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The Story of England’s

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‘THE
LOST DOMINION

The Story of England’s
Abdication in India

BY

Aly GAR LHIEE,

NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
LONDON: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

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COPYRIGHT 1925

Printed in Great BritainPREFACE.

Many are the lost possessions of England. From
some she has been driven in battle: others she
has abandoned through negligence: others she
has surrendered as useless and noxious: some
have been bartered.

The case of India is up to the present the
first and only example of the abandonment of
a valuable possession on moral grounds,

Whether the future historian will attribute
to the [mperial statesmen responsible the self-
denial of Washington or the self-denial of Sulla
will be for him to decide. It is by results that
policies are judged. The future only can show
whether this great abdication is not also a great
refusal. But may the good prevail.

{ am writing history and not polemics. I wish
to explain the reasons for the fall of the British
dominion in India. I do not, therefore, praise or
blame individuals. Indeed, as far as_ possible,
[ abstain from even naming the chief actors in

the drama. Nor do I censure or praise policies.vi PREFACE

Given the conditions, the policy naturally follows.
Nor am I writing to recommend or dissuade from
any future policy. I am neither a politician nor
a preacher. Nor am I called on to express dog-
matically approbation or disapprobation of current
views. I am not a moralist. Indeed, to my
mind there is much to be said on both sides.
The Imperialist is right, and so also is the Little
Englander. There is not in my mind any
absolute right or wrong. The question 1s qua
mente, and these men all had noble ideals.

One word of warning. I am not a realist.
When, then, I use the expressions ‘“ India,”
“England,” and the like, | do not thereby
imply that I believe there is any such entity in
rerum natura as, eg., India apart from the
actual sub-continent and its various inhabitants.
When, then, I say, ‘‘India did this or thought
this,” I am merely using a convenient abbrevia-
tion of the sentence, “At this time a good
many of the actual inhabitants of India did or
thought this.” Where there is any chance of
misunderstanding I have generally made ‘the
expression correspond to the thought.

NITED AUTCTTTAT ETAT ETCONTENTS.

CHAP,

I. THE INDIAN EMPIRE : : L
UO. THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
Ill. DISSIDENTS (I.) . . D1
IY. DISSIDENTS ({I.) . : : ; 54
V. THE RAJ wee GS
VI. THE REVOLT ; » Loo
VII. DECAY ; : 3 . 236

VI. THE DEATH AGONY ; ; ~« wor

IX, DISSOLUTIONMULES OSU ACUTE TCE

eae: EE
TUiteeer eect eae irey

 

iraLHE LOST DOMINION.

CHAPTER I.
THE INDIAN EMPIRE,

It began in trade, Under the Tudors the wealth
of England continually increased. That wealth was
invested in manufactures, and it became more and
more difficult to find markets. From much of the
habitable world English trade was excluded. To
much it was admitted only on sufferance, and
after paying heavy brokerage to the middleman.
As regards imports, winter-feeding of stock was
unknown: cattle were killed off at Martinmas ;
their salted flesh was the food even of the better
class for six months in the year. ‘T’his nutriment
was dry and unpalatable, and there was oreat de-
mand for spices. But English commerce was cut
off from direct communication with the splce-
bearing lands. This trade was a monopoly, first
of the Portuguese and then of the Dutch. The
accidental capture of a carrack (a Portuguese East-
Ael a SoS

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2 THE LOST DOMINION

Indiaman) attracted the attention of England, up
to that time rather turned westwards, to the East
as a possible market for English manufactures,
and as a source of supply for condiments. The
Dutch presumed on their monopoly to raise the
price of pepper to what the English consumer
thought a preposterous figure, and accordingly
some adventurous English merchants began to
trade in Indian seas.

The trade was not altogether satisfactory. The
East did not provide a very good market for
English manufactures. On the contrary, Oriental
manufactures threatened to compete with home
manufactures. Oriental products had therefore
to be paid for in specie, the export of which was
technically illegal. The trade was therefore, at
first, looked on with no very favourable eyes. At
last, however, it dawned on the economists of the
day that to send to India a shilling and to purchase
with that coin a pound of pepper, which you can
sell to the Spaniard for five shillings, does not
really drain off the silver of the country. It
soon became impossible to deny that the removal
of the staple for Oriental wares from Lisbon and
Amsterdam to London conferred on England many
subsidiary benefits. The Indian trade, therefore,
ere long became an object of solicitude to the
Government.

In order to regulate the trade, that is to avoid
cut-throat competition and speculation, to prevent

TETSU ETRE SESTOUEE LI LERtaES STE
A 4THE INDIAN EMPIRE 3

disorders in Indian seas, to ensure that the traders
in those seas should conduct themselves according
to the ordinary rules of commercial morality, and
to put the whole trade under powerful guardian-
ship, which could more easily protect the interests
of individual traders, a trading company was formed
under Royal Charter; and on the members of this
Company was conferred, by executive decree, a
monopoly of the trade with all countries between
the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.

This corporation was through the whole of the
Stewart period in close connection with the Crown,
and in the factious struggles at the end of that

—

period its influence was thrown on the Tory side.
Consequently when the Stewarts fell, the Com-
pany was menaced: its monopoly was disallowed ;
private enterprise in the East was encouraged.
The results were so disastrous that the Company,
purged of its Tory elements and strengthened by
new blood and fresh capital, was reconstituted, and
was now secured in its privileges by statute.
he East India Company thus became the creature
of Parliament.

Hor many years the Company did not trade
exclusively with India, and indeed their activities
were at first directed rather to the Spice Islands
of the Far East. Here they came into conflict
with the Dutch. The Dutch had by this time
built up a considerable territorial empire in those

remote regions. ‘There was no very powerfulMEPEREEESSES CORES SELAESCOSSSESELERSSRARSEADSS

—————E———————ioi eB J u | f i

4 THE LOST DOMINION

native government, and that the trader might be
gafe in his trading, 1t was necessary for him also
to be a sovereign. The British had no such
ambitions, and were unable or unwilling to obtain
political control of these far dominions. Therefore,
about the middle of the seventeenth century, they
were finally driven from those markets. From
Japan they were wholly excluded; in China they
had a precarious footing ; they knew nothing of
Australia, and the whole western coast of America
was subject to the actual or nominal superiority
of Spain. These latter regions were also unattrac-
tive. Therefore the British were forced to con-
centrate on India, and a rough sort of compromise
was entered into between them and the Dutch,
whereby India was assigned as a sphere of influence
to Britain, and the Islands to Holland. ‘The
Portuguese were by this time wholly negligible.
At this time India was still under the rule of
the Moghuls, though that monarchy was now enter-
ing on its decline. It was still able to keep the
peace, and its military and naval power was by no
means to be disregarded. Dreams of conquest for
a moment flitted before the eyes of one ambitious
director of the Company, and some attempts were
made to establish in India a territorial dominion
on the model of the Dutch. These attempts were
easily foiled by the generals of Aurangzeb. Thus
the sole frechold possessions of the Company in
the East remained the island of Bombay and its

THAT ear THT ;
a TER eg
° {" el ae | a +o aTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 5

dependencies, which original Portuguese conquests
had passed to the British Crown as part of the
dowry of the unfortunate wife of Charles the
Second, and from the Crown had been transferred
to the Company. For many years, therefore, the
Company was contented to carry on its business,
either in factories situated in some city of the
Moghul Empire—for the Moghul system allowed
a certain measure of self-government to such a
settlement of Frankish merchants,—or in trad-
ing stations leased from some feudatory of the
Moghul,

This situation of the LEnglish traders was
attended with certain inconveniences, especially
when the decline of the Moghul Empire became
pronounced, and even walled cities were not safe
from predatory raids. In the west of India trade
languished. Bombay, though a British possession,
was not regarded as a very suitable site for a
ereat centre of trade. It was on the open sea,
and was therefore exposed to pirates. The hinter-
land was sterile and thinly peopled, and Bombay
was in any case cut off from it by the Portuguese,
the Marathas, and the hills. Bengal was remote ;
Sindh was hostile. It was therefore on the east
coast of Madras, in the so-called Carnatic, that
the energies of the Company were concentrated.
Here the Company flourished, as small landed
proprietors and great merchants, for many years,

Then came the war of Jenkins’ Har. It seems6 THE LOST DOMINION

now well established (what was at one time in
doubt) that Jenkins at one time had had an ear,
and that it was cut off. But the whole business
reflected little credit on the common-sense of the
British people, or on the honesty of the politicians.
Both are, perhaps, capable of defence, and it 1s
now known that there was, at any rate, this justi-
fication for the howl for war, that there was
actually a conspiracy between the Bourbon Princes
for the suppression of British trade, and that
freedom of trade was becoming every year more
essential to the mere existence of Britain. The
war spread to India. There, as elsewhere, 1t went
against England, and the prestige of the French
grew. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle restored the
possessions of the Company, but that was rather
a reason for the French Company to try to
extinguish the rival firm by indirect means. The
French were more esteemed by the native powers
than the English, but there was this difficulty,
that the French Company, though also a great
trader, had never sufficient capital or goods to
satisfy the demands of the import and export
trade. Therefore the local rulers were unwilling
to allow the total extirpation of the English, who
were first and foremost traders, and therefore
excellent customers.

Reluctantly the servants of the Hast India
Company laid aside the ledger and yardstick, and
took to the drill-manual and musket. It was

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not till the daring and brilliant diplomacy and
strategy of the French chiefs seemed likely to
make that nation supreme over the whole of the
south of India, and till it appeared by evident
signs that the French intended to use that
supremacy to extirpate British trade, that the

ole
between rival local Indian chiefs, was actually a

;

British entered into a stru which, nominally

(y
ad )
a

combat between French and English, at a time
when there was formal peace between the Crowns.
That struggle was long drawn out and abounds
in thrilling and picturesque incidents, and ended
in the total annihilation of the French interest in
the south.

