The year 1757 was one of the gloomiest ever known to England. At home, the
government was in a state of utter confusion, though the country was at war
with France, and France was in alliance with Austria; these two nations
having departed from their policy of two centuries and a half, in order
that they might crush Frederic of Prussia, England's ally. Frederic was
defeated at Kolin, by the Austrians, on the 18th of June, and a Russian
army was in possession of East Prussia. A German army in British pay,
and commanded by the "Butcher" hero of Culloden, was beaten in July, and
capitulated in September. In America, the pusillanimity of the English
commanders led to terrible disasters, among which the loss of Fort William
Henry, and the massacre of its garrison, were conspicuous events. In India,
the English were engaged in a doubtful contest with the viceroy of Bengal,
who was supported by the French. Even the navy of England appeared at
that time to have lost its sense of superiority; for not only had Admiral
Byng just been shot for not behaving with proper spirit, but a combined
expedition against the coast of France ended in signal failure, and Admiral
Holburne declined to attack a French fleet off Louisburg. No wonder that
the British people readily believed an author who then published a work to
establish the agreeable proposition, "that they were a race of cowards and
scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of
being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate."
Such a succession of disasters might well discourage a people, some of whom
could recollect the long list of victories which commenced with Blenheim
and closed with Malplaquet, and by which the arrogance of the Grand
Monarque had been punished.
Yet it is from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern
England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the
Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,--cold,
comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season
have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the
pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which
succeeded in carrying England's power and glory to heights which they
did not reach even under the Protectorship of Cromwell or the rule of
Godolphin. Then were commenced those measures which ended in the expulsion
of the French from North America, and gave to England a territory here
which may perpetuate her institutions for ages after they shall have ceased
to be known in the mother-land. Then was America conquered in Germany, and
not only was Frederic so assisted as to be able to contend successfully
against the three great houses of Bourbon, Habsburg, and Romanoff, and a
horde of lesser dynasties, but British armies, at Minden and Creveldt,
renewed on the fields of the continent recollections of the island skill
and the island courage. Then was a new spirit breathed into the British
marine, by which it has ever since been animated, and which has seldom
stopped to count odds. Then began that dashing course of enterprise which
gave almost everything to England that was assailable, from Goree to Cuba,
and from Cuba to the Philippines. Then was laid the foundation of that
Oriental dominion of England which has been the object of so much wonder,
and of not a little envy; for on the 23d of June, 1757, was fought the
battle of Plassey, the first of those many Indian victories that illustrate
the names of Clive, Coote, Wellesley, Gough, Napier, and numerous other
heroes. It seems odd, that the interest in Indian affairs should have been
suddenly and strangely revived in the hundredth year after the victory that
laid Bengal at the feet of an English adventurer. Had the insurgent Sepoys
delayed action but a few weeks, they might have inaugurated their movement
on the very centennial anniversary of the birth of British India.
There is nothing like the rule of the English in India to be found in
history. It has been compared to the dominion which Rome held over so large
a portion of the world; but the comparison has not the merit of aptness.
The population of the Roman Empire, in the age of the Antonines, has been
estimated at 120,000,000, including that of Italy. The population of
India is not less than 150,000,000, without counting any portion of the
conquering race. Rome was favorably situated for the maintenance of her
supremacy, as she had been for the work of conquest. Her dominion lay
around the Mediterranean, which Italy pierced, looking to the East and the
West, and forming, as it were, a great place of arms, whence to subdue or
to overawe the nations. Cicero called the Hellenic states and colonies a
fringe on the skirts of Barbarism, and the description applies also to the
Roman dominion; for though Gaul and Spain were conquered from sea to sea,
and the legions were encamped on the Euphrates, and the valley of the Nile
was as submissive to the Cæsars as it had been to the Lagidse, yet the
Mediterranean was the basis of Roman power, and a short journey in almost
any direction from it would have taken the traveller completely from
under the protection of the eagles. Not so is it with British India. From
no European country is India so remote as from England. The two regions
are separated by the ocean, by seas, by deserts, and by some of the most
powerful nations. Their sole means of union are found in the leading cause
of their separation. England owes her Indian empire to her empire of the
sea. India will be hers just so long, and no longer, as she shall be able
to maintain her naval supremacy. Those who predict her downfall in the
East, either as a consequence of the natives throwing off her rule, or
through a Russian invasion, forget that she entered India from the sea,
and that until she shall have been subdued on that element it would be
idle to think of dispossessing her of her Oriental supremacy. Were the
long-cherished dream of Russia to be realized,--a dream that is said to
have troubled the sleep of Peter, and which certainly haunted the mind of
Catharine,--and Russian proconsuls ruling on the Ganges, India could no
more be to Russia what she has been to England, than the Crimea, had he
kept it, could have been to Louis Napoleon what it is to the Czar. The
condition of Indian dominion is ocean dominion.
