It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he who
he may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve of
it. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing the
sense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasons
that ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the
strangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to
the real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they sign
political manifestoes of the highest importance without taking the
trouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us to
believe that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand,
they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years,
numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest,
have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, and
bound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do. Every man of sense knows that the people support
the Government. But the doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it
is the business of the Government to support the people. It is supposed
by many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible
storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from
mere hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazine
among the poor. We have all of us read speeches and tracts in which it
seemed to be taken for granted that we who sit here have the power of
working miracles, of sending a shower of manna on the West Riding,
of striking the earth and furnishing all the towns of Lancashire with
abundance of pure water, of feeding all the cotton-spinners and weavers
who are out of work with five loaves and two fishes. There is not a
working man who has not heard harangues and read newspapers in which
these follies are taught. And do you believe that as soon as you give
the working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget all
this? Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power. The Charter would
give them no less. In every constituent body throughout the empire
the working men will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an
irresistible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed
at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and is
it possible to doubt what the result must be? The honourable Member for
Bath and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as very
democratic members of Parliament. They would occupy a very different
position in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, if they
succeeded in obtaining seats. They would, I believe, honestly oppose
every attempt to rob the public creditor. They would manfully say,
"Justice and the public good require that this sum of thirty millions
a year should be paid;" and they would immediately be reviled as
aristocrats, monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of old
abuses. And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions who
have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate, and is
wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, use
that power to enforce what they think their rights? What could follow
but one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough.
That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yet
would that a single vast spoliation were the worst! No, Sir; in the
lowest deep there would be a lower deep. The first spoliation would not
be the last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the first
spoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully than
before. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences which
now protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, swept
away. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything that
they held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complain
of being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience,
God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We can
only guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible than
can be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger
scale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow
space, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;
credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenance
of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilence
following in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotion
into a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that I
can anticipate,--and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman
and a Whig calls such an event the very best?--the very best event,
I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong
military despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of all
that immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutions
under which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth,
in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief that
we should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We should
not deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatness
would insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;
and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselves
the means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions her
legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in their
excuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;
for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enough
to comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin would
be the effect of their compliance.
Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God has
given me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to the
granting of universal suffrage. This motion I think, tends that way.
If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for universal suffrage with a
full view of all the consequences of universal suffrage as they are set
forth in this petition, he acts with perfect consistency in voting for
this motion. But, I must say, I heard with some surprise the honourable
baronet the Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope.) say that, though
he utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just as
I do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in explanation
of their opinions. I conceive that their opinions are quite sufficiently
explained already; and to such opinions I am not disposed to pay any
extraordinary mark of respect. I shall give a clear and conscientious
vote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I
conceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complain
of my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who
tries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has
fully made up his mind not to comply with their demands.
*****
THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH. (MARCH 9, 1843) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH 1843.
On the ninth of March 1843, Mr Vernon Smith, Member for Northampton,
made the following motion:
"That this House, having regard to the high and important functions
of the Governor General of India, the mixed character of the native
population, and the recent measures of the Court of Directors for
discontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in India, is of opinion
that the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in issuing the General Orders of
the sixteenth of November 1842, and in addressing the letter of the same
date to all the chiefs, princes, and people of India, respecting the
restoration of the gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous,
and reprehensible."
Mr Emerson Tennent, Secretary of the Board of Control, opposed the
motion. In reply to him the following Speech was made.
The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157.
Mr Speaker,--If the practice of the honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of the Board of Control, had been in accordance with his precepts, if he
had not, after exhorting us to confine ourselves strictly to the subject
before us, rambled far from that subject, I should have refrained from
all digression. For and truth there is abundance to be said touching
both the substance and the style of this Proclamation. I cannot,
however, leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question before
us to any great distance or for any long time.
I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravely
represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourable
friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the Governor
General's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this House
is to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty's
Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And how
can we consider how they are governed without considering the conduct
of him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of him
who is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can say
for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friend
the Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our hearts
and souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence of
Lord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit of
England, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at this
moment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has
no right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how important
it is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, the
State should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamation
reflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the present
occasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very different
return. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland
has an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may
have committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. No
brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests and
the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate Lord
Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough the
means of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? A
proclamation by Lord Ellenborough, stigmatising the conduct of Lord
Auckland. And, Sir, since the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the
Board of Control has thought fit to divert the debate from its proper
course, I will venture to request that he, or the honourable director
who sits behind him (Sir James Hogg.), will vouchsafe to give us some
explanations on an important point to which allusion has been made.
Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly announced that our
troops were about to evacuate Afghanistan before he had ascertained that
our captive countrymen and countrywomen had been restored to liberty.
This accusation, which is certainly a serious one, the honourable
gentleman, the Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be a
mere calumny. Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the withdrawing
of the troops bears date the first of October 1842. What I wish to know
is, whether any member of the Government, or of the Court of Directors,
will venture to affirm that on the first of October 1842, the Governor
General knew that the prisoners had been set at liberty? I believe that
no member either of the Government or of the Court of Directors will
venture to affirm any such thing. It seems certain that on the first
of October the Governor General could not know that the prisoners were
safe. Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board
of Control assures us that, when the proclamation was drawn up, the
Governor General did know that the prisoners were safe. What is the
inevitable consequence? It is this, that the date is a false date, that
the proclamation was written after the first of October, and antedated?
