies to depend on an assembly
of which one third was British American, and another third South
African and Australian. Yet to this it must come if there were any
thing like fair or equal representation; and would not every one feel
that the representatives of Canada and Australia, even in matters of
an imperial character, could not know or feel any sufficient concern
for the interests, opinions, or wishes of English, Irish, and Scotch?
Even for strictly federative purposes the conditions do not exist
which we have seen to be essential to a federation. England is
sufficient for her own protection without the colonies, and would be
in a much stronger, as well as more dignified position, if separated
from them, than when reduced to be a single member of an American,
African, and Australian confederation. Over and above the commerce
which she might equally enjoy after separation, England derives little
advantage, except in _prestige_, from her dependencies, and the little
she does derive is quite outweighed by the expense they cost her, and
the dissemination they necessitate of her naval and military force,
which, in case of war, or any real apprehension of it, requires to be
double or treble what would be needed for the defense of this country
alone.
But, though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her
colonies, and though, on every principle of morality and justice, she
ought to consent to their separation, should the time come when, after
full trial of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to be
dissevered, there are strong reasons for maintaining the present
slight bond of connection so long as not disagreeable to the feelings
of either party. It is a step, as far as it goes, towards universal
peace and general friendly co-operation among nations. It renders war
impossible among a large number of otherwise independent communities,
and, moreover, hinders any of them from being absorbed into a foreign
state, and becoming a source of additional aggressive strength to some
rival power, either more despotic or closer at hand, which might not
always be so unambitious or so pacific as Great Britain. It at least
keeps the markets of the different countries open to one another, and
prevents that mutual exclusion by hostile tariffs which none of the
great communities of mankind except England have yet outgrown. And in
the case of the British possessions it has the advantage, especially
valuable at the present time, of adding to the moral influence and
weight in the councils of the world of the power which, of all in
existence, best understands liberty--and, whatever may have been its
errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience and moral
principle in its dealings with foreigners than any other great nation
seems either to conceive as possible or recognize as desirable. Since,
then, the union can only continue, while it does continue, on the
footing of an unequal federation, it is important to consider by what
means this small amount of inequality can be prevented from being
either onerous or humiliating to the communities occupying the less
exalted position.
The only inferiority necessarily inherent in the case is that the
mother country decides, both for the colonies and for herself, on
questions of peace and war. They gain, in return, the obligation on
the mother country to repel aggressions directed against them; but,
except when the minor community is so weak that the protection of a
stronger power is indispensable to it, reciprocity of obligation is
not a full equivalent for non-admission to a voice in the
deliberations. It is essential, therefore, that in all wars, save
those which, like the Caffre or New Zealand wars, are incurred for the
sake of the particular colony, the colonists should not (without their
own voluntary request) be called on to contribute any thing to the
expense except what may be required for the specific local defense of
their ports, shores, and frontiers against invasion. Moreover, as the
mother country claims the privilege, at her sole discretion, of taking
measures or pursuing a policy which may expose them to attack, it is
just that she should undertake a considerable portion of the cost of
their military defense even in time of peace; the whole of it, so far
as it depends upon a standing army.
But there is a means, still more effectual than these, by which, and
in general by which alone, a full equivalent can be given to a smaller
community for sinking its individuality, as a substantive power among
nations, in the greater individuality of a wide and powerful empire.
This one indispensable, and, at the same time, sufficient expedient,
which meets at once the demands of justice and the growing exigencies
of policy, is to open the service of government in all its
departments, and in every part of the empire, on perfectly equal
terms, to the inhabitants of the colonies. Why does no one ever hear a
breath of disloyalty from the Islands in the British Channel? By race,
religion, and geographical position they belong less to England than
to France; but, while they enjoy, like Canada and New South Wales,
complete control over their internal affairs and their taxation, every
office or dignity in the gift of the crown is freely open to the
native of Guernsey or Jersey. Generals, admirals, peers of the United
Kingdom are made, and there is nothing which hinders prime ministers
to be made from those insignificant islands. The same system was
commenced in reference to the colonies generally by an enlightened
colonial secretary, too early lost, Sir William Molesworth, when he
appointed Mr. Hinckes, a leading Canadian politician, to a West Indian
government. It is a very shallow view of the springs of political
action in a community which thinks such things unimportant because the
number of those in a position actually to profit by the concession
might not be very considerable. That limited number would be composed
precisely of those who have most moral power over the rest; and men
are not so destitute of the sense of collective degradation as not to
feel the withholding of an advantage from even one person, because of
a circumstance which they all have in common with him, an affront to
all. If we prevent the leading men of a community from standing forth
to the world as its chiefs and representatives in the general councils
of mankind, we owe it both to their legitimate ambition and to the
just pride of the community to give them in return an equal chance of
occupying the same prominent position in a nation of greater power and
importance. Were the whole service of the British crown opened to the
natives of the Ionian Islands, we should hear no more of the desire
for union with Greece. Such a union is not desirable for the people,
to whom it would be a step backward in civilization; but it is no
wonder if Corfu, which has given a minister of European reputation to
the Russian Empire, and a president to Greece itself before the
arrival of the Bavarians, should feel it a grievance that its people
are not admissable to the highest posts in some government or other.