In one respect the Indian empire of England resembles the Roman empire.
The latter comprised many and widely different countries and races, and
so is it with the former. We are so accustomed to speak of India as if it
constituted one country, and were inhabited by a homogeneous people, that
it is difficult to understand that not even in Europe are nations to be
found more unlike to one another than in British India. In Hindostan and
the Deccan there are ten different civilized nations, resembling each other
no more than Danes resemble Italians, or Spaniards Poles. They differ in
moral, physical, and intellectual conditions,--in modes of thought and in
modes of life. This is one of the chief causes of England's supremacy,
just as a similar state of things not only promoted the conquests of Rome,
but facilitated her rule after they had been made. The Emperors ruled over
Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and other Eastern peoples, with ease, because
they had little in common, and could not combine against their conquerors.
They did the same in the West, because the inhabitants of that quarter, if
left to themselves, would have passed their time in endless quarrels. The
old world abounded in great cities, all of which owned the supremacy of
Rome, from Gades to Thapsacus; and in modern India the most venerable
places are compelled to bow before the upstart Calcutta.
The peculiar condition of India a hundred years since enabled the English
to lay the foundations of their power in that country so broadly and so
deep that nothing short of a moral convulsion can uproot them, though the
edifice erected upon them may be rudely shaken by internal revolts, or by
the consequences of external wars. Fifty years sooner or forty years later,
the English could have made no impression on India as conquerors. Seventy
years before the conquest of Bengal the English traders had been plundered
by a viceroy who anticipated the tyranny of Surajah Doulah. They determined
not to submit to such exactions. They resolved upon war. But the great
Aurungzebe was then on the throne of Delhi; and though the Moghul empire
had declined somewhat from the standard set up by Akbar and maintained by
Shah Jehan, the fighting merchants were soon taught that they were but as
children in the hands of its chief. They were driven out of Bengal, and
Aurungzebe thought of expelling them from his whole empire. The punishment
of death was visited upon some of the East India Company's officers and
servants by the Moghul. This severe lesson made a deep impression on the
English. They resumed their humble position as traders on sufferance. They
never thought of conquest again. It was not until every man who had been
concerned in that business had long been in his grave, that the English
dared so much as to think of making another war. Though the Moghuls
rapidly became powerless after the death of Aurungzebe, the blows struck
by anticipation in their behalf protected them for forty years against the
ambition of the intrusive Occidentals, and even for some time after Nadir
Shah's Persian invasion had demonstrated that their dynasty was as weak
as that of Lodi had been found when Baber came into the land. Whether the
English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it
is certain that they were forced upon the work against their own wishes and
inclinations, and in self-defence. The very expedition which Clive made use
of to effect the subjugation of Bengal had been undertaken on defensive
grounds; and so fearful was even that great man of the consequences of a
union of the forces of the Moghul with those at the command of the French
in the East, that he was at first desirous of making peace with Surajah
Doulah himself. When the arrival of reinforcements had induced him to
take a bolder course, and the destruction of that fierce viceroy had been
resolved upon, it was not until after much doubt and hesitation, and
against his original judgment, that that course of action was entered upon
which ended in the victory of Plassey. He knew the risk that was run in
fighting a pitched battle against a force nearly twenty times larger than
his own; and had the viceroy been either a respectable ruler or a good
soldier, the English, humanly speaking, must have then failed as signally
as their predecessors of 1687; but as he was as destitute of humanity as of
courage and skill, and could neither animate his followers by affection nor
command them by force of character, he was utterly routed. Not six hundred
men fell in the battle of Plassey, on both sides, and most of these were on
the side of the vanquished. Seldom has it happened that so mighty a change
has been effected with so little slaughter. One is reminded of the battles
fought by the few Romans under Lucullus against the entire array of the
Armenian monarchy.
