INDIA.
'As time passes it rather appears that we are in the hands of a
Providence which is greater than all statesmanship, that this
fabric so blindly piled up has a chance of becoming a part of
the permanent edifice of civilization, and that the Indian
achievement of England, as it is the strangest, may after all
turn out to be the greatest; of all her achievements.'--Prof. J.
R. Seeley.
'BUT above all, what is to be done with India'? With this
question Mr. Goldwin Smith makes the relation of India to the
Empire the crux of the Federation problem. To him the difficulty
presented seems insoluble, chiefly because he believes that it
would be impossible for a federation of democratic communities
scattered over the globe to hold India, about which they know
little, as a dependency. He even doubts, in his customary vein
of pessimism, whether the fate of the Indian Empire is not
already 'sealed by the progress of democracy in Britain.' So far
from this last being the case it looks as if the English working
man, who has annually more than £60,000,000 of trade staked on
our hold on India, will be the last to weaken by his vote our
position in the country or our grip on the waterways which lead
to the East. Every second or third day's work of the Lancashire
cotton-spinner is done for the Indian market, or for other
Eastern {244} markets which we control on account of our
position in India. In some large districts, such as that of
Oldham, the proportion is three days' work out of four. And the
Lancashire spinner is a keen political thinker, especially where
his bread and butter are concerned.
The industry of the city of Dundee depends almost entirely upon
the supply of a single fibre from the valley of the Ganges. The
Dundee jute-worker is a Radical, but he is not likely for that
reason to forget that his daily wage depends on the hold which
the Empire keeps upon Bengal. The purely trade relation of India
to the United Kingdom was clearly put by Lord Dufferin in his
address to the London Chamber of Commerce three years ago. He
said:--
'During the past year our trade with our Indian Empire was
larger than our trade with any other country in the world, with
the exception of the United States, amounting to no less a sum
than £64,000,000. If, again, we merely confine our attention to
a comparison of our exports to India with our exports to other
countries, we shall find that the same statement holds good,
namely, that the exports of Great Britain to India are greater
than those to any other country in the world except the United
States, amounting as they do to £34,000,000, whereas our exports
to France do not exceed £24,000,000, and to Germany £27,000,000.
In fact, India's trade with the United Kingdom is nearly
one-tenth of the value of the total British trade with the whole
world. ... In 1888 she took £21,250,000 worth of our cotton
goods {245} and yarns, out of a total of £72,000,000 worth
exported to all countries, whereas China only took £6,500,000
worth, Germany £2,500,000 worth and the United States £2,000,000
worth. Again, if we take another great section of British
exports, such as hardware, machinery and metals, we find that
out of a total export of £36,000,000 to all countries India in
1888 took £5,750,000 worth, whereas we only sent £3,000,000
worth to France, £1,750,000 worth to Russia, and £750,000 worth
to China.
'These figures, I think, should be enough to convince the least
receptive understanding what a fatal blow it would be to our
commercial prosperity were circumstances ever to close, either
completely or partially, the Indian ports to the trade of Great
Britain, and how deeply the manufacturing population of
Lancashire, and not only of Lancashire, but of every centre of
industry in Great Britain and Ireland, is interested in the
well-being and expanding prosperity of our Indian
fellow-subjects. Indeed it would not be too much to say that if
any serious disaster ever overtook our Indian Empire, or if our
political relations with the Peninsula of Hindostan were to be
even partially disturbed, there is not a cottage in Great
Britain, at all events in the manufacturing districts, which
would not be made to feel the disastrous consequences of such an
intolerable calamity.'
There is another point to consider. The rapid growth of our vast
Indian commerce has been largely due to the application on an
immense scale of British capital {246} for the opening up of the
country by railways and canals, and for the conservation and
distribution of water by systems of irrigation. It is estimated
that £350,000,000 are thus invested, to which must be added
other large sums employed in various forms of industrial
enterprise; the profits and interest of all this capital
flowing back steadily to the United Kingdom, and evidently
secured only by British dominance.
When to all this we connect the fact that from 75,000 to 100,000
British people find well paid employment in carrying on the
government, defence and industrial development of the country we
begin to understand the vast range of national interests
involved in our retaining possession of India. The estimate that
the people of the United Kingdom draw from India sixty or
seventy millions sterling every year in direct income is
probably a moderate one. Directly then Britain's stake in India
is enormous. Indirectly our possession of the country would
probably determine the drift of the commerce of the vast regions
still further East.
Nor is it the United Kingdom alone which is concerned.
The present and prospective interest of the Australasian
colonies in India are also great, not only for the military
reasons which have been mentioned, but in view of the growing
trade relations. India reduced to anarchy by the withdrawal of
British rule, or India governed by Russia, would mean a serious
blow {247} to Australasian trade, present and prospective. It
might easily mean exclusion from all the markets of the East.
South Africa, which owed its earliest development to the fact
that it was the stopping place on the road to India, still owes
much of its importance to the same cause. The interest of Canada
in India is more remote, but now that Canadian steamship lines
are on the Pacific, with their terminus at Hong Kong, Britain's
position in the East has a new interest for the Dominion.
But every British colony great and small is directly and deeply
interested in the maintenance of the power of the Empire, and if
the continued power of the Empire involves, as it seems to do,
the retention and government of India, the colonies should not
shrink from sharing that responsibility.