Thus far of the dependencies whose population is in a sufficiently
advanced state to be fitted for representative government; but there
are others which have not attained that state, and which, if held at
all, must be governed by the dominant country, or by persons delegated
for that purpose by it. This mode of government is as legitimate as
any other, if it is the one which in the existing state of
civilization of the subject people most facilitates their transition
to a higher stage of improvement. There are, as we have already seen,
conditions of society in which a vigorous despotism is in itself the
best mode of government for training the people in what is
specifically wanting to render them capable of a higher civilization.
There are others, in which the mere fact of despotism has indeed no
beneficial effect, the lessons which it teaches having already been
only too completely learned, but in which, there being no spring of
spontaneous improvement in the people themselves, their almost only
hope of making any steps in advance depends on the chances of a good
despot. Under a native despotism, a good despot is a rare and
transitory accident; but when the dominion they are under is that of a
more civilized people, that people ought to be able to supply it
constantly. The ruling country ought to be able to do for its subjects
all that could be done by a succession of absolute monarchs,
guaranteed by irresistible force against the precariousness of tenure
attendant on barbarous despotisms, and qualified by their genius to
anticipate all that experience has taught to the more advanced nation.
Such is the ideal rule of a free people over a barbarous or
semi-barbarous one. We need not expect to see that ideal realized;
but, unless some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a
dereliction of the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a
nation; and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish usurpers,
on a par in criminality with any of those whose ambition and rapacity
have sported from age to age with the destiny of masses of mankind.
As it is already a common, and is rapidly tending to become the
universal condition of the more backward populations to be either held
in direct subjection by the more advanced, or to be under their
complete political ascendancy, there are in this age of the world few
more important problems than how to organize this rule, so as to make
it a good instead of an evil to the subject people, providing them
with the best attainable present government, and with the conditions
most favorable to future permanent improvement. But the mode of
fitting the government for this purpose is by no means so well
understood as the conditions of good government in a people capable of
governing themselves. We may even say that it is not understood at
all.
The thing appears perfectly easy to superficial observers. If India
(for example) is not fit to govern itself, all that seems to them
required is that there should be a minister to govern it, and that
this minister, like all other British ministers, should be responsible
to the British Parliament. Unfortunately this, though the simplest
mode of attempting to govern a dependency, is about the worst, and
betrays in its advocates a total want of comprehension of the
conditions of good government. To govern a country under
responsibility to the people of that country, and to govern one
country under responsibility to the people of another, are two very
different things. What makes the excellence of the first is, that
freedom is preferable to despotism: but the last _is_ despotism. The
only choice the case admits is a choice of despotisms, and it is not
certain that the despotism of twenty millions is necessarily better
than that of a few or of one; but it is quite certain that the
despotism of those who neither hear, nor see, nor know any thing about
their subjects, has many chances of being worse than that of those who
do. It is not usually thought that the immediate agents of authority
govern better because they govern in the name of an absent master, and
of one who has a thousand more pressing interests to attend to. The
master may hold them to a strict responsibility, enforced by heavy
penalties, but it is very questionable if those penalties will often
fall in the right place.
It is always under great difficulties, and very imperfectly, that a
country can be governed by foreigners, even when there is no extreme
disparity in habits and ideas between the rulers and the ruled.