And for what reason was it antedated? I am almost ashamed to tell
the House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that Lord
Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to his
proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was
dated on the first of October. I believe that Lord Ellenborough wished
to make the contrast between his own success and his predecessor's
failure more striking, and that for the sake of this paltry, this
childish, triumph, he antedated his proclamation, and made it appear to
all Europe and all Asia that the English Government was indifferent
to the fate of Englishmen and Englishwomen who were in a miserable
captivity. If this be so, and I shall be surprised to hear any person
deny that it is so, I must say that by this single act, by writing those
words, the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be a
man of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust.
I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourable
gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many other
matters. I might call the attention of the House to the systematic
manner in which the Governor General has exerted himself to lower
the character and to break the spirit of that civil service on the
respectability and efficiency of which chiefly depends the happiness of
a hundred millions of human beings. I might say much about the financial
committee which he appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of his
predecessor, but which at last found out no blunders except his own.
But the question before us demands our attention. That question has two
sides, a serious and a ludicrous side. Let us look first at the serious
side. Sir, I disclaim in the strongest manner all intention of raising
any fanatical outcry or of lending aid to any fanatical project. I would
very much rather be the victim of fanaticism than its tool. If Lord
Ellenborough were called in question for having given an impartial
protection to the professors of different religions, or for restraining
unjustifiable excesses into which Christian missionaries might have been
hurried by their zeal, I would, widely as I have always differed from
him in politics, have stood up in his defence, though I had stood up
alone. But the charge against Lord Ellenborough is that he has insulted
the religion of his own country and the religion of millions of the
Queen's Asiatic subjects in order to pay honour to an idol. And this the
right honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control calls a
trivial charge. Sir, I think it a very grave charge. Her Majesty is the
ruler of a larger heathen population than the world ever saw collected
under the sceptre of a Christian sovereign since the days of the Emperor
Theodosius. What the conduct of rulers in such circumstances ought to be
is one of the most important moral questions, one of the most important
political questions, that it is possible to conceive. There are subject
to the British rule in Asia a hundred millions of people who do not
profess the Christian faith. The Mahometans are a minority: but their
importance is much more than proportioned to their number: for they are
an united, a zealous, an ambitious, a warlike class. The great majority
of the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attached
to doctrines and rites which, considered merely with reference to the
temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. In
no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to
the moral and intellectual health of our race. The Brahminical mythology
is so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind which receives it
as truth; and with this absurd mythology is bound up an absurd system of
physics, an absurd geography, an absurd astronomy. Nor is this form
of Paganism more favourable to art than to science. Through the whole
Hindoo Pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling those
beautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient
Greece. All is hideous, and grotesque, and ignoble. As this superstition
is of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all superstitions
the most inelegant, so is it of all superstitions the most immoral.
Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts of
public worship. The courtesans are as much a part of the establishment
of the temple, as much ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimes
against life, crimes against property, are not only permitted but
enjoined by this odious theology. But for our interference human victims
would still be offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid
on the pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her own
children. It is by the command and under the especial protection of one
of the most powerful goddesses that the Thugs join themselves to the
unsuspecting traveller, make friends with him, slip the noose round his
neck, plunge their knives in his eyes, hide him in the earth, and divide
his money and baggage. I have read many examinations of Thugs; and I
particularly remember an altercation which took place between two
of those wretches in the presence of an English officer. One Thug
reproached the other for having been so irreligious as to spare the life
of a traveller when the omens indicated that their patroness required
a victim. "How could you let him go? How can you expect the goddess
to protect us if you disobey her commands? That is one of your North
country heresies." Now, Sir, it is a difficult matter to determine
in what way Christian rulers ought to deal with such superstitions as
these. We might have acted as the Spaniards acted in the New World. We
might have attempted to introduce our own religion by force. We might
have sent missionaries among the natives at the public charge. We might
have held out hopes of public employment to converts, and have imposed
civil disabilities on Mahometans and Pagans. But we did none of these
things; and herein we judged wisely. Our duty, as rulers, was to
preserve strict neutrality on all questions merely religious: and I
am not aware that we have ever swerved from strict neutrality for the
purpose of making proselytes to our own faith. But we have, I am
sorry to say, sometimes deviated from the right path in the opposite
direction. Some Englishmen, who have held high office in India, seem to
have thought that the only religion which was not entitled to toleration
and to respect was Christianity. They regarded every Christian
missionary with extreme jealousy and disdain; and they suffered the
most atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hindoo superstition, to be
perpetrated in open day. It is lamentable to think how long after our
power was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting the first
and plainest duty of the civil magistrate, suffered the practices of
infanticide and Suttee to continue unchecked. We decorated the temples
of the false gods. We provided the dancing girls. We gilded and painted
the images to which our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired and
embellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees flung
themselves at every festival to be crushed to death. We sent guards of
honour to escort pilgrims to the places of worship. We actually made
oblations at the shrines of idols. All this was considered, and is
still considered, by some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, as
profound policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, so senseless
a policy. We gained nothing by it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes of
those whom we meant to flatter. We led them to believe that we attached
no importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism.
Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding to
topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxious
for the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, so
speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to
discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice,
and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and
domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, which
has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servants
and playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treason
against humanity and civilisation.