Had circumstances not led to the display of British power at the time when
great prizes were sure to follow even from minor exertions, England never
could have become mistress of India. Had the English remained traders
forty years longer,--or even for half that time, perhaps,--they would have
encountered very different foes from those which they overthrew so easily
when forced to fight for property and life. India was breaking up in 1757,
and the process of reformation was about to begin. Had not the English been
brought into the vast arena, either a number of powerful monarchies would
have been formed, or the whole country would have passed under some new
dynasty, which would have revived the power of the state with that rapidity
which is so often exhibited in the East, when new and able men assume the
reins of government. Hyder Ali might have made himself the master of all
India, had it been his lot to contend only with native rulers and native
races. Had this been the course of events, and had circumstances brought
him into collision with the East India Company when he had made himself the
Moghul's successor, can it be believed that he would have experienced any
more difficulty in dealing with them than was found by Aurungzebe? We know
that the English found in Hyder a very able foe, with but limited means
at his disposal, and when they were masters of half the country, and had
been almost uniformly victorious. Can it be supposed that they could have
effected anything against all India, ruled by so consummate a statesman as
Hyder Ali? There seems to have been something providential in the events
that caused them to pass from traders to conquerors, at the only time when
such a transition could be made either with safety or success. That their
career of conquest has been occasionally marked by injustice and crime
proves nothing against the position that they may have been appointed by
a higher Power to work out a revolution in the East. "The dark mystery
of the moral world," in this as in a thousand other instances, remains
impenetrable. Heaven selects its own agents, and all that it becomes us to
say concerning such relations is, that they do not appear in all cases to
be made from among men specially entitled to the honors of canonisation.
The English have frequently been denounced, not only for their errors in
governing India, but for their conquest of that country. The French have
been especially fervent in these denunciations. It is a fact, however, that
the French saw nothing wrong in subduing India until all their own plans
to that end had utterly failed. The device originated with them, but the
English applied it. Dupleix planned for France what Clive executed for
England. The French adhered to their plans for years, and it was not until
a very recent period that the last remnants of their influence disappeared
from India. They saw not the evil involved in the overthrowing of virtuous
nabobs and venerable viceroys, until time and a whole train of events had
proved that England alone was competent to the full performance of the
work. The English in India have not, on all occasions, been saints; but we
are unable to see what moral right the French have to reproach them with
the enumeration of their errors. In the East, France was "overcrowed" by
England; and that is the sole and the very simple cause of the vast amount
of "sympathy" which the French have bestowed upon suffering Indian princes,
whose condition in no sense would have been improved, had fortune favored
the Gallic race, instead of the Saxon, in their struggle for supremacy in
Hindostan.
The prejudice that exists in many minds against England, concerning her
Indian empire, is in no small degree owing to something of which she is
justly proud; to the talent that characterized the prosecution--his friends
called it the persecution--of Warren Hastings. No man, not even Strafford,
when borne down by the whole weight of the country party in the first
session of the Long Parliament, ever encountered so able a host as that
which set itself to effect the ruin of the great British proconsul. He
was acquitted by his judges, but he stands blackened forever on the most
magnificent pages of his country's eloquence. Burke's speeches are yet read
everywhere; and to Burke, Hastings was the principle of Evil incarnate.