Foreigners do not feel with the people. They can not judge, by the
light in which a thing appears to their own minds, or the manner in
which it affects their feelings, how it will affect the feelings or
appear to the minds of the subject population. What a native of the
country, of average practical ability, knows as it were by instinct,
they have to learn slowly, and, after all, imperfectly, by study and
experience. The laws, the customs, the social relations for which they
have to legislate, instead of being familiar to them from childhood,
are all strange to them. For most of their detailed knowledge they
must depend on the information of natives, and it is difficult for
them to know whom to trust. They are feared, suspected, probably
disliked by the population; seldom sought by them except for
interested purposes; and they are prone to think that the servilely
submissive are the trustworthy. Their danger is of despising the
natives; that of the natives is, of disbelieving that any thing the
strangers do can be intended for their good. These are but a part of
the difficulties that any rulers have to struggle with, who honestly
attempt to govern well a country in which they are foreigners. To
overcome these difficulties in any degree will always be a work of
much labor, requiring a very superior degree of capacity in the chief
administrators, and a high average among the subordinates; and the
best organization of such a government is that which will best insure
the labor, develop the capacity, and place the highest specimens of it
in the situations of greatest trust. Responsibility to an authority
which has gone through none of the labor, acquired none of the
capacity, and for the most part is not even aware that either, in any
peculiar degree, is required, can not be regarded as a very effectual
expedient for accomplishing these ends.
The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality, but
such a thing as government of one people by another does not and can
not exist. One people may keep another as a warren or preserve for its
own use, a place to make money in, a human-cattle farm to be worked
for the profit of its own inhabitants; but if the good of the governed
is the proper business of a government, it is utterly impossible that
a people should directly attend to it. The utmost they can do is to
give some of their best men a commission to look after it, to whom the
opinion of their own country can neither be much of a guide in the
performance of their duty, nor a competent judge of the mode in which
it has been performed. Let any one consider how the English themselves
would be governed if they knew and cared no more about their own
affairs than they know and care about the affairs of the Hindoos. Even
this comparison gives no adequate idea of the state of the case; for a
people thus indifferent to politics altogether would probably be
simply acquiescent, and let the government alone; whereas in the case
of India, a politically active people like the English, amid habitual
acquiescence, are every now and then interfering, and almost always in
the wrong place. The real causes which determine the prosperity or
wretchedness, the improvement or deterioration of the Hindoos, are too
far off to be within their ken. They have not the knowledge necessary
for suspecting the existence of those causes, much less for judging of
their operation. The most essential interests of the country may be
well administered without obtaining any of their approbation, or
mismanaged to almost any excess without attracting their notice. The
purposes for which they are principally tempted to interfere, and
control the proceedings of their delegates, are of two kinds. One is
to force English ideas down the throats of the natives; for instance,
by measures of proselytism, or acts intentionally or unintentionally
offensive to the religious feelings of the people. This misdirection
of opinion in the ruling country is instructively exemplified (the
more so, because nothing is meant but justice and fairness, and as
much impartiality as can be expected from persons really convinced) by
the demand now so general in England for having the Bible taught, at
the option of pupils or of their parents, in the government schools.
From the European point of view nothing can wear a fairer aspect, or
seem less open to objection on the score of religious freedom. To
Asiatic eyes it is quite another thing. No Asiatic people ever
believes that a government puts its paid officers and official
machinery into motion unless it is bent upon an object; and when bent
on an object, no Asiatic believes that any government, except a feeble
and contemptible one, pursues it by halves. If government schools and
schoolmasters taught Christianity, whatever pledges might be given of
teaching it only to those who spontaneously sought it, no amount of
evidence would ever persuade the parents that improper means were not
used to make their children Christians, or, at all events, outcasts
from Hindooism. If they could, in the end, be convinced of the
contrary, it would only be by the entire failure of the schools, so
conducted, to make any converts. If the teaching had the smallest
effect in promoting its object, it would compromise not only the
utility and even existence of the government education, but perhaps
the safety of the government itself. An English Protestant would not
be easily induced, by disclaimers of proselytism, to place his
children in a Roman Catholic seminary; Irish Catholics will not send
their children to schools in which they can be made Protestants; and
we expect that Hindoos, who believe that the privileges of Hindooism
can be forfeited by a merely physical act, will expose theirs to the
danger of being made Christians!