Gladly now would the Company have reverted
to the old state of things, whereby the territorial
sovereignty was left to the local princes, and the
British confined themselves to the position of
privileged traders. But such a retrograde step
was clearly impossible. The British had during
a generation of war built up a large army. They
had also entered into engagements with numerous
native chiefs and must preserve the means of
meeting those obligations. The army could there-
fore not be disbanded and must be paid. Terri-
torial revenues were therefore necessary. More-
over, should the British leave the field, others
would step in. The French after the Seven Years’
War fostered their colonies and marine, and their

hopes of vengeance. The Dutch showed ambitionsi el

8 THE LOST DOMINION

in the Indian field, where they already possessed
some settlements, and which was adjacent to their
important settlement of Ceylon. The memory of
the Danish, Prussian, and Imperial enterprises
was not extinct. Wisely, therefore, the British,
though reluctantly, resolved to retain what they
had won. They did this with a better conscience
because there was no one with a very clear title
to whom their conquests could be resigned. The
Moghul power was in these parts utterly extinct.
The Nizam’s claims were no better than those of
the English. The Nawab of the Carnatic was a
mere figurehead, and was apparently quite content
to be such.

Meanwhile in Bengal an extraordinary series of
accidents had given to the British the superiority
of that rich and important province, and it was
not difficult to connect the Carnatic with Bengal
by obtaining a cession of the wild and isolated no-
man’s-land which connected them.

This was the nucleus of the British dominion
in India.

This dominion was organised by Clive and
Hastings, extended by Wellesley, and established
by Lord Hastings. By the ‘twenties of the last
century all the Indian lands, with the exception
of the basin of the Indus, were ruled either im-
mediately by the British or by Princes acting
with them in ‘subordinate co-operation.” In the
meantime Russia had extended her Empire east-

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MILLERTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 9

wards and southwards, and showed evident signs of
attempting to establish an influence in the highly
if established and
consolidated, must evidently have proved fatal to

disorganised Afghanistan, which,
the British interests in India.
This attempt was clearly premature, but the
British thought necessary to counter it. They
therefore invaded Afghanistan, to discover that
the Afghans were not Indians, and that though to
beat the Afghans in the field was not difficult,
yet to pacify the country would be costly and
dangerous. The British accepted the verdict of
the Khurd Kabul Pass and withdrew from Afghan-
istan. But for a race of conquerors to show not
only that they can be defeated, but also that they
are prepared to accept defeat, is to give discon-
tented subjects and doubtful friends a dangerous
lesson, and the Afghan campaign had as inevitable
consequences the annexation of Sindh, two wars
with the Sikhs
The mutiny, however, was in the future. By

?

and ultimately the great mutiny.

1854 the whole of the sub-continent was British.

This extension of British dominion was an
inevitable necessity from the moment that the
British had any territorial possessions at all. A
civilised power which has valuable possessions, on
whose frontiers are weak and uncivilised states, is
forced in mere self-defence, or in order to fulfil the
most elementary duties of protection to its own
subjects, to extend its power until either 1t meets10 THE LOST DOMINION

some natural obstacle which renders further pro-
gress useless or impossible, or till its frontiers
become conterminous with those of some strong
power which can preserve the order of the marches.
Step by step, therefore, the British had advanced.
The Home Government was opposed to this
extension of British power. The Court of Directors,
which was not an ambitious body and regarded
dividends rather than glory as the proper objects
of desire by a trading company, dreaded such
extension as likely to endanger trade, and still
more likely to lead to the interference of the
Crown. The Company’s servants and even the
Governors-General were on the whole pacitic.

Events, however, proved too strong for pacificism.
To assert, therefore, that the British Empire of
India is the result of a series of unjust wars 1s a
calumny. With the exception of the annexation
of Sindh, for which the Company was in no way
responsible, there is no instance of aggression
which was also successful.

The really shocking stories of our dealings with
Mir Jaafar and with Mysore are not stories of
political aggression on peaceful neighbours. Here
is a mere saturnalia of impudent corruption, in
which were protagonists certain individual English-
men, some of whom happened to be employees of
the Company, but who were acting in clear
defiance of the orders of their superiors both in
England and in India.

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Some of the annexations of Dalhousie were an
unjustifiable exercise of power. They were not,
however, aggressions on independent states. They
were merely acts of internal administration where-
by territory, up to the present governed medi-
ately through vassal princes, was now converted
into immediate possessions of the Company. ‘This
may or may not have been a mistaken policy. It
was not in any way an example of an aggressive
foreign policy.

In 1854 Dalhousie could look about him with
satisfaction. The Empire of India had now ex-
tended to what appeared to be its natural
boundaries. Inside those natural boundaries the
will of the Company was supreme. ‘There was
nothing in the physical sphere that could shake
the dominion. This great empire had been won
by means for which there was no need to blush.
It was administered, according to the lights of
the rulers, for the benefit of the ruled. To those
who, brought up in a philosophy of utilitarianism,
imagined that Government was a mere mechanism,
there seemed no reason why the Company’s rule
should not endure eternally.

It is not difficult to ascertain why the Company
had been able to do what none of its predecessors
had done, that is to say, to extend its raj from
Assam to Peshawur, and from Hardwar to Cape
Comorin. It was a corporation and not an in-
dividual. Therefore it did not die of a fever, or12 THE LOST DOMINION

take to drink, or lavish public revenues on
concubines and mausolea, or appoint eunuchs and
pandars to important military and civil commands.
It was ruling in the Hast, but was not an Oriental
ruler.

Its governing body was composed of elderly
prudent merchants, many of them Scots. Such
a body was not in the least likely to plunge
into wild and romantic adventures. It was very
averse to war at all, and only engaged in it
when war was clearly necessary. That 1s to say,
it generally waited to be attacked, and for an
Indian state voluntarily to attack the Company
was an evident sign of some lack of prudence
in the Government of that state, or at any rate
of a restless spirit of aggression which made the
enemy of the Company dreaded also by its
Indian neighbours and rivals. The Company
therefore never lacked powerful allies. There was
thus never any general confederation among the
Native States against the Company.

The Company was wealthy. It possessed the
revenues of two rich provinces. Madras had
certainly been wasted by war, but its irrigation
system was intact, and in any case the devasta-
tion there was far less than elsewhere. Bengal
had suffered little if at all from invasion. The
Company had also the profits of its trade.
Having a certain reputation for honesty and good
faith, it was able to raise loans in India on terms

TS LE TER TELRVEUEL OUEST ETT ATT ETEL aa ee eee TITEL TESUEUUUTITE THE aT TUVEETTUTPRITATY Hilt
F he ‘ MERTACAEST LOSSES EE Peaeeal ECE UTETRETT EET TUTE UU Lc ei LidgbbietaTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 13

which, heavy as they seem in modern days,
filled its rivals with admiring despair. It had
behind it, ultimately, the credit and resources of
the City of London and the [Imperial Government.

For the greater part of this period its finances
were well administered. For the mercenary, there-
fore, the Company was an ideal paymaster, and
India was the happy hunting - ground of the
mercenary.

Except for a short time during the American
rebellion, the English had not only superiority
hut absolute dominion at sea. It was the dream
of various hostile powers to embarrass the British
Government by striking at its Indian trade,
and there were numerous comings and goings
of French and other agents. Confederacies ad-
mirable on paper were built up, but dissolved
as goon as it was discovered that no Kuropean
power had the faintest chance of throwing any
considerable military force into the country. The
existence of these intrigues was rather a cause
for the extension of British power.

The British wielded a formidable military power.
In addition to the European troops, both those
of the Royal and of the Companys army, there
was an ever-increasing establishment of Indian
troops. The French were the first to employ
sepoys, but it was the English who discovered

that it was possible to discipline them, and that

when disciplined they were capable of great1 eae ae a ge: Be

14 THE LOST DOMINION

things. The Indian soldier was not a mere
mercenary. Attracted no doubt into the service
of the Company by the lure of good and regular
pay and decent treatment, he developed a strange
sort of loyalty based on a belief in the ikbal
or numen of the Company. India was full of
masterless fighting men, and they rallied with
enthusiasm round the ever-victorious standards
of the Raj.

For many centuries it had been known in
Europe that the decision given at Adrianople in
A.D. 875 must be reversed. It was no longer
true that the cavalry arm was superior to the
infantry. ‘The introduction of the missile weapon,
first the long bow and then the musket, had
rendered the predominance of cavalry doubtful.
The invention of the bayonet, which armed the
infantryman with a weapon which was at once
a missile and a pike, still further weighted the
balance against the man on the horse. Then
came the revival of the Roman infantry drill
and tactics, which gave to the battalion or tertra
a flexibility and a power of alternating between
attack and defence which no cavalry force could
rival. Finally came the combination of the
three arms—a combination worked out during
the Thirty Years’ War— which rendered purely
cavalry tactics obsolete. Observant Franks had
noted, even in the palmy days of the Moghul
Tmpire, that there was nothing in India which

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could stand against a small force disciplined on
the European model, and this truth was amply

proved by the first successes of the French in

the Carnatic. India was still in the cavalry
stage. One of the early English historians

records the impression produced on him by a
charge of 10,000 horse— “be their valour and
discipline what it may,’—but it was soon found
that against even a very small brigade, provided
it was well drilled and disciplined, and well led,
the utmost power of Indian armies was applied
in vain. It was discovered also, what was pre-
viously unknown, that infantry can outmarch

and wear down cavalry. The invention of the

galloper oun made it certain that when the

ht to bay it would be

.

cavalry force was broug
broken up.

It is true that the Indian princes soon grasped
the superiority of the foreign tactics, and them-
selves formed military establishments on the
British model. But these were condemned to
inferiority to their original. In the first place,
the pick of the fighting men preferred the service
of the Company. In the second place, the foreign
mercenary—the Arab or the Afghan—was a poor
substitute for the European troops; in the third
place, there was a deficiency of officers. The
tactic was really foreign to Indian ideas, and
Indian officers were incapable of wielding it.

The Indian princes therefore engaged Huropean16 THE LOST DOMINION

mercenary officers. But valiant and loyal as
these men were, they were yet mercenaries
and foreigners, and were mistrusted even by
their own employers as such. The princes there-
fore dreaded to make the corps so officered too
perfect, and used their disciplined battalions
merely as subsidiary to the huge, useless, ex-
pensive and thoroughly noxious Asiatic armies
of the old type.

Desperate as the fighting therefore was be-
tween the Company’s forces and the disciplined
battalions of Mysore and Sindia and the Sikhs
—the disciplined battalions in the latter case
being supported by a formidable artillery,—the
conflict was never really in doubt. The struggle
with such of the powers as kept to the cavalry
tactic, but avoided pitched battles, was more
troublesome, but could end in one way only. It
was only the Afghan levée-en-masse which
proved unconquerable.