The two great divisions of civilized mankind hold Burke in lasting
remembrance,--the liberals for his labors in the early part of his life,
and the conservatives for his writings against the French Revolution; and
it is impossible to admire him without condemning Hastings. It is equally
impossible to condemn Hastings without condemning the nation for which he
performed deeds so vicious and cruel, and which formally acquitted him of
each and every charge preferred by Burke and his immortal associates, in
the name of the Commons of England. Even those charges were the result, not
of conscientious conviction on the part of the Commons, but of Mr. Pitt's
determination to crush one who promised to become a formidable political
rival. The arguments and eloquence of such men as Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and
Grey, constitute a splendid armory, from which the enemies of England can
forever draw admirable weapons with which to assail her Indian policy; and
they have not been backward in making use of this mighty advantage. No one,
who has ever sought to defend England's course in the East, but has had
experience of the difficulties which those great men have placed in the
way of a successful vindication of their country's cause. Either they were
honest, or they were not. If honest, what shall be said of the nation which
would not listen to them? If dishonest, what are we to think of men, the
first statesmen of their age, who, for mere party ends, had persecuted to
his ruin one who was in no respect their inferior, and who had saved India
for England? Our own opinion is that Burke and his associates were honest,
and that the only dishonest men in the prosecuting party were William Pitt
and Henry Dundas,--the first being chief minister, and the other second
only to the premier himself in the government. Pitt talked much of his
conscience, after having absolved Hastings on the very worst of the charges
that had been preferred against him, and then condemned him on lighter
charges. When Roger Wildrake heard the landlord at Windsor talk much of
his conscience, he was led to observe that his measures were less and his
charges larger than they had been in those earlier times when sin was
allowed to take its natural course. It was so with Pitt, who was guilty
of gross injustice, according to his own arguments, and then threw his
conscience into the scale against the accused party, when he saw that
that party's acquittal would probably lead to his being converted into a
successful political rival. Hastings deserved severe censure, and no light
punishment, for some of his deeds; but not even Burke would have condemned
him to the slow torture to which he was sentenced by one who believed
him to be innocent, and the object of party persecution. But the nice
distinctions which Englishmen and Americans can make in the cause and
course of this famous state trial, because they live in the very atmosphere
of party politics, are utterly unknown to the men of continental Europe;
and until the end of time, England will be condemned out of the mouths of
her most brilliant sons, whenever her foes--and she is too great not to
have many and bitter foes--shall discuss the history of her Indian empire.
Every nation condemns conquest, and every nation with power to enter upon
a career of conquest rushes eagerly upon it. The harshest condemnation
that has visited England because of her Indian successes has proceeded
from nations who have never been backward in seizing the lands of other
nations. She has been stigmatized as a usurper, and as having destroyed the
independence of Indian states. The facts do not warrant these charges. She
has rarely had a contest with any power which was not as much an intruder
in India as herself. The Moghul dynasty was as foreign to India as the
East India Company, or the house of Hanover; and the viceroys sent to
rule over its vast and populous provinces had the same bases of power as
were possessed by Clive, and Hastings, and Wellesley, and Bentinck, and
Ellenborough, and Dalhousie. The Moghuls obtained Indian dominion by
conquests that were rendered easy by Indian troubles; and this is precisely
the history of England's Oriental dominion. What difference there is, is
favorable to England. The Moghuls were deliberate invaders of India; the
founder of that dynasty being an adventurer who sought an empire sword in
hand, and won it by violence which no man had provoked. Baber was to India
what the Norman William was to England. He long contemplated the conquest
of the country, showing a wolf-like perseverance in hunting down his prey.
For two-and-twenty years he had his object in view, and invaded India five
times before he obtained the throne of Delhi. The English were forced to
assume the part of conquerors, and would gladly have remained traders.
They did not commence their military career until the Moghul had become a
mere shadow, and when that potentate was altogether unable to protect them
against the tyrannical practices of his lieutenants. They had to choose
between war and extermination, and they belonged to a race which never
hesitates when forced to make such a choice. Their wars were waged with the
Moghul's viceroys, who were aiming at the foundation of dynastic rule, each
in his own government, or with other princes, who were equally usurpers
with those viceroys, the Mahratta chiefs, for example, and Hyder Ali.