Such is one of the modes in which the opinion of the dominant country
tends to act more injuriously than beneficially on the conduct of its
deputed governors. In other respects, its interference is likely to be
oftenest exercised where it will be most pertinaciously demanded, and
that is, on behalf of some interest of the English settlers. English
settlers have friends at home, have organs, have access to the public;
they have a common language, and common ideas with their countrymen;
any complaint by an Englishman is more sympathetically heard, even if
no unjust preference is intentionally accorded to it. Now if there be
a fact to which all experience testifies, it is that, when a country
holds another in subjection, the individuals of the ruling people who
resort to the foreign country to make their fortunes are of all others
those who most need to be held under powerful restraint. They are
always one of the chief difficulties of the government. Armed with the
_prestige_ and filled with the scornful overbearingness of the
conquering nation, they have the feelings inspired by absolute power
without its sense of responsibility. Among a people like that of
India, the utmost efforts of the public authorities are not enough for
the effectual protection of the weak against the strong; and of all
the strong, the European settlers are the strongest. Wherever the
demoralizing effect of the situation is not in a most remarkable
degree corrected by the personal character of the individual, they
think the people of the country mere dirt under their feet: it seems
to them monstrous that any rights of the natives should stand in the
way of their smallest pretensions; the simplest act of protection to
the inhabitants against any act of power on their part which they may
consider useful to their commercial objects they denounce, and
sincerely regard as an injury. So natural is this state of feeling in
a situation like theirs, that, even under the discouragement which it
has hitherto met with from the ruling authorities, it is impossible
that more or less of the spirit should not perpetually break out. The
government, itself free from this spirit, is never able sufficiently
to keep it down in the young and raw even of its own civil and
military officers, over whom it has so much more control than over the
independent residents. As it is with the English in India, so,
according to trustworthy testimony, it is with the French in Algiers;
so with the Americans in the countries conquered from Mexico; so it
seems to be with the Europeans in China, and already even in Japan:
there is no necessity to recall how it was with the Spaniards in South
America. In all these cases, the government to which these private
adventurers are subject is better than they, and does the most it can
to protect the natives against them. Even the Spanish government did
this, sincerely and earnestly, though ineffectually, as is known to
every reader of Mr. Helps' instructive history. Had the Spanish
government been directly accountable to Spanish opinion, we may
question if it would have made the attempt, for the Spaniards,
doubtless, would have taken part with their Christian friends and
relations rather than with pagans. The settlers, not the natives, have
the ear of the public at home; it is they whose representations are
likely to pass for truth, because they alone have both the means and
the motive to press them perseveringly upon the inattentive and
uninterested public mind. The distrustful criticism with which
Englishmen, more than any other people, are in the habit of scanning
the conduct of their country towards foreigners, they usually reserve
for the proceedings of the public authorities. In all questions
between a government and an individual, the presumption in every
Englishman's mind is that the government is in the wrong. And when the
resident English bring the batteries of English political action to
bear upon any of the bulwarks erected to protect the natives against
their encroachments, the executive, with their real but faint
velleities of something better, generally find it safer to their
Parliamentary interest, and, at any rate, less troublesome, to give up
the disputed position than to defend it.
What makes matters worse is that, when the public mind is invoked (as,
to its credit, the English mind is extremely open to be) in the name
of justice and philanthropy in behalf of the subject community or
race, there is the same probability of its missing the mark;
for in the subject community also there are oppressors and
oppressed--powerful individuals or classes, and slaves prostrate
before them; and it is the former, not the latter, who have the means
of access to the English public. A tyrant or sensualist who has been
deprived of the power he had abused, and, instead of punishment, is
supported in as great wealth and splendor as he ever enjoyed; a knot
of privileged landholders, who demand that the state should relinquish
to them its reserved right to a rent from their lands, or who resent
as a wrong any attempt to protect the masses from their
extortion--these have no difficulty in procuring interested or
sentimental advocacy in the British Parliament and press. The silent
myriads obtain none.
The preceding observations exemplify the operation of a
principle--which might be called an obvious one, were it not that
scarcely anybody seems to be aware of it--that, while responsibility
to the governed is the greatest of all securities for good government,
responsibility to somebody else not only has no such tendency, but is
as likely to produce evil as good. The responsibility of the British
rulers of India to the British nation is chiefly useful because, when
any acts of the government are called in question, it insures
publicity and discussion; the utility of which does not require that
the public at large should comprehend the point at issue, provided
there are any individuals among them who do; for a merely moral
responsibility not being responsibility to the collective people, but
to every separate person among them who forms a judgment, opinions may
be weighed as well as counted, and the approbation or disapprobation
of one person well versed in the subject may outweigh that of
thousands who know nothing about it at all. It is doubtless a useful
restraint upon the immediate rulers that they can be put upon their
defense, and that one or two of the jury will form an opinion worth
having about their conduct, though that of the remainder will probably
be several degrees worse than none. Such as it is, this is the amount
of benefit to India from the control exercised over the Indian
government by the British Parliament and people.