That levée-en-masse was the rising of a free
and turbulent people against a foreign invader
who wished, no doubt, to introduce order and
good government into a lawless land, but who
wished in the process to reduce the country to
foreign subjection. This was intolerable to the
Afghans. In India, the British encountered no
such moral obstacle. For eight hundred years the
country had been subject to the sway of
foreigners. Patriotism was an idea unknown to

MEL ERTE LAT UEET ATT LLETE ETSI TT] USER LAT CES a PUREE

MUTE eete ap libbibe laitTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 17

the Indian, as it is to the Oriental in general,
His attachment is to his own village, his own
community, his own religion. Thus a Guzerathi
Moslem is a Moslem living in Guzerat. To him
a Moslem from Timbuktu or from Constantinople
is a_ fellow - citizen. A Hindu or Christian
Guzerathi is a foreigner. His affections are not
territorial. In some rare cases, no doubt, the
nationality was so small and so concentrated in
one particular area, that there was patriotism in
our sense. Such was the case in Coore. In others
there was strong tribal attachment overriding
the general attachment to race and religion, and
it might be that the tribe had a confined and
compact territory. In this case again there was
something like local patriotism. Such was the
case in Bhopal or Nepal, But these were rare
and local exceptions to the general rule. And
as a matter of history, this local patriotism was
apt to invoke the aid of the British against
princes who were menacing the small nationality
or the isolated tribe. It was due to the inter-
vention of the British that Bhopal and Coorg
and the Rajput states preserved their municipal
independence. With the nationality of Nepal the
British soon established a modus vivendy.

The country, therefore, of the Hindu and the
Moslem was Hinduism and Islam, and not any
local area, and his ruler was Allah, or the gods,
and in no case any territorial prince. And there

B18 THE LOST DOMINION

was certainly nothing about any of the Indian
princes which made people anxious to die for
them. The collapse of the Moghul Empire had
left India a welter of weak states, ruled for the
most part by incompetent descendants of soldiers
of fortune, whose title was no better than that
of the Company, who were Just as much foreigners,
and who were far more oppressive. ‘There were,
with the exception of the Marathas, no great
Hindu rulers. The Moslems were degenerate.
From the beginning, the Moslem interest in India
had been maintained by a_ perpetual flow of
foreigners from Persia and Central Asia. ‘This
‘influx was now cut off by political changes in
those countries, and by the rise of the Sikh power
in the Punjab. The Mussulman ruler of the
eighteenth century was therefore, as a general
rule, the descendant in the third or fourth
generation of some Indianised Turkish or Persian
family. He showed his origin by softness and
effeminacy, modified by outbreaks of tigerish feroc-
ity. There was nothing attractive about these
cruel, spoiled children, the puppets and victims
of the harem. They were also for the most part
followers of a sect of Islam which was distasteful
to the Indian Moslem, and were therefore looked
on, in general, as little better than infidels.
Haidar Ali was a man of genius, and his son,
Tippu, an able vigorous Prince. As the estab-
lishers, maintainers, and propagators of Islam inTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 19

a region, even now the seat of a peculiar kind of
Hindu orthodoxy, they were to a certain extent
regarded as national leaders by the Moslems,
But this by itself was sufficient to alienate Hindu
sympathies. And their triumphs were not won
against Hindus and Christians only; they fell also
on the Moslem lands of the South, and the strange
restless reforming zeal of Tippu rendered him
highly suspect to orthodoxy.

The titular King of Delhi, after long yearning
for British protection, was at last able to obtain
it. Moslem intriguers were apt to use his name
and authority, but it was impossible for him to
assume an attitude of official Opposition to the
power which maintained him in a position of
dignity and affluence to which he had long been
a stranger.

The Marathas, who were in their own home-
lands a patriotic enough community, commended
themselves as rivals to the British neither to the
Hindu nor the Mussulman. In theory the state
was formed on a Hindu basis, and was intended
to form a rallying-point for a Hindu insurrection
against the Moslems. In practice it did annihi-
late the Moghul power, but proved equally oppres-
sive to Hindus and Mussulmans. Outside its own
homelands it performed none of the functions of
sovereignty, contenting itself with the exaction
of tribute from Hindu and Mussulman alike, and
supplementing these resources by campaigns whichPEERGTER:

} | i } : 4 | i
CNet eTeeaetaRe CRT Sm PT Pe

20 THE LOST DOMINION

were mere razzias. At a later period individual
Maratha chieftains set up independent monarchies,
but the individual Maratha was by no means a
popular figure outside the limits of his own land.

The Hindus, therefore, were without a leader,
or, worse, their leaders were generally abhorred.
The Moslems looked anxiously across the northern
frontiers of India, but no permanent help came
from there. The invasion of Nadir Shah gave
the coup-de-grdce to the Delhi monarchy. ‘The
invasions of Ahmad Shah broke the force of the
Marathas and gave Islam a breathing space, but
established no competent government in Indian
lands. Thus the Empire was without a master,
and might as well fall to the Company as to any
other claimant. There appeared nothing in the
rule of the Company which was a menace to
Hindu or Moslem orthodoxy. The servants of the
Company were of course Franks, and their cus-
toms were strange and disgusting. But they kept
themselves very much to themselves and did not
obtrude their ideas on the Indian. They were
supposed to be Christians, but showed no zeal
in the propagation of their religion, regarding
conversion, indeed, rather as a disqualification for
favour than a recommendation. The Company
seemed extremely reluctant to supply churches or
priests even for its own servants, and there seemed
to be no particular thirst among its employees
for these spiritual refreshments, It is sad that

eaeTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 21

the rulers should be infidels, but it is better than
that they should be persecuting bigots. The Com-
pany and its servants seemed also to have few
prejudices. It was guilty of what we should now
consider as rather scandalous compliances with
Hinduism. Also the two great religions were
protected by the laws and the administration.
The religious law, at any rate in so far as it
dealt with matters of inheritance and civil relations,
was enforced. And just as much as ‘'weedledum
was vexed that he could not persecute and mortily
Tweedledee, so he was gratified that Tweedledee
was not allowed to persecute and mortify him.
This religious indifference was not due to any
doubts on the part of the British people that
Christianity was superior to Hinduism and Islam,
or that Western civilization was superior to Hastern
civilization. But in the first place, the directorate
of the Company were traders, and the experience
of the Portuguese had shown that crusading and
trade do not really harmonise. ‘‘Sad it is, no
doubt, that our subjects should be Pagans and
Moslems, and therefore, presumably, doomed to
reprobation. But it is better to deal in trade
with solvent infidels than with orthodox bank-
co as far as the

CS

rupts.” The Company did not
Dutch, who, good Calvinists, and therefore in-
different to religious symbols, had no scruples in
purchasing the right to the lucrative trade of

Japan by trampling on the cross,22 THE LOST DOMINION

In the same way the Company did not interfere
with national customs. This was not because the
Company or its servants regarded the state of
Indian society with much approbation. ‘The ‘“‘sym-
pathetic officer” was yet to be born. The bar-
barous Briton of the eighteenth century, if told
it was his duty to sympathise with sodomy, poly-
gamy, child-marriage, sati, usury, perjury, forgery,
treason, and the other fruits of a decadent civili-
zation, would have answered with coarse brevity,
for there was no doubt that Indian civilization
was decadent. The Hindu civilization had, ages
ago, produced all the fruit of which it was cap-
able, and nothing more of profit could grow on
that sapless trunk. The Moslem civilization was
purely exotic, and dependent on continual rein-
forcement from the Moslem lands of the west.
Over those lands also the night was now creeping
fast; Islam under the hegemony of the Turk was
sunk in that deathlike sleep from which only
now there are signs of an awakening.

The Company was, however, tolerant, so long
as its customers had sufficient morality to pay
their debts and perform their contracts. Indi-
vidual Englishmen were as a general rule indiffer-
ent. The individual Englishman is apt to regard
all foreigners as a queer unintelligible unaccount-
able lot, who are obviously inferior, and cannot
be expected to comply with British ideas. To
reform the Indian seemed unadvisable, and wasTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 23

obviously quite hopeless. It was therefore not
attempted.

There were some ardent souls who hoped that by
an exhibition of a British model, and particularly
by the spread of English education, matters might
be improved. These persons were not looked On
with much favour, in official circles, as likely to
produce a dangerous ferment. They did not know
(what is, however, a fact) that a nation is capable
of reaching only a certain level of civilization.
When that level is reached a decline necessarily
takes place. The nation is then not capable either
of reaching again the same level of civilization from
which it has degenerated, or itself of developing
a new civilization. It is only by the introduction
not merely of new ideas but of fresh blood to such
an extent that the national stock is profoundly and
permanently modified, that any fresh progress can
be made. You cannot make a C3 man into a Al
man, or an Al man into a C3 man, by literary
education. But the error of the eighteenth century
(an error which is still vital enough) was the idea
of human perfectibility. The character and intelli-
gence of every man, according to this school, when
he is born, is a blank sheet of paper. It is the
duty of the educationalist to write on that sheet
of paper, and according to the inscription so will
the character of the human being be. ‘This doctrine,
neglecting as it does the influence of heredity, 1s

totally false and therefore exceedingly dangerous24 THE LOST DOMINION

for the politician, but its disciples in India were
not yet in a position of power, and its dangers were
not therefore yet apparent. Still islanded in his
own arrogance, the Englishman was perfectly satis-
fied with his own culture, lopsided as it was, and
his own vices, and had a contemptuous toleration
for those of the Indians.

And indeed the progress of decay of Indian
society was very marked. Religion as a moral
guide seemed to have vanished. Even the morality
which binds together buccaneers, the recognition of
the necessity of loyalty to your leader, of fidelity to
your ‘‘pal,” of keeping a promise to a confederate,
was rapidly growing obsolete. India, like Italy in
the fifteenth century, was a sort of traitor’s paradise.
With religion perished also the laws, for to the
Oriental it is religion and not the State which
forbids and commands. What there was of piety
and learning had withdrawn from the world and
taken refuge in the sanctuary or the forest. Corrup-
tion was universal. There were no tribunals and
no judges who made even a pretence of chastity.
If there had been there was no executive to enforce
decrees. The currency was debased. ‘Trade lan-
guished. Outside the British settlements manu-
factures disappeared. Over all the country for
three generations had revelled an endless, devas-
tating, inconclusive war. Vast areas of productive
lands had relapsed to forest.