One war led to another, in all of which the English were victorious,
until their power extended itself over all India. In one hundred and six
years--dating from the capture of Madras by the French in 1746, which event
must be taken as the commencement of their military career in India, and
closing with the annexation of Pegu, December 28, 1852,--they had completed
their work. That, in the course of operations so mighty, and relating to
the condition of so many millions of people, they were sometimes guilty of
acts of singular injustice, is true, and might be inferred, if there were
no facts upon which to base the charge. It is impossible that it should
have been otherwise, considering the nature of man, and the character of
many of the instruments by which great enterprises are accomplished. But we
think it may safely be said, that never was there a career of conquest of
such extent accompanied with so little of wrong and suffering to the body
of the people. As against the wrong that was perpetrated, and the suffering
that was inseparable from wars so numerous and long-continued, are to be
set the reign of order and law, under which the mass of the inhabitants
have been able to cultivate their fields in quiet, and with the assurance
that they should reap where they had sowed, undisturbed by the incursions
of robber-bands. The cessation of the Mahratta invasions alone is an ample
compensation for whatever of evil may have marked the course of British
conquest. The stop that has been put to the cruelties of the native rulers
ought not to be forgotten in estimating the amount of evil and of good
which that conquest has brought upon India. The world has been shocked by
the cruelties of which the rebellious Sepoys have been guilty; but they
can astonish no one who is familiar with the history of the races to which
these mutineers belong. An indifference to life, and a love of cruelty for
cruelty's sake, are common characteristics of most of the Orientals, and
are chiefly conspicuous in the ruling classes. The reader of Indian history
sickens over details compared with which all that is told of the horrors
of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have
prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been
in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn
the teeth of these human tigers. They have acted humanely; yet it may be
doubted if they would not have consulted their own immediate interests more
closely, if they had acted the part of tyrants rather than of protectors.
By ruling through the princes, and allowing them to act as "middle-men,"
they would have been less troubled with mutinies, and could have amassed
greater sums of money. It is to their credit that they have pursued
the nobler course; nor ought they to repent of it even in the midst of
disasters brought upon them, we are firmly convinced, as much by the
mildness of their rule as by any other cause that can be mentioned.
It is yet too early to attempt to account for the rebellion of the Bengal
army. That rebellion took the world by surprise, and nowhere more so, it
would seem, than in England. A remarkable proof of this is to be found in
the tone and language of the debate that took place in the British House of
Commons on the 27th of July, in which Mr. Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, Lord
John Russell, Mr. Whiteside, Mr. T. Baring, Sir T.E. Perry, Mr. Mangles,
Mr. Vernon Smith, and others, participated. That debate was most lively and
interesting; and the reading of the ample report in the "Times" revives the
recollection of the great field-days of the English senate. Mr. Disraeli's
speech is a masterpiece, and would have done honor to times when eloquence
was far more common than it is now. Yet the conclusion to which the careful
reader of the report must come is, that neither Mr. Disraeli, nor the
Premier, nor the President of the Board of Control, nor the Chairman of
the Directors of the East India Company, nor any other of the speakers,
had a definite idea of the cause of the sudden mutiny of the Sepoys. It
is impossible not to admire Mr. Disraeli's talents, as displayed in this
speech; and equally impossible is it to find in that speech anything that
an intelligent observer of Indian affairs can regard as settling the
question, Why did the Sepoys of the Bengal army mutiny in 1857? Everything
that he brought forward as a cause of the mutiny was distinctly proved not
to be worthy of the name of a cause. Yet the men who could show that he had
failed to clear up the mystery could themselves throw no light upon it. The
government was especially ignorant of all that it should have known; and
there is something almost ludicrous in the tone of the speech made by the
President of the Board of Control.