It is not by attempting to rule directly a country like India, but by
giving it good rulers, that the English people can do their duty to
that country; and they can scarcely give it a worse one than an
English cabinet minister, who is thinking of English, not Indian
politics; who does not remains long enough in office to acquire an
intelligent interest in so complicated a subject; upon whom the
factitious public opinion got up in Parliament, consisting of two or
three fluent speakers, acts with as much force as if it were genuine;
while he is under none of the influences of training and position
which would lead or qualify him to form an honest opinion of his own.
A free country which attempts to govern a distant dependency,
inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means of a branch of its own
executive, will almost inevitably fail. The only mode which has any
chance of tolerable success is to govern through a delegated body of a
comparatively permanent character, allowing only a right of inspection
and a negative voice to the changeable administration of the state.
Such a body did exist in the case of India; and I fear that both India
and England will pay a severe penalty for the shortsighted policy by
which this intermediate instrument of government was done away with.
It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body can not have all
the requisites of good government; above all, can not have that
complete and over-operative identity of interest with the governed
which it is so difficult to obtain even where the people to be ruled
are in some degree qualified to look after their own affairs. Real
good government is not compatible with the conditions of the case.
There is but a choice of imperfections. The problem is, so to
construct the governing body that, under the difficulties of the
position, it shall have as much interest as possible in good
government, and as little in bad. Now these conditions are best found
in an intermediate body. A delegated administration has always this
advantage over a direct one, that it has, at all events, no duty to
perform except to the governed. It has no interests to consider except
theirs. Its own power of deriving profit from misgovernment may be
reduced--in the latest Constitution of the East India Company it was
reduced--to a singularly small amount; and it can be kept entirely
clear of bias from the individual or class interests of any one else.
When the home government and Parliament are swayed by such partial
influences in the exercise of the power reserved to them in the last
resort, the intermediate body is the certain advocate and champion of
the dependency before the imperial tribunal. The intermediate body,
moreover, is, in the natural course of things, chiefly composed of
persons who have acquired professional knowledge of this part of their
country's concerns; who have been trained to it in the place itself,
and have made its administration the main occupation of their lives.
Furnished with these qualifications, and not being liable to lose
their office from the accidents of home politics, they identify their
character and consideration with their special trust, and have a much
more permanent interest in the success of their administration, and in
the prosperity of the country which they administer, than a member of
a cabinet under a representative constitution can possibly have in the
good government of any country except the one which he serves. So far
as the choice of those who carry on the management on the spot
devolves upon this body, their appointment is kept out of the vortex
of party and Parliamentary jobbing, and freed from the influence of
those motives to the abuse of patronage for the reward of adherents,
or to buy off those who would otherwise be opponents, which are always
stronger with statesmen of average honesty than a conscientious sense
of the duty of appointing the fittest man. To put this one class of
appointments as far as possible out of harm's way is of more
consequence than the worst which can happen to all other offices in
the state; for, in every other department, if the officer is
unqualified, the general opinion of the community directs him in a
certain degree what to do; but in the position of the administrators
of a dependency where the people are not fit to have the control in
their own hands, the character of the government entirely depends on
the qualifications, moral and intellectual, of the individual
functionaries.
It can not be too often repeated that, in a country like India, every
thing depends on the personal qualities and capacities of the agents
of government. This truth is the cardinal principle of Indian
administration. The day when it comes to be thought that the
appointment of persons to situations of trust from motives of
convenience, already so criminal in England, can be practiced with
impunity in India, will be the beginning of the decline and fall of
our empire there. Even with a sincere intention of preferring the best
candidate, it will not do to rely on chance for supplying fit persons.