To a people thus fevered, thus tortured, came theTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 25

British peace as a healing anodyne. The rule of

the Company was for twenty years oppressive
enough, but its oppressions were confined to the
powerful, and spared the peasant. Enough, how-
ever, of the tale of tyranny reached England to

_

shock public opinion, and the proper remedies were
appled. Since that time it cannot be denied (save
by those who would deny anything) that the British
Government has always sought for the material

welfare of its subjects, and has never consciously
and intentionally oppressed them. Further, the
British Government insisted on a high standard of
public morality among its servants and agents in
India. Warren Hastings, for instance, was perse-
cuted not so much for what he did, for all his
actions were severally justifiable, but for the way
he did it. It cannot escape the observer that here
was not an English statesman but a man applying
the Machiavelian ‘ Politics” to Eastern questions.
He was actually a beneficent ruler. Had policy
seemed to point towards oppression, he would as
easily have been a tyrant. His only guide was a
cold, passionless, acute, and unmoral intelligence.

The Company did not attempt to do much more
than perform the very elementary duties of a ruler.
[t kept order, administered justice, and guarded its
territories against the enemy, and in order to do
so, raised revenue. But it did all these things with
an efficiency hitherto unknown in India. To the
great mass of the péople the. Company's raj was26 THE LOST DOMINION

a paradise, and the peaceful inhabitants of all the
states in India prayed that it might be extended
to them. Lands abandoned for a century were
taken again into cultivation, cities were repopulated
or new emporia founded, commerce revived, temples
and mosques were built anew. ‘To the swashbuckler,
the brigand, the court parasite, the rule of the
Company was an evil thing, but these had played
their part long enough.

After a short and unedifying excursion into the
domain of Oriental intrigue, the Company and its
servants had decided that “ honesty was the best
policy.” The meaning of this much misunderstood
proverb is merely that to tell the truth is a valuable
diplomatic artifice. I do not think it 1s true, as so
often asserted, that the British do not make good
liars and intriguers. There is a certain amount of
evidence the other way, and I have no doubt that
in this field also the highly competent British nation
could far excel the Oriental. But on the whole, it
appeared that the British were likely to obtain their
ends more by getting a reputation for truth and
fidelity to their word than by deceit and fraud.
This was a new and valued trait in the ruler.

The subjects no doubt missed a certain lavishness
and display to which they were accustomed in
their rulers. They would not have minded a few
capricious acts of tyranny. They appreciated the
impartial justice, but recognised that that justice
was expensive, slow, and uncertain, and sighed

 

a ER CeTHE INDIAN EMPIRE 27

sometimes for the rapid despatch of the court of
the Kazi. They would have liked to see magnificent
palaces and pleasure-grounds testify to the taste,
wealth, and power of their rulers, provided they
were not erected on their own fields. They would
have rejoiced to see the troops after a victorious
campaign rewarded with lands and donatives. They
would not have objected to the erection of sumptuous
churches, provided that the mosques and temples
were also preserved and endowed. ‘They would
have thought it only proper that the Company
should endow learned and pious men of all religions
including their own. The absence of these attri-
butes of royalty puzzled them, but they shrugged
their shoulders, saying: “ These Franks are all mad,”
and enjoyed the peace and prosperity to which they
had become wholly unfamiliar.

The princes of India, mostly rescued from immi-
nent destruction by British protection, also benefited
by the general peace and prosperity of the sub-
continent. A competent ruler was allowed to go
very much his own way, even though that way was
not quite that of the British. In cases where it
was needed, the British Government gave private
counsel to an erring ruler. In more serious cases
it openly intervened. Im cases of gross tyranny
or rebellion, it preserved the dynasty by removing
the individual. It took little or no tribute from
the states, exacting, however, a rigorously strict

payment for services rendered. It was not till; j Tene
’ ae i t t H , ee j
OE agi Dn po GAPE A gS i ae acts Neen nn ee eee aie ee an a Sa aN tine een ne

28 THE LOST DOMINION

the end of this period that the idea became current
that it was the duty of the British Government
to extend the blessings of British rule to as many
Indians as possible, and that therefore, in cases of
misgovernment, it should not merely remove the
monarch, but abolish the dynasty, and should,
wherever an opportunity occurred, annex a princi-
pality when there was no direct heir. These
doctrines, when applied and laid down as general
principles, horrified and alienated the native princes,
but they were not prevalent till the fifties.

There is therefore no reason for surprise that
the British dominion spread over the sub-continent
with the ease and irresistibility of some natural
process.yA

CHAPTER Il.
THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.

AurnoucH theoretically India was the private
property of a private Company, it was impossible
for England to abstain from interference and con-
trol. The whole Kingdom was interested in Indian
trade; experience had shown that the Company
was unable to provide its Indian subjects with good
government, and incidents had occurred shocking
to humanity; at any moment imperial assistance
might be invoked to preserve or extend the
Company's possessions. At the same time neither
political party was much in favour of State inter-
ference with private rights. The Company was
also a corporation, and there were other powerful
corporations who were not anxious to allow the
establishment of a precedent, which a Government,
which might wish to interfere with them, might
invoke. The Company was itself extremely
influential.

After much heated controversy, and after various

abortive experiments, a compromise was arrived at30 THE LOST DOMINION

satisfactory to all parties. The Company retained
its trading rights unaffected. As a Sovereign it
controlled its officials in India through the Board
of Control, the president of which was a politician,
a member of one of the Houses, and was theoreti-
cally appointed by the King. Actually, of course,
he was appointed, subject to objection by the King,
by the Premier. The appointment was a political
appointment, and if the ministry fell the office was
vacated. According to the practice of the con-
stitution, therefore, the King’s ministry was
responsible for the acts of the administration in
India, and an adverse vote in the House of
Commons in respect of some act of the Indian
Government would lead to the fall of the
ministry.

Legally and theoretically the president had great
powers of overriding the wishes of the Company,
and on occasion he did so, but as a matter of
practice he was reluctant to come into conflict with
so powerful a corporation or with the wealthy and
influential members of it. The salary of the
president was paid by the Company, and did not,
therefore, figure on the Parliamentary estimates.
There was thus no regular and certain means by
which the opinion of the House of Commons as to
the administration could be elicited, but in cases
of importance particular questions could always
be discussed in the House on special motion. Such
occasions were not frequent, as it was felt thatTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA © 3l

India should not be a party matter, and that it

was sufficient for the House to lay down the

general lines of policy which it considered suitable
to

for India, leavin the constitutional authorities

the duty of settling details.

The Company held its privileges by statute, and
this statute always fixed a time when the Company
should cease to exercise these privileges. Before
that date it was necessary to pass another law.
This act of legislation was made the occasion of a
regular enquiry into the affairs of India, and the
new Act generally cut down the rights of the
Company in some way, or imposed on it duties
which the Legislature thought it was proper that
the Sovereign of India should assume.

The control thus exercised by the British people
was remote but effective. The system was and 1s,
in theory, absurd, but in practice it worked
admirably.

As regards the administration in India, 1t was
vested in a Governor-General. The (Governor-
General was appointed theoretically by the
Company, but actually, subject to representations
on the part of the Company, by the Minister. He

was almost invariably a peer belonging to the

party actually in power. His tenure of office was,
however, five years, and it often happened that a
Governor-General appointed by one party ad-
ministered India under the control of a ministry

composed of his political opponents. in contra-Se A EE

32 THE LOST DOMINION

distinction to the case of Ireland, the Governor-
General of India did not thereon resign.
Theoretically the Company might recall him.
Actually it never did so, unless there were other
reasons for this step than mere party differences.
Both parties were pretty well agreed as to the
general policy to be followed in India, and details
were best left to the local people. Occasionally, but
only occasionally, this lack of harmony in political
views between the Governor-General and the home
ministry led to friction. The Governor-Generalship
thus was not a political appointment.

The Governor-General was assisted by a council.
This consisted of a certain number of permanent
servants of the Company, with the addition of a
Commander-in-Chief. This latter might be a
servant of the Company or of the Crown. Later
on an English Jurist was appointed. This council
was more than a council. The members divided
among themselves the principal branches of ad-
ministration, and, though theoretically all executive
acts were the acts of the Governor-General-in-
Council, there was thus something like cabinet
responsibility. The individual member had con-
siderable control over his own departments. Im-
portant matters only were brought before the
plenum. The Governor-General was merely the
president of this board. As a member he had one
vote; as president he had, in cases of equality of
the opinion, a casting vote. But the power of theTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA — 33

Governor-General was actually creater than would
appear from this bald statement. In the first
place, it was etiquette that the Commander-in-Chief
always voted with him, except on purely military
subjects.

In the next place, there was no regulation as to
the quorum necessary for a decision, and if the
Governor-General was not at the seat of Govern-
ment, he might take the votes of such of the
members as were present. In the third place, the
evils of faction had been so clearly demonstrated,
and the natural weight of the opinion of a close
friend of the home ministry, a peer, and a
prominent politician, was so great, that members
were extremely reluctant to cross the Governor-

General. Finally

.

, IM very grave cases it was
possible for a Governor-General to override the
opinion (even the unanimous opinion) of his
council,

The council was appointed by the Crown. But
as regards the civilian members, the Crown, that
is the home ministry, acted on the recommendation
of the Governor-General. The appointment was
also for five years, and was not a political appoint-
ment. It might therefore well happen, and in
fact continually did happen, that a member of
council appointed by the recommendation of one
Governor-General was in office through nearly the
whole government of the succeeding Governor-
General, Thus there was a continuity of policy.
OSN ae RL RS NR

34. THE LOST DOMINION

Similar arrangements existed in the minor Pre-
sidencies of Bombay and Madras. Though the
Government of each of these Presidencies was
subordinate to the Government of India, yet their
Governments were also in direct relations with
the Board of Control.

Originally the Government of India was also the
Government for the whole of the north, Hven-
tually this was found inconvenient. Attempts
were made to set up the presidency system in
North India, but failed. Finally the old original
dominion of the Government of India was divided
into provinces, each of which was placed under
» Lieutenant-Governor, theoretically the mere
delegate of the Governor-General. This officer,
therefore, had no council, and of course had no
connection with the home Government. He was
appointed by the Governor-General, and an ex-
member of council was generally selected for the
post.