Professor Seeley has proved with conclusive clearness that the
government of India has had very little effect upon the domestic
politics of England; there is no reason to think that it would
have more upon the domestic politics of the Empire.
The political difficulty about India's relation to a united
Empire is, however, felt very widely. It is one of the first
which occurs to the minds of most men when they turn their
attention to the question, as I have found during public
discussion in many parts of the Empire. Nor is this to be
wondered at. That a country enjoying popular representative
institutions should rule as an imperial power over some hundreds
{248} of millions of people without representation in their own
government is an extraordinary anomaly. Men's minds have,
however, become accustomed to it by long usage, and the fact is
accepted almost without remark. But when a proposal is made to
re-construct the national organism on what is claimed to be a
logical basis, the incompatibility between our popular system of
government, and the system which we apply to India at once
re-appears.
The anomaly, however, would be no greater under federation than
without it, and it is one with which the British mind in all
parts of the Empire is familiar. Most of the great colonies have
had on a small scale the experience which the United Kingdom has
had on a large scale of ruling weaker races without giving them
representation.
Unquestionably confusion of thought is caused by the careless
use of the term Empire into which English people have fallen.
Applied to India and the crown colonies it is admissible, though
with the qualification that in practice the Empress of India
acts as much under advice as the Queen of England. As a name for
the 'slowly grown and crowned Republic' of which the mother-land
is the type and the great self-governing colonies copies, the
term Empire is a misnomer, and has none of the meaning which it
has when applied to Russia, Austria, or the France of the
Napoleons. If immediate reflection of the popular will in public
policy be taken as the test, England, Canada, and Australia are
more republican than the modern {249} republics; as democratic
as is well possible under a representative system of government.
But the people of this 'crowned republic,' proud of their
capacity for self-government, and impatient of any illegitimate
control over themselves, have assumed the task of governing a
real Empire--one which contains a population of some hundreds of
millions of various races. The legitimacy of this assumed task
we need not stay to discuss. The actual relation of Britain to
India as to several other countries without self-government is a
fact; and one which has passed beyond the range of discussion.
This government of India the United Kingdom, upon which the work
now devolves, finds it possible to carry on, and on the whole
efficiently. That it is done to the good of the people ruled is
scarcely open to question. British rule in India may be far from
ideally perfect, but that it is superior to anything India ever
had before is freely admitted even by foreigners. Is there
anything in the nature of the case which would prevent the
representatives of a united British race from carrying forward
the government of India as do now the representatives of the
United Kingdom alone?
Let us consider the system of government. To the Indians
themselves no representation, as we understand the term, is
given. While largely employed for executive functions they take
no part in legislation. An English statesman of proved capacity,
assisted by a council of experienced specialists, is placed as
{250} Viceroy at the head of affairs. Under him is a trained
body of civil servants, selected by a rigid system of
examination. To these the general administration of the country
is committed. It is a system of government by experts.
The fiscal system of India, its revenue and expenditure, are
kept entirely separate from those of the United Kingdom. It has
its separate and clearly defined code of laws suited to its
circumstances. It has a practically independent military
organization. The government of the great dependency is not only
essentially different in form from that of the self-governing
portions of the Empire, but revolves in a sphere of its own. The
general lines of Indian policy come under the review of
Parliament; the pressure of public opinion is kept upon those
who rule India through the channel of Parliamentary criticism;
beyond this the rule of the country is left to the specialists
to whom it has been committed. It has been long since any
question of Indian policy made or unmade a government.
I have met everywhere, in Britain and in the colonies, people
who think that India makes a heavy drain upon the revenues of
the United Kingdom, and would do so upon the revenues of a
united Empire. This is an example of that ignorance which, it
has been truly said, is the most probable dissolvent of the
Empire. It is therefore not unnecessary to say that India pays
exclusively for its own defence and government. Every soldier,
white or native, from the {251} Commander-in-Chief down to the
humblest sepoy; every civil servant, from the Governor-General
to the lately appointed clerk, is paid from Indian revenues
alone. India does even more, it pays the whole expense of the
India Office in London, and for the maintenance of Aden and
other ports near the mouth of the Red Sea, with their garrisons,
although these give protection to other Eastern commerce and to
that of the Australasian colonies as well as Indian. India
contributes also to the maintenance of consular establishments
in China and of the British Embassy in Persia. The resources and
the fighting power of India stand today as a barrier to guard
from danger the enormous British commerce in the Eastern seas,
to keep back the most dangerous military power of Europe and
Asia from nearer approach to the English communities of the
South.
The question whether any degree of representation could be given
to the Indian population would remain for a federated Empire,
just as it now exists for the United Kingdom. The problem would
be no greater and no less. Any step taken in that direction
would no doubt be exceedingly cautious and tentative. But for
dealing with this, as with all other Indian problems, a united
Empire, with its consolidated strength, would be vastly more
efficient than a nation going through various stages of
disintegration.
The answer which appears to me sufficient to those whom claim
that Britain's control of India interposes {252} an insuperable
obstacle to a Federal system for the Empire is this:--
India is practically a crown colony, and as yet the United
Kingdom has shown no inclination to govern it otherwise than as
a crown colony. The same duty may be rightly accepted and duly
fulfilled by British people as a whole under any system of
common government. To accept it would create no new national
burden or risk, would react no more upon the ordinary political
development of the various states than it has upon that of the
United Kingdom.
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