The system must be calculated to form them. It has done this hitherto;
and because it has done so, our rule in India has lasted, and been one
of constant, if not very rapid improvement in prosperity and good
administration. As much bitterness is now manifested against this
system, and as much eagerness displayed to overthrow it, as if
educating and training the officers of government for their work were
a thing utterly unreasonable and indefensible, an unjustifiable
interference with the rights of ignorance and inexperience. There is a
tacit conspiracy between those who would like to job in first-rate
Indian offices for their connections here, and those who, being
already in India, claim to be promoted from the indigo factory or the
attorney's office to administer justice or fix the payments due to
government from millions of people. The "monopoly" of the civil
service, so much inveighed against, is like the monopoly of judicial
offices by the bar; and its abolition would be like opening the bench
in Westminster Hall to the first comer whose friends certify that he
has now and then looked into Blackstone. Were the course ever adopted
of sending men from this country, or encouraging them in going out, to
get themselves put into high appointments without having learned their
business by passing through the lower ones, the most important offices
would be thrown to Scotch cousins and adventurers, connected by no
professional feeling with the country or the work, held to no previous
knowledge, and eager only to make money rapidly and return home. The
safety of the country is, that those by whom it is administered be
sent out in youth, as candidates only, to begin at the bottom of the
ladder, and ascend higher or not, as, after a proper interval, they
are proved qualified. The defect of the East India Company's system
was that, though the best men were carefully sought out for the most
important posts, yet, if an officer remained in the service,
promotion, though it might be delayed, came at last in some shape or
other, to the least as well as to the most competent. Even the
inferior in qualifications among such a corps of functionaries
consisted, it must be remembered, of men who had been brought up to
their duties, and had fulfilled them for many years, at lowest without
disgrace, under the eye and authority of a superior. But, though this
diminished the evil, it was nevertheless considerable. A man who never
becomes fit for more than an assistant's duty should remain an
assistant all his life, and his juniors should be promoted over him.
With this exception, I am not aware of any real defect in the old
system of Indian appointments. It had already received the greatest
other improvement it was susceptible of, the choice of the original
candidates by competitive examination, which, besides the advantage of
recruiting from a higher grade of industry and capacity, has the
recommendation that under it, unless by accident, there are no
personal ties between the candidates for offices and those who have a
voice in conferring them.
It is in no way unjust that public officers thus selected and trained
should be exclusively eligible to offices which require specially
Indian knowledge and experience. If any door to the higher
appointments, without passing through the lower, be opened even for
occasional use, there will be such incessant knocking at it by persons
of influence that it will be impossible ever to keep it closed. The
only excepted appointment should be the highest one of all. The
Viceroy of British India should be a person selected from all
Englishmen for his great general capacity for government. If he have
this, he will be able to distinguish in others, and turn to his own
use, that special knowledge and judgment in local affairs which he has
not himself had the opportunity of acquiring. There are good reasons
why the viceroy should not be a member of the regular service. All
services have, more or less, their class prejudices, from which the
supreme ruler ought to be exempt. Neither are men, however able and
experienced, who have passed their lives in Asia, so likely to possess
the most advanced European ideas in general statesmanship, which the
chief ruler should carry out with him, and blend with the results of
Indian experience. Again, being of a different class, and especially
if chosen by a different authority, he will seldom have any personal
partialities to warp his appointments to office. This great security
for honest bestowal of patronage existed in rare perfection under the
mixed government of the crown and the East India Company. The supreme
dispensers of office--the governor general and governors--were
appointed, in fact though not formally, by the crown, that is, by the
general government, not by the intermediate body, and a great officer
of the crown probably had not a single personal or political
connection in the local service, while the delegated body, most of
whom had themselves served in the country, had, and were likely to
have, such connections. This guaranty for impartiality would be much
impaired if the civil servants of government, even though sent out in
boyhood as mere candidates for employment, should come to be
furnished, in any considerable proportion, by the class of society
which supplies viceroys and governors. Even the initiatory competitive
examination would then be an insufficient security. It would exclude
mere ignorance and incapacity; it would compel youths of family to
start in the race with the same amount of instruction and ability as
other people; the stupidest son could not be put into the Indian
service, as he can be into the Church; but there would be nothing to
prevent undue preference afterwards. No longer, all equally unknown
and unheard of by the arbiter of their lot, a portion of the service
would be personally, and a still greater number politically, in close
relation with him. Members of certain families, and of the higher
classes and influential connections generally, would rise more rapidly
than their competitors, and be often kept in situations for which they
were unfit, or placed in those for which others were fitter. The same
influences would be brought into play which affect promotions in the
army; and those alone, if such miracles of simplicity there be, who
believe that these are impartial, would expect impartiality in those
of India. This evil is, I fear, irremediable by any general measures
which can be taken under the present system. No such will afford a
degree of security comparable to that which once flowed spontaneously
from the so-called double government.