It will be seen that the common-sense of the
British people had carefully excluded from the
India system that bane of Colonial administration,
namely, the assignment of all the important and
lucrative posts at the disposal of the Crown to
political supporters, who contented themselves
with drawing the salary of the appointment, and
performed its duties through ill-paid deputies.
So inexpedient did it appear to permit this in
India, that it was provided that if the GovernorsTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA — 35

and Commanders-in-Chief left India, they at once
vacated their posts.

Nor were the minor executive appointments
available for the purposes of party corruption.

The rights of the Civil Service of India to these
appointments were recognised by custom and
statute. ‘his Civil Service was composed of men
who were the permanent employees of the Com-
pany. Originally they were clerks and writers

As t
became a sovereign, it appointed its writers and

engaged in England, and employed in India,
he

Company from a trading corporation

clerks to executive posts. At first the results
were not satisfactory. The salaries given by the
Company to its employees were wretched, but
they were allowed to supplement that miserable
salary by engaging in the lucrative inland and
coastwise trade. This was well enough while the
Company was a mere trader, dealing with exports
and imports on a grand scale. But for an execu-
tive officer to be also a trader is not so well, and
for an ill-paid executive officer, particularly a
Kuropean executive officer in a newly conquered
country, not to trade, and therefore to have no
legitimate means even of existence, is even worse.
Therefore the civil servants of the Company were
at first a corrupt and oppressive class, though far
less so than the Indian amla whom they had
superseded. ‘The scandals became intolerable, and
what was worse, the Company’s own _ interestened
aes a I I IS

 

36 THE LOST DOMINION

became menaced. The only possible remedy was
applied. The Civil Service was prohibited from
trading and taking gilts, and was paid on a scale
which enabled the members to live with extreme
comfort and dignity in India, and if prudent, to
accumulate a reasonable fortune. To these advan-
tages were added also in time a pension, and a
family provident fund, to both of which the officer
contributed from his pay.

Corruption and oppression being thus unne-
cessary, and the classes from which the Civil
Service were drawn not having any particular
love for unnecessary corruption and oppression,
the service became noted for purity, and every
member, therefore, felt it incumbent on himself
to preserve the traditions of the corps.

The recruitment of this service was left very much
to chance. A certain number of “ writerships”
were filled every year. The right to appoint was
distributed among the directors. A director might
appoint a relative of his own, or a relative of
some friend or political supporter, or the son or
nephew of some meritorious public servant, or he
might put his patronage at the disposal of the
President of the Board of Control, who would use
it for the purpose of rewarding political supporters.
Like many English institutions, the system was
theoretically unsound, but actually worked very
well. The same was the case in the Navy. The
directors were naturally anxious that their protegésTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA § 37

should do them credit, and were careful not to
appoint lads who might be unworthy. The Pre-
sident usually applied his patronage to securing
the Scotch vote in the House for the support of
the general administration, and in those days at
least it was almost impossible by any process of
selection to pitch on an incompetent Scot.

The civil servant, once appointed, served in India,
with rare intervals of leave home, for the whole
of his active life. From this class, which did not
number as many as a thousand, were selected
officials to fill all the higher executive and most
of the higher judicial posts in the Empire. From
them were selected the Members of Council, and
the staff of the higher administrative machine.
They were thus actually though not legally a
powerful corporation. To this corporation only
Huropeans were admitted.

[India was divided into provinces, which in their
turn were divided into districts. The district
might average about three thousand square miles.
In each district there was a collector who was
the principal executive officer, and invariably a
clvilian, and generally a Judge who was also
a member of the same service. ‘These ofhcers
might have under them assistants who would
usually be junior civilians; and deputies and
inferior agents who would be Indians or Indian-
born Europeans.

The District Administration was connected withee eee eT peer ae ener ree ae era EN RR

 

aT —

38 THE LOST DOMINION

the Provincial Administration, which in its turn
was connected with the Government of India, by
means of the Secretariat. There were several
Secretaries each in charge of a vast and growing
number of departments. The Secretariat, in the
interest of uniformity, controlled the District
Administration, and furnished the Provincial or
Imperial Government with information and recom-
mendations. The Secretaries and Under-Secretaries
were generally civilians.

One might have supposed that a service so small,
so closely connected by private and official ties, so
homogeneous in origin, possessing such a monop-
oly of power in all its branches, might have been
dangerous to the State, using its power for selfish,
personal, or sectional ends. This was not the
case. It is not, however, at present necessary to
ascertain why this was so.

The Governor-in-Council in the Presidencies,
and the Governor-General-in-Council for the rest
of India, were for the greater part of this period
also the legislature. Legislation was, however,
not effected by the issue of sudden and arbitrary
edicts. It was carried out formally and delib-
erately, and the laws when passed had to be regis-
tered in the Supreme Courts of the Presidencies
affected. Such laws might be disallowed by the
Directors of the Company, but till they were so
disallowed were valid unless they conflicted directly
with some Imperial statute.THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA — 39

There were two systems of Courts in India. There
were the Company’s Courts, which had jurisdiction
over the whole of India outside the Presidency
towns, the judges of which were civilians, and
there were the Kine’s Courts in the Presidency
towns; the judges of these latter Courts were
barristers or advocates appointed by the Crown.
The East India Company, though exercising
sovereion rights, was not in the eve of the law

a sovereign, and it could therefore be sued in the
King’s Courts, and the validity of its acts and of
the acts of its officers thus questioned. Very high
officials were, however, exempt from the criminal
jurisdiction of those Courts, and the law provided
for a special tribunal to try Indian delinquents,
which never actually sat. The power of impeach-
ment by the Commons before the House of Lords
(which was the process applied to Warren Hastings)
still exists; and possibly also the legal fictions
whereby the King’s Bench assumes jurisdiction over

crimes committed outside the four seas.

The army was officered exclusively by English-
men. There was a small body of European
troops recruited by the Company, and a larger
number of Royal troops; but the main defence
of India was entrusted to the Indian Army.
This vast body, recruited from the whole of the
sub-continent and its adjacent areas, numbered
about 250,000 at the time of the Mutiny, as
against a force of the paper strength of 50,000

es -40 THE LOST DOMINION

European troops. It was in no way homogeneous,
and was composed of units of very varying military
value. All the regimental non - commissioned
officers, with the exception of one Huropean
sergeant in each regiment, were Indians. ‘There
was also a corps of Indian officers who held the
Company's commission, but all these were inferior
in rank to the European commissioned officers who
filled the grades from ensign upwards. This corps
of European officers was a permanent corps of
servants of the Company, appointed in the same
way and drawn from the same classes as the civil
servants. Service in the Jndian Army was eagerly
sought by young men of military tastes who had
no private means, and to whom, therefore, the
British service in time of peace was closed. Such
men were likely to be the sons of military officers,
and service in this force tended in the Huropean
as in the Indian ranks to become a _ hereditary
profession. ‘There was much jealousy between the
officers of the Indian Army and the Civil Service
on the one hand, and between those officers and
the Royal officers on the other. Service in the
Indian Army, agreeable enough in time of war to
the young, became very tedious as the ofhicer
advanced in years. Promotion was slow and the
duties monotonous. The talented young officer
therefore did his best to escape from regimental
duty either into an Irregular corps or into some
civil or quasi-civil employment. In the regimentsa —

THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 41

were left either very keen soldiers or disheartened
old men who ought long ago to have been
superseded.

None of the other departments which now
function in India had been created, with the ex-
ception of the medical department. The Company
provided free medical attendance for its employees,
both military and civil, and was therefore obliged
to keep up a corps of military surgeons. These
were of course all Kuropeans.

The trading privileges of the Company, gradually
diminished, were towards the end of this period
wholly abolished. In accordance with the ideas
of the Manchester school, the trade of India was
thrown open to the whole world. In accordance
also with the doctrines of that school the trade was
free. The sole relics of the trading activity of the
Company were now the monopolies in salt and
opium.

Such was the Government of India, and such
up till recently it, with slight modifications, re-
mained. It was an autocracy. It had not, how-
ever, the malignant properties of an autocracy.

In the first place, it was the creature of the law
of a free people. The same power which created
it and maintained it might abolish it. It had no
claims to divinity or to peculiar relations with the
Almighty. It knew well enough that it would
have to justify its existence and its policy before

public opinion in England, and it well knew42 THE LOST DOMINION

that that public opinion would never tolerate
oppression.

In the next place, its superior agents and
supreme directorate were men trained in the
atmosphere of a free state, and a free state
particularly jealous of paternal government. Its
officials were therefore by no means men who
would have been the servile tools of an oppressive
tyranny. They felt they had two duties, a duty
to India, and a duty to England. But they felt
that every one whose opinion was of any value
would feel that in doing their duty by India they
were also doing it by England. England required
no tribute from India. She did not ask for any
special privileges there. She looked merely to the
increasing wealth and prosperity of this valuable
market for her material reward, and to the con-
sciousness that she was ruling and benefiting three
hundred millions of the human race for the satis-
faction of her appetite for less material recompense.

The despotism was not only the creature of
law, but worked also through the law. It was
bound not only by Imperial statutes, but by its
own laws, and these were (because they could be
changed at will) preserved for the benefit of the
subject with peculiar sacredness. The Government
had no regal prerogatives. No act of it was legal
unless sanctioned by law, and every act, therefore,
could be controlled by the Royal Tribunals.

The principal objection to despotism is that itTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 43

destroys itself. The functioning of this smooth-
working efficient machine sooner or later destroys
the efficiency of the subject, and the more efficient
the despotism is, the more rapidly does this result
follow. The result is that the despotism, which
must draw its directors and servants from the
people thus emasculated, itself loses efficiency
and perishes with the nation which it has ruined.
But in India there was no such objection. In
the first place, the subject was already as inefficient
as millennia of despotism could make him. In the
next place, the despotism did not draw its direc-
torate, or principal officials, from this source at all.
To fill these posts it could draw on the vast and
unpolluted sources of administrative efficiency put
at its disposal by its intimate connection with a
tree people.