It is not for us to speak authoritatively as to the cause of the Sepoy
mutiny, but we venture to express our concurrence with those who have
regarded it as, in considerable measure, of Mahometan origin. The Mahometan
rule was displaced by the British rule. The Mahometans were for centuries
the aristocracy of India, standing to the genuine Indians in pretty much
the same relation that the Normans held to the Saxons in England; only
it is but justice to them to say, that they rarely bore themselves so
offensively towards the Indians as the Normans were accustomed to bear
themselves towards the English. They have never lost the recollection of
their former _status_, or ceased to sigh for its restoration. Nor is the
time so very remote when they were yet great in the land. Old men among
them can recollect when Tippoo Saib was treated as an equal by the English,
and have not forgotten how powerful was his father, Hyder. Some few
aged Mussulmans there may be yet living who heard from their sires or
grandsires, who saw it with their mortal eyes, of the glories of the
magnificent Aurungzebe, ere the Persian, or the Affghan, or the Mahratta
had carried fire and sword into Shahjehanabad. Two not over-long lives
would measure the whole interval of time between the punishment of the
English by Aurungzebe and the mutiny at Meerut. Time enough has not yet
elapsed to cause the Mahometans to forget what they have been, or to cease
to hope that they may yet surpass their fathers. They are not actuated by
anything of a sentimental character, but desire to win back, and to enjoy
at the expense of the Indian races, the solid advantages of which they
have been deprived through the ascendency of a Christian people in the
East. "Mahometans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Mahometan
_régime_," says Colonel Sleeman, "not from any particular attachment to the
descendants of Tymour, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and
Tories sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England;
it would give them all the offices in a country where office is everything.
Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to rate his own
abilities highly, and to have a good deal of confidence in his own good
luck; and all think, that if the field were once opened to them by such a
change, they should very soon be able to find good positions for themselves
and their children in it. Perhaps there are few communities in the world,
among whom education is more generally diffused than among the Mahometans
in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly
gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime-minister." [Footnote:
_Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official_, Vol. II. pp. 282,
283.--Colonel Sleeman's work is one of the best ever published on
India,--learned, liberal, and philosophical. It has been highly praised
by so competent a judge as Mr. Grote.] This very capability for rule must
render them not only all the more desirous of obtaining it, but exceedingly
dangerous as seekers after it. They are not an ignorant rabble, but men who
have an intelligent idea of what they want, and rational modes of effecting
its realization. Colonel Sleeman adds, "It is not only the desire for
office that makes the educated Mahometans cherish the recollection of
the old _régime_ in Hindostan; they say, 'We pray every night for the
Emperor and his family, because our forefathers ate of the salt of His
forefathers,'--that is, our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors,
and consequently were of the _aristocracy_ of the country. Whether they
really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their children that
they were." In this way the idea of superiority has been kept up among the
Mahometans of India; and they have continued to hope for the restoration
of their old political supremacy, as pious Jews dream of the rebuilding of
Zion. That they were at the bottom of the Meerut mutiny may be taken for
granted. That they took for their leader the heir of the Moghul shows the
Mahometan nature of the outbreak. At the same time, we believe that if
it had not been for the imbecility of Hewitt, who commanded at Meerut,
the mutiny never would have occurred, or the mutineers would have been
promptly put down. Even after they had escaped from Meerut, Delhi never
could have fallen into their hands, if that city--so important, morally
and geographically, as well as in a military point of view--had not
been without a garrison. That a station of such consequence, stored so
abundantly with all the munitions of war, should have been left in an
utterly defenceless condition, is a fact that creates inexpressible
astonishment, notwithstanding all that happened during the Russian war. Mr.
Whiteside, in the debate of the 27th of July, stated that the late General
Sir C.J. Napier "said of Delhi, that to guard against surprise, considering
its position, its treasures, and its magazines, it should always be
defended by twelve thousand picked men." From all that appears, there were
not twelve hundred men, or anything like that number, of any kind, in
Delhi, last May, to protect either the inhabitants or the stores there
deposited. Such another instance of neglect it would be impossible to find
in history, after due warning given. Long ago, Albany Fonblanque said, "The
sign of the fool with his finger in his mouth, and the sentiment, 'Who'd
have thought it?' is the precise emblem of English jurisprudence." The same
sign would seem to be applicable to some other branches of the English
public service, as well as to that of the law. Perhaps it was because
of the warning that nothing was done,--that being the usual course with
governments; while it was thought a duty to treat with a sort of spiteful
neglect every warning that came from Sir C.J. Napier, because he had a
rough, fiery way of expressing his opinion of the folly of those who are
perpetually giving occasion for warnings which they never heed,--as if in
all ages roughness and fire had not been especial characteristics of the
prophetic office.