What is accounted so great an advantage in the case of the English
system of government at home has been its misfortune in India--that it
grew up of itself, not from preconceived design, but by successive
expedients, and by the adaptation of machinery originally created for
a different purpose. As the country on which its maintenance depended
was not the one out of whose necessities it grew, its practical
benefits did not come home to the mind of that country, and it would
have required theoretic recommendations to render it acceptable.
Unfortunately, these were exactly what it seemed to be destitute of;
and undoubtedly the common theories of government did not furnish it
with such, framed as those theories have been for states of
circumstances differing in all the most important features from the
case concerned. But in government as in other departments of human
agency, almost all principles which have been durable were first
suggested by observation of some particular case, in which the general
laws of nature acted in some new or previously unnoticed combination
of circumstances. The institutions of Great Britain, and those of the
United States, have the distinction of suggesting most of the theories
of government which, through good and evil fortune, are now, in the
course of generations, reawakening political life in the nations of
Europe. It has been the destiny of the government of the East India
Company to suggest the true theory of the government of a
semi-barbarous dependency by a civilized country, and after having
done this, to perish. It would be a singular fortune if, at the end of
two or three more generations, this speculative result should be the
only remaining fruit of our ascendancy in India; if posterity should
say of us that, having stumbled accidentally upon better arrangements
than our wisdom would ever have devised, the first use we made of our
awakened reason was to destroy them, and allow the good which had been
in course of being realized to fall through and be lost from ignorance
of the principles on which it depended. _Dî meliora;_ but if a fate so
disgraceful to England and to civilization can be averted, it must be
through far wider political conceptions than merely English or
European practice can supply, and through a much more profound study
of Indian experience and of the conditions of Indian government than
either English politicians, or those who supply the English public
with opinions, have hitherto shown any willingness to undertake.
The End
Footnotes:
[Footnote 1: I limit the expression to past time, because I would say nothing
derogatory of a great, and now at last a free, people, who are
entering into the general movement of European progress with a vigor
which bids fair to make up rapidly the ground they have lost. No one
can doubt what Spanish intellect and energy are capable of; and their
faults as a people are chiefly those for which freedom and industrial
ardor are a real specific.]
[Footnote 2: Italy, which alone can be quoted as an exception, is only so in
regard to the final stage of its transformation. The more difficult
previous advance from the city isolation of Florence, Pisa, or Milan,
to the provincial unity of Tuscany or Lombardy, took place in the
usual manner.]
[Footnote 3: This blunder of Mr. Disraeli (from which, greatly to his credit,
Sir John Pakington took an opportunity soon after of separating
himself) is a speaking instance, among many, how little the
Conservative leaders understand Conservative principles. Without
presuming to require from political parties such an amount of virtue
and discernment as that they should comprehend, and know when to
apply, the principles of their opponents, we may yet say that it would
be a great improvement if each party understood and acted upon its
own. Well would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently
for every thing conservative, and Liberals for every thing liberal. We
should not then have to wait long for things which, like the present
and many other great measures, are eminently both the one and the
other. The Conservatives, as being by the law of their existence the
stupidest party, have much the greatest sins of this description to
answer for; and it is a melancholy truth, that if any measure were
proposed on any subject truly, largely, and far-sightedly
conservative, even if Liberals were willing to vote for it, the great
bulk of the Conservative party would rush blindly in and prevent it
from being carried.]
[Footnote 4: "Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform," 2nd ed. p. 32-36.]
[Footnote 5: "This expedient has been recommended both on the score of saving
expense and on that of obtaining the votes of many electors who
otherwise would not vote, and who are regarded by the advocates of the
plan as a particularly desirable class of voters. The scheme has been
carried into practice in the election of poor-law guardians, and its
success in that instance is appealed to in favor of adopting it in the
more important case of voting for a member of the Legislature. But the
two cases appear to me to differ in the point on which the benefits of
the expedient depend. In a local election for a special kind of
administrative business, which consists mainly in the dispensation of
a public fund, it is an object to prevent the choice from being
exclusively in the hands of those who actively concern themselves
about it; for the public interest which attaches to the election being
of a limited kind, and in most cases not very great in degree, the
disposition to make themselves busy in the matter is apt to be in a
great measure confined to persons who hope to turn their activity to
their own private advantage; and it may be very desirable to render
the intervention of other people as little onerous to them as
possible, if only for the purpose of swamping these private interests.