In Europe despotism is disliked largely because
it is inclined to interfere with private opinions,
especially in the religious field. The Indian des-
potism had no prejudices, and showed not the
slightest wish to interfere with its subjects beliefs
and practices, as long as such practices were not
mala in se. That it was a despotism was not
to its discredit in Indian eyes. ‘The Oriental
understands no other form of government. There
are many tendencious stories in Herodotus, but
the imaginary dialogue of the Persian nobles at
the death of Smerdis exceeds all bounds. To the

Oriental, if he could understand it, a democracy44 THE LOST DOMINION

would appear a mere irreligious anarchy, and an
aristocracy a confederate band of robbers. He
requires the rule of a master. That master must
rule according to the religious law and the customs
of the people. If he does not, he is removed;
for as there is no check to the royal power, so
there is no sanctity in a king.

That the Indian Empire employed only
Kuropeans in high office was not surprising to
the Indian or resented by him. He was used to
the rule of the foreigner. He regarded it as
only natural that the ruler should wish to benefit
his own clansmen, and should prefer to employ
people in whom, owing to their affinity to him,
he could trust. The Government had an uneasy
feeling that there was not enough scope for
ambitious native talent under their system, but
there was really no remedy. The Government had
in its first days been anxious to employ Indians
in the higher military and civil posts, but found
that it would not work. The temptations of the
situation working on men born and bred in the
atmosphere of the India of the eighteenth
century proved too much for their honesty and
loyalty. The Indian of that epoch was, moreover,
unsuitable for employment under the new régime.
Kducation of some sort was necessary, and with
rare exceptions the Indian of the more manly
castes, whether Hindu or Moslem, was averse
to education. This is still an _ insuperableTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 45

difficulty in India, though there are now some
races which are both manly and educated. But
in the rough India of the days of Clive and
Hastings, executive ability of a high order was

—

needed, and that was not, and is not, to be found

among the literate classes. Moreover, it was not
the intention of England or the Company to set
up an Oriental despotism fortified by the arts
and arms of the West. They wished to give
India the Government worthy of, and possible in,
an Oriental country which was a dependency
of a Christian and European Empire. For the
administration of such a Government the Oriental,
without even that veneer of Western culture that
he now possesses, was wholly useless. He was
therefore excluded from it. The Government
consoled itself by reflecting that a great part of
India was under native princes, and that in
those areas native talent would find ample scope
for employment, without embarrassing itself or
the Government by forced participation in un-
familiar and distasteful policies.

To the subject scourged for centuries by a
corrupt amla, the removal of his fellow-country-
men from high posts in the administration was
an immense relief, and his sole regret was that
he could not be delivered also from the rapacious
Indian underlings who, under the new régime,
seemed to cross his path at every turn.

In a country where nepotism is not a vice. —- NS ee ea — a
en en Te eae a et STO Oterrer roe eee RT ID aS ENS ee SSS TT a ae i =

46 THE LOST DOMINION

but a sacred duty, it was no small boon to be
freed from the necessity of providing for a
whole horde of relations and hangers-on of the
principal executive officers of the country. In a
country lacerated by such bitter racial and re-
ligious factions, it was no small comfort to know
that the last word was with an official who was
no more interested in the petty squabbles of the
time than Gallic. No Indian will ever believe
that any fellow-countryman of his can be so
lost to all decent feeling as to sacrifice at the
shrine of an abstract virtue like impartiality the
interests of those who should be most dear
to him.

The administration was perhaps, according to
modern ideas, somewhat conservative and unpro-
gressive. The European officer cut off from
England and from the free influx of English
ideas, living for most of his life in a small
coterie, in receipt of a regular salary, rising from
post to post by mere length of service, was apt
to stagnate; and was content to carry on the
administration on lines already laid down without
trying experiments, which could not benefit him
personally, which might give him much trouble,
and which after all might prove noxious. That
is to say, the European in India became intel-
lectually somewhat Orientalised. But this was
not a bad property of one entrusted with the
Government of Orientals, nor is too rapid pro-
gress advisable in a country essentially con-THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 47

servative and extremely resentful of changes
forced on it from without.

Such then was the progress and history of
the Indian Government during the three genera-
tions which lay between Plassey and the Mutiny.
It is unnecessary to go into the history of the
Mutiny or to try to ascertain its causes. What
is the cause why a horse shies and stumbles ?
Why is the rider shaken but not unseated? Does
it matter very much, provided the horse does
not break its knees, and the rider does not loose
his nerve? All that is necessary is to remark
that the Mutiny was in no way a national revolt,
except in Oudh, which was hardly part of the
British dominions; the Mutiny was a military
rebellion. ‘To the rebellious soldiers added them-
selves certain disorderly elements of the civil
population, but the mass of the respectable
inhabitants were at worst neutral. The princes,
after a little natural hesitation, and with a certain
amount of precautionary hedging, joined with
cordiality the banners that were obviously destined
to be crowned with victory. When the military
force of the rebellion was broken, peace was
rapidly restored. The power of the Company had
proved unshakeable by the temporal force. It
remained to be seen whether in the spiritual
sphere any ally was to be found for the East,
now, after a long truce, about to engage again
in its secular struggle against the West. Perhaps
some god might come to aid, and Clyde and48 THE LOST DOMINION

Canning, admirable men as they were, were
clearly unfitted to contend with gods.

The defect of the Government of India was
not that it was autocratic, but that it was
mechanic. It was a thing of human invention
imposed by foreigners, not an organisation grow-
ing naturally out of national institutions. There
have been many admirable and many tolerable
mechanical Governments, such as that of the
Roman Empire or of Russia, but the philosophic
enquirer will condemn them except as a desperate
remedy for desperate ills. If it is impossible for
the nation to evolve out of itself an organic
Government (of however low a type) which can
preserve the peace and protect the nation from
the foreign foe, then it is probably better for the
nation to put itself under some mechanical
government rather than immediately to perish. In
some cases, a mechanical government has been
transmuted by a vigorous nationality into a living
organism, but this is very rare. The machine,
however skilfully constructed and carefully tended,
must eventually wear out and then there is
nothing for it but the scrap-heap. Thus a
Rolls-Royce is no doubt a more agreeable vehicle
than a one-horse chaise drawn by some miserable
garron. But in ten years your car will be an
unseemly heap of rusted iron. A thousand years
hence some Kelipse or Persimmon may count the
garron among its ancestors. In the organismTHE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 49

 

there is at least this one thing—life,—and while
there is life there is hope. Had then the British,
in establishing their dominion by means of the
elaborate and artful mechanism called the Indian
Government, destroyed some living organism,
or even the rudimentary germ of such an organ-
ism, they could not at the bar of history plead

bP

“not guilty.” They must throw themselves on
the mercy of the court, and plead extenuating
circumstances,

To my mind no such guilt attaches to the British
nation. In view of the extreme decadence into
which the Indian peoples had sunk, of the degrada-
tion of the national character, the lack of the flexi-
bility in the national intellect, India could not, in
the short time left to her before the interference
of the foreigner would have become serious, have
organised any sort of national Government which
could have kept the foreigner at bay. Indeed, it
is extremely doubtful to me whether, even had the
foreigner by some accident been excluded, there
would have been anything of more importance than
the emergence in a province or two of some fairly
vigorous sultanate. In order to develop a national
Government you must have a nation, and there was,
and is. no Indian nation. There is an India as there
is a Europe, but there is no more an Indian nation
than there is a European nation. Just as nothing
but strong compulsion from the outside will ever
bind the nations of Europe North of the Balkans

DPai saa BEAEGES

peminmnets ua mt hn te faa RI Pare EOE AT OE A TN MT STR Sn a TE Nn OE NIT

50 THE LOST DOMINION

and West of the Vistula into one confederated state,
so it was only the rough compression of the foreign
conqueror which has given to India the semblance
of unity. This question is still swb judsce, but if
I am not wholly mistaken, there is no doubt as
to what the ultimate finding of the final tribunal
will be.

Therefore the English were in no way to blame
for setting up the Indian Empire. It is true that
a grove of oaks is, because it is a collection of
organisms, a nobler thing than the hall, however
royal, which is built of the timber of those oaks
when cut down. But that consideration would not
induce the traveller overtaken by a rain-storm to
seek for shelter in a grove rather than in a hall.
So it was no discreditable thing to the British to
have constructed, from the shattered fragments of
the old Imperial organisation, a safe abiding-place
for so large a section of the human race. Its end
was certain. It must in time perish, whether the
destructive agency was the violence of human hands,
or the natural fury of the elements, or the chances
of flood or fire, or mere dry-rot ; but in the meantime
the Empire was a protection against the foe, the
city of refuge against the oppressor, the palace of
justice, the royal seat, a temple of the gods. Well-
guarded, it might last five hundred or a thousand
years, and if it then perished—well, all things must
perish, all human things pass, the gods alone are
immortal.CHAPTER. III.
DISSIDENTS (I).

OnE of the phenomena of history which it is need-
less to try to explain, and useless to deny, is the
secular struggle between East and West. Some
obscure impulse brought the Persian to the Strymon,
the Arab to Tours, and the Turk to Vienna. Some
obscure influence led the phalanx to the Indus, and
the eagles to the gates of Ctesiphon. In this
struggle there were brilliant but irrelevant episodes,
which seemed mere interludes in the great spectacle.
Such were the Crusades and the rising of Mithridates.
Such was perhaps the adventure of British India.
Hor the last two hundred years there had been
a great “going forth of the Franks,” and the East
was restless. India was generally apathetic and
contented for the present. But there were some
men whose feelings were other. This class may be
figured under the imaginary character of Panditji.
Panditji then was a man of the Brahmin caste ;
to him was due by birthright a lordship over
millions, a lordship which was the more firmly~, Se sae
OSE aoe ee Or tee nny
ie eee Pe ee

ee etl
ger

52 THE LOST DOMINION

established because it was not confirmed by tem-
poral sanctions. He found this lordship threatened.
That the foreigner ruled in India was in itself no
menace to his superiority. The foreigner had ruled
before, but the superiority of Panditji had been
rather confirmed than shaken by the rule of the
Scythian, the Pathan, and the Turk. The foreigners
who now exercised the rule of India showed small
respect to the claims of the Brahmin. They prided
themselves on their equal justice, and to them,
theoretically, the Brahmin and the sweeper were
all one. They had obviously a poor opinion of the
executive ability of all Indians, and showed evident
sions of intending to confine the Brahmin to a very
subaltern part in the administration. ‘They seemed
also radically to mistrust this caste, and to prefer
the Mussulman or even Hindus of inferior status.
The removal of the political career from the horizon
of the Brahmin would no doubt have been a serious
loss to him. Not only was such a career lucra-
tive, but while the Brahmin had his due influence
in Durbar, there was little chance of his superi-
ority in other fields being denied. The new system,
however, menaced Brahmin predominance in such
other fields. The foreigners were, nominally at
least, Christians, and therefore hostile to the caste
system. They made no attempt to propagate
their religion, but that did not affect the fact
that an opinion strongly held by the rulers 1s
bound to act in the sphere of administration.DISSIDENTS 53

They did attempt to propagate their culture, and
that also was radically hostile to the caste system.