But when the matter in hand is the great business of national
government, in which every one must take an interest who cares for any
thing out of himself, or who cares even for himself intelligently, it
is much rather an object to prevent those from voting who are
indifferent to the subject, than to induce them to vote by any other
means than that of awakening their dormant minds. The voter who does
not care enough about the election to go to the poll is the very man
who, if he can vote without that small trouble, will give his vote to
the first person who asks for it, or on the most trifling or frivolous
inducement. A man who does not care whether he votes is not likely to
care much which way he votes; and he who is in that state of mind has
no moral right to vote at all; since, if he does so, a vote which is
not the expression of a conviction, counts for as much, and goes as
far in determining the result as one which represents the thoughts and
purposes of a life."--_Thoughts_, etc., p. 39.]
[Footnote 6: Several of the witnesses before the Committee of the House of
Commons in 1860, on the operation of the Corrupt Practices Prevention
Act, some of them of great practical experience in election matters,
were favorable (either absolutely or as a last resort) to the
principle of requiring a declaration from members of Parliament, and
were of opinion that, if supported by penalties, it would be, to a
great degree, effectual. (_Evidence_, pp. 46, 54-7, 67, 123, 198-202,
208.) The chief commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in
reference certainly to a different proposal), "If they see that the
Legislature is earnest upon the subject, the machinery will work.... I
am quite sure that if some personal stigma were applied upon
conviction of bribery, it would change the current of public opinion"
(pp. 26 and 32). A distinguished member of the committee (and of the
present cabinet) seemed to think it very objectionable to attach the
penalties of perjury to a merely promissory as distinguished from an
assertory oath; but he was reminded that the oath taken by a witness
in a court of justice is a promissory oath; and the rejoinder (that
the witness's promise relates to an act to be done at once, while the
member's would be a promise for all future time) would only be to the
purpose if it could be supposed that the swearer might forget the
obligation he had entered into, or could possibly violate it unawares:
contingencies which, in a case like the present, are out of the
question.
A more substantial difficulty is, that one of the forms most
frequently assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to
local charities or other local objects; and it would be a strong
measure to enact that money should not be given in charity within a
place by the member for it. When such subscriptions are _bonâ fide_,
the popularity which may be derived from them is an advantage which it
seems hardly possible to deny to superior riches. But the greatest
part of the mischief consists in the fact that money so contributed is
employed in bribery, under the euphonious name of keeping up the
member's interest. To guard against this, it should be part of the
member's promissory declaration that all sums expended by him in the
place, or for any purpose connected with it or with any of its
inhabitants (with the exception perhaps of his own hotel expenses)
should pass through the hands of the election auditor, and be by him
(and not by the member himself or his friends) applied to its declared
purpose.
The principle of making all lawful expenses of a charge, not upon the
candidate, but upon the locality, was upheld by two of the best
witnesses (pp. 20, 65-70, 277).]
[Footnote 7: "As Mr. Lorimer remarks, by creating a pecuniary inducement to
persons of the lowest class to devote themselves to public affairs,
the calling of the demagogue would be formally inaugurated. Nothing is
more to be deprecated than making it the private interest of a number
of active persons to urge the form of government in the direction of
its natural perversion. The indications which either a multitude or an
individual can give when merely left to their own weaknesses, afford
but a faint idea of what those weaknesses would become when played
upon by a thousand flatterers. If there were 658 places of certain,
however moderate emolument, to be gained by persuading the multitude
that ignorance is as good as knowledge, and better, it is terrible
odds that they would believe and act upon the lesson."--(Article in
_Fraser's Magazine_ for April, 1859, headed "Recent Writers on
Reform.")]
[Footnote 8: Not always, however, the most recondite; for one of the latest
denouncers of competitive examination in the House of Commons had the
_näiveté_ to produce a set of almost elementary questions in algebra,
history, and geography, as a proof of the exorbitant amount of high
scientific attainment which the Commissioners were so wild as to
exact.]
[Footnote 9: On Liberty, concluding chapter; and, at greater length, in the
final chapter of "Principles of Political Economy."]
[Footnote 10: Mr. Calhoun.]
[Footnote 11: I am speaking here of the _adoption_ of this improved policy, not,
of course, of its original suggestion. The honor of having been its
earliest champion belongs unquestionably to Mr. Roebuck.]