Panditji, therefore, naturally enough—I am not

 

accusing him of selfishness disliked the in-
trusion of the West into what was essentially
an Eastern land. It 1s, after all, material interests
that have the final word. No man loves a system
which attacks his pride and pocket. He may,
however, conceal successfully from himself the real
reason why he is hostile to a régime which is
noxious to him, and in perfect good faith attri-
bute that hostility to religion, patriotism, or some
of the other causes which men invoke when they
wish to commit a baseness.

Panditji was therefore not inclined to love the
Enelish system, He also ceased to respect it.
He absorbed its culture and hated it. He knew
many Englishmen personally, and summed them
up as barbarians. He thought he was acquainted
with the English political and social system and
despised it. There seemed, therefore, nothing
which justified the continuance of the English
régime except the physical force of the conquerors.
But physical force, though an essential for an
Imperial race, is, if it stands by itself, no very
safe pillar of Empire. The force of the English
might be broken down by internal revolt, or by
foreign invasion, or by natural decay.

Might not the British dominion thus be broken
down? In the domain of force it has been54 THE LOST DOMINION

menaced. Haidar had nearly crushed it. The
Afehan and Sikh wars had shaken it. The Mutiny
had brought it near to annihilation. These attempts
had indeed failed, but new opportunities might
hereafter arise.

But Panditji has an aversion to physical force.
Not himself a warrior, and mistrusted by the
fighting races, it is safer to try the way of diplo-
macy. In fact, the principal defect of Panditji
as a statesman was always that he hoped, like
the Italian statesman of the cinque cento, to obtain
his ends ‘‘by finessing and trick,” forgetting that
in the rough game of politics the last word is
to the master of the legions. How many a web
has been spun by the Omental spider! And how
often, just when the fabric was perfect, enveloping
in a fine and glittering network, in which was no
single flaw, some blundering wasp, the contemptible
insect has shattered the whole delicate and radiant
snare with a few brusque, brutal, and purely in-
stinctive plunges.

Still it was possible to realise his policy with-
out force. All that was necessary was to convince
the British people or the British politicians that
to continue to rule India through a Kuropean
agency was unnecessary and indeed noxious. That,
ceterts paribus, it was only proper that India
should be ruled by the Indians was an axiom
admitted by everybody. Panditji hoped to con-
vince the West that not only abstract justice, butDISSIDENTS 55

imperious necessity, rendered the transfer of the
administration to indigenous hands a matter of
practical politics. That point gained, all was won.
The supremacy of Panditji in temporal as well
in spiritual affairs would, it appeared, be for ever
established. The defence of India from the foreign
foe, and even the maintenance of internal quiet,
might well be left to the Imperial forces. The
foreign religion exotic to [India would soon wither,
or might even be perverted to subserve the
purposes of Panditjii The dangerous foreign
culture kept in safe hands would be a mighty
weapon at the disposal of Panditji to deal with
the foreign rival and domestic enemy.

Panditji would have to play a part. It might
seem difficult to convince the world that he, to
whom caste was all in all, was really a democrat,
that a polygamist and a worshipper of the phallus
had much in common with Western civilization,
that a believer in a lofty, if nebulous, philosophy
was really an admirer of the shallow nominalism of
the West. But much might be done in a good
cause. Just as without in the least compromising
his Brahminhood, he had invested Akbar with the
sacred thread, and in return accepted the spiritual
guidance of The Most Great God, just as he had
in the drinking-parties of Jehangir capped the
merry monarch’s improper Persian verses, so he
might learn to talk the jargon of democracy and
utilitarianism.56 THE LOST DOMINION

Just so the newly-landed Greek in the household
of the Roman patrician must acquaint himself with
the lie of the land, and ascertain what are his
master’s political aims and associates, who are
the wife’s gallants, to whom does the daughter
wish to send an apple, what astrologer does the
son consult as to his father’s life. Thus, if the
goddess be propitious, he may come to mastery.
So it was necessary for Panditji to study the
whims and fancies of the people to whom the gods
had, for some wise purpose, for the moment granted
the sovereignty. And just as that same Greekling
would, if he were wise, also study the character of
his fellow-slaves, and especially that of the all-
important steward, so Panditji would not neglect
to study his own countrymen and the Government
of India.

The business was, no doubt, risky. The patrician
may take alarm and crucify the too-ambitious slave
before he has established his power. But the
prize was splendid, and there is to the Oriental,
and particularly to Panditji, something very
attractive in an intrigue as an intrigue, without
any particular reference to the possible profit.
The Occidental does not understand this trait—
which is, however, a basic part of the mental
and consequently often

 

constitution of the Indian,
cannot believe in the existence of intrigue, which
is patent as the day, and equally patently
childish. Panditji, with all his ability, is anDISSIDENTS 57

Oriental and must work with appropriate tools
and technique.

Such an observer would first turn his glance
towards England. The key to India is not in
Herat, and not in Delhi or Calcutta, but im
Whitehall. It was on the power and resolution of
the British people to retain India that the con-
tinuance of the Empire depended. As to the
physical power of Britain there was no doubt.
Armed rebellion by the Indians was hopeless.
Besides, there were no classes in India who were
both willing and able to rebel. Intervention by
the foreigner was unlikely. The British Navy
kept the seas. Russia, however much she might
manceuvre and bluff, had at present no serious
intention of jeopardising her very existence in a
creat war—that terrible test of national eth-
ciency,—or, if she did, of committing large armies
to the defiles of the Hindu Khush.

Moreover, there was the danger that in presence
of another mutiny (even if such were possible),
whether or not associated with foreign invasion,
the British people might be roused to swift and
ruthless repression. No doubt such repression
might be followed by reaction. The British people
might say, “Intolerable indeed must have been
the misgovernment which has driven the amiable
Oriental into insurrection against our beneficent
sway, and might introduce changes into the

Government. But who could guarantee that power

tn a NE Tr
a ee ee re
Re ones y ea eee

in58 THE LOST DOMINION

would pass into the right hands? Perhaps there
might be a movement towards setting up of more
feudatory states. This would never do. It would
seem then that actual insurrection (with or with-
out foreign invasion), though a possible policy,
was not the most desirable. There seemed little
hope of shaking the Government of India in India
by agitation. But would it not be possible so
to enfeeble that body that it would be unable to
function? If this could only be effected, organic
change would be necessary. That organic change
would be effected in London. Would it not
therefore be possible, by playing off the home
Government against the Indian Government, and
by appealing alternately to the various factions
who played their part on the political stage of
Westminster, to render such organic change
necessary, and to see that it was effected in a
manner likely to lead to the result that we desire ?
The political situation in England was not
unknown to Panditji. The idea which he formed
thereof, erroneous or not, was as follows: By
the reform of 32 the power of the great houses
had been broken, and the power of the King,
whether direct or indirect, was a thing of the past.
For about fifty years the country was under the
excellent but uninspiring rule of the middle class,
The period is one of social progress and increasing
prosperity at home, but of shame abroad, and a
total absence of any definite Imperial domesticDISSIDENTS 59

policy. There was no real difference between the
parties. ‘The alternations of the Government were
merely on the rotative system. It is felt that
Tweedledum has had enough of the sweets of
office. It is now the turn of Tweedledee. Five
years hence it will be the turn of a bloated and
satiated Tweedledee to give place to an esurient
Tweedledum. Just as the party system breaks
down when the nation is divided into two parties
whose basic principles are so antagonistic that the
members of one would rather appeal to the sword
than be governed by the other faction, so when
there is no difference of principle between the two
parties, politics are merely a May-game of faction
where the Tadpoles and Tapers play a not un-
profitable part. Under such a régime, principle
and patriotism rapidly vanish, and the test of
public spirit is merely whether the politician
possesses the amount of fidelity that must exist
between a successful quack and his accomplices.
Under such a régime national spirit must sink to
a low ebb.

The various suffrage acts enlarged the electorate
but produced little effect on politics. The “ people ¢
had not yet learned their power. Nothing there-
fore came to agitate the rather stagnant sea of
politics. Politics, indeed, became less and less
attractive as the rotation system became more
pronounced; and as the growth of the number
of the electorate, and the consequent development60 THE LOST DOMINION

of the machine, discouraged the young man of
ability from a political career, the affairs of the
country were thus more and more entrusted to
the old Parliamentary hands, to whom the results
of the next division, or at furthest the next election,
were more interesting than any attempt to fore-
cast the ultimate results of any policy. A ‘‘ good
cry” was therefore all-important, and the most
successful slogan was “A Free Breakfast Table.”

It is symptomatic of the real bankruptcy of
the age that the Laureate of this epoch was the
sweet-tongued Virgil, whose Eternal City was
Ascalon.

In such circumstances it is not to be wondered
at that to avoid war was the highest duty of the
statesman; and it was on the whole fortunate that
this fact was grasped, for the Crimea showed that
war cannot be successfully waged by politicians
who are no more than politicians. The nation
was not wholly averse to war. It was essential,
however, that the other party to the combat should
be defenceless.

As regards the Empire the question was, did it
pay? It was extremely doubtful whether it did
pay, and the general opinion was that the Colonies
were an infernal nuisance, and the sooner they
separated the better. Here again the British
Empire was fortunate, because where the Imperial
Government did interfere in Colonial affairs its
interference was highly pernicious, and had it beenDISSIDENTS 61

persisted in, would have driven the Colonials into
maddened revolt.

The British people were therefore fond of the
Indian Empire; it certainly did pay, and might
be relied on to furnish them with a perennial
crop of cheap laurels.

From this drugged sleep the British people
were awakened by a series of shocks. ‘The Russo-
Turkish war, the assumption of the Imperial title,
the shame of Majuba and the Soudan, the Home
Rule agitation, the scramble for Africa, the Boer
war, rendered the old careless optimism out of
date. People became interested in the Empire,
and Panditji saw that uninstructed interest might
be capable of being guided into strange paths.

For the British Electorate, whom some caprice
of Providence had made masters of the destinies
of the human race, were lamentably ignorant and
had no safe guides.

So matters stood at the death of Victoria. Then
came feverish years. All old things were passing,
and the nation, as if in despair, seemed to fling
itself wildly in any direction which promised it
relief from a growing feeling of approaching doom.
In the political arena the old figures were rapidly
vanishing, and the old cries becoming more and
more obsolete. Everybody knew, though they did
not confess it, that at home the parties would soon
be struggling for the survival of civilization, and

that abroad dangers were banking up which mighta er Sy en re

62 THE LOST DOMINION

settle all domestic disputes in the same manner
as the Turkish cannon had decided the differences
between azymote and zymote. Then came the
war, which proved, if it proved nothing else, that
the nation was still sound at heart, and that the
individual citizen was still ready to die for an
idea. But it proved even more clearly how worn
out was the whole apparatus of government, and
how possible it is for a great nation to be content
to take its leaders from the pettiest of men. The
war and its aftermath led to the final disappearance
of the old parties. It became more and more clear
that there were only two parties in England, the
subversives and the Conservatives.

The old Tory party, which had at least a con-
structive policy, had perished. It could not survive
the treason of its leader twice repeated, and the
crushing defeat of the first Reform Bill. Its
successor, the Conservative party, was annihilated
by a third treason, and after lingering for nearly
twenty years as a mere faction, was merged in
the Unionist party. The name of this party is
sufficient to condemn it. It was obviously pledged
to the mere negative policy of preserving a
Mezentian union, a union which was, in any case,
certain to be dissolved as soon as the Irish vote
became the arbiter of the destinies of the Kingdom.
When the Unionist party did attempt to form a
constructive and positive policy it was annihilated.

The Unionist party rather tended to arrogate toDISSIDENTS 63

itself a particular interest in the Empire. But
this claim was not admitted by a considerable
section of the Liberal party. The Liberal Im-
perialist (if any such existed in fact) was, however,
hopelessly handicapped by the fact that the tail
of the party (a very important part of the anatomy
of the Liberal body), and the mass of its supporters
in the constituencies, still thought that there was
something dangerous and almost indecent about
the idea of an empire. The Liberal Government
maintained the foreign policy of their predecessors,
neglecting, however, to provide the resources,
without which a brilliant foreign policy is a danger-
ous drug, and were loud in their homage to the
[Imperial idea. Would it not be possible to appeal
from the new to the old Liberals? Was there
not the chance that some veteran Liberal states-
man might be convinced that the old ways were
the best? Might not the chance of becoming

©

sponsors to a great and constructive act of states-

manship appeal even to the Liberal Imperialists,

naturally anxious to show that, while becoming
Imperialists, they had not ceased to be Liberals?

It was not to be expected that any party, Liberal
or Tory, would take very much trouble about India.
India did not command a single vote in the House ;
but the slaves of Jamaica had not commanded a
single vote, whereas their masters commanded
many. Nevertheless the conscience of the British
people insisted on the freedom of the slaves. Thea
eens Seem one mn

64 THE LOST DOMINION

Boers had not commanded a single vote, yet they
had once forced the British Government into a
shameful treaty, and once into a daring but magnil-
icent stroke of statesmanship. Surely, among the
motley hosts that followed the Liberal banner,
some group would be found, or some one statesman
of leading, who would set the feet of India on that
path down which Panditji wished to guide her.

The great Whig party, which organised itself
as a part of the constitution about the end of
the seventeenth century, and which committed
harikari (thus ending a mere post-mortem existence
of about thirty years) in 1865, had little to do
directly with the destinies of India. It made
one cynical attempt to secure the valuable
Indian patronage for itself. This attempt—lox's
East India Bill—was frustrated by means shock-
ing to the constitutionalist, and the party resigned
itself to hoping for a mere share of the golden
harvest which it had sought to monopolise. India
was treated a non-party question, and is equally
orateful to Whig and Tory Presidents of the
Board of Control.

That the Indian administration was a despotism
(though a legal despotism) was not shocking to
the genuine Whig. Just as the Jew imagined
that the revelations of Sinai and the promises
of Jehovah concerned him alone, and were in no
way communicated to the Gentile, so the real
Whig knew that the Gospel of 1688 was revealed,DISSIDENTS 65

and the blood of the martyrs, Hampden and

Russell, and Sidney and Titus Oates, was shed
certainly for the Englishman ; probably for the
Scot, possibly for the Colonial and [rishman, but
in no way for the foreigner, and least of all for
the man of colour.

This was perhaps fortunate, because the genuine
Whig doctrines were highly oligarchical, and
were thus unattractive to those who are not
enamoured of that austere and insolent domina-
tion. I do not mean the real arcana of the
party, which may be summed up in the phrase,
“It is essential to the well-being of the human
race that all the descendants of Lord Gower
should be provided with a place”; but the more
common and vulgated doctrines. These doctrines
took form during the century-long struggle
between the Stewart kings on the one side, and
the richer burghers and the greater landed
aristocracy on the other. “The executive js
hostile to us. We must insist on trial by jury,
because otherwise the King, by means of his
creatures the judges, may put us to death. We
sist on religious freedom, at least for protestant
dissenters, because we expect political support
from schismatics; the Church also is suspected
of absolutist yearnings. We object to a standing
army because that might be used to put us
down; we insist on a free press, as we must be
allowed to attack our political enemies when in

EKee

66 THE LOST DOMINION

power. We rather value war, if trans - oceanic,
and provided we are not overtaxed, because
many of us are burghers, and we find profit m
that class of state activity. We insist on the
rigorous execution of the existing laws, just as
the whist-player insists on rigorous compliance
with the rules of the game; and because we
have a great body of legal talent at our dis-
posal, which will enable us to use the laws for
our own purposes. We do not approve of con-
tinual _ legislation, because that throws all
‘nto confusion. Imagine a whist - table, where
the players might by a bare majority change
the rules from rubber to rubber. As the royal
power 1s hostile to us, and the executive power is
still nominally in the hands of the King, it is
graceful to be theoretically a republican, especially
when in opposition; but the republic we admire
‘s the later Roman or the present Venetian state.
Jacobinism and democracy are still in the womb
of the future. Meantime, we will effectively
bridle the royal power by parliaments, in both
houses of which we will hold and maintain a
majority. We will scan carefully, or even with
malignancy, the use of the executive power, lest
any beginning of tyranny may escape notice.”
There was obviously much of value in these
doctrines, adopted in opposition but maintained
in power; but they were essentially negative
and therefore sterile, as is invariably the caseDISSIDENTS 67

with the ideas of oligarchies, Again, like all
oligarchies which are hereditary, but which are
not close corporations, the Whig oligarchy pro-
duced many competent administrators, and pos-
sessed a great quantity of second-rate political
ability. Like all oligarchies, it was extremely

jealous of genius, and, while using abhorred

g,
brilliant men, especially if such forced themselves
from outside into the sacred circle.

Lhe Whig formula offered no solution of Indian
problems. But the doctrine that government is
for the good of the subject, though not ex-
clusively a Whig doctrine, is derived with oreater
ease from the Whig than from the Tory theory,
and both Whig and Tory, in their dealings with
India, kept this doctrine steadily before them.
The Whig policy, in general, was one which
excited little enthusiasm except among the Whigs
themselves, But just as Judaism, spreading among
a Grecised population, left the narrow confines
of the Promised Land and became a universal]
religion in the form of Christianity, so Whiggism,
provincial as it was in its origin, was destined
to become the metropolis of a cosmopolitan creed.
It was the official faith of the revolted American
colonies, for it was to Whigeism that the revolu-
tion owed its justification and success, The
principle was studied, popularised, and univer-
salised in France. Whiggery indeed ‘started
back in horror at its spiritual offspring. But68 THE LOST DOMINION

the pure Whig had rarely been able to stand
alone. In the days before the party was any-
thing more than a faction, it had allied itself
with the fanatic, the rebel, the assassin, the
perjurer, the foreign spy, and the foreign enemy.
There is no particular blame to be attributed to
‘+ on this account. Those who are engaged im
a great and holy struggle must not, when the
day is going against them, be too nice in their
choice of allies. Later on, the Whig party
always had a considerable left wing whose
opinions were as abhorrent to the official leaders
of the party as they were to the Tories, but to
whose revolutionary ardour the orthodox were
forced to appeal for support. The revolutionary
hoped to use the Whig doctrines for the purpose
of paralysing the Government which kept him
out of whatever Paradise he, at the moment,
contemplated as realisable on earth. The Whig
knew that the forces of order were too strong
for the enthusiast, but had not the slightest
objection to using the energies of the anarchist
and the sympathies of the neutral elector with
those who promised him a speedy relief from
‘ntolerable conditions, to afirm his own pre-
dominance. There was always, therefore, in the
Whig ranks a mass, ever increasing, of extremists.
How this tail, growing in size and muscularity,
eventually succeeded in wagging the dog to which
‘+ was attached, and what was the fate of theDISSIDENTS 69

dog, and what will be the fate of the tail, may
be studied in any standard history and book of
political prognostications.

Whiggery has now perished, and Liberalism, its
favourite bastard, is fast perishing, but both have
left strong parties which regard themselves as
the legitimate heirs of those great inheritances,
These new parties by no means impose on them-
selves the self-denying ordinance of abstention
from interference in Indian affairs. It is necessary,
therefore, to discuss these parties and their
doctrines more at length.

In a certain degree every Englishman is a Whig.
The present British constitution is a Whig inven-
tion, and is certainly a wonderful and admirable
mechanism. By it, for the first time in the
history of institutions, faction, a passion natural
to man, but dangerous to the public weal, was
made an instrument of government. We are so
used to the scenic thunder of our mimic revolutions,
and so grateful to a system which appears to
require that no measure of importance should be
carried into execution without the assent of a
great majority of the citizens; so used to debates
which appeared to be serious enough; so used to
compromises between apparently irreconcilable
opinions; that the silent, smooth-working, efficient
Indian despotism appeared something monstrous.
The average Englishman is so used to amateur

legislators, and amateur administrators, that he70 THE LOST DOMINION

flatters himself that bureaucracy is unknown to
the English system; and the Indian system of
government by experts was unfamiliar and there-
fore suspect. There was no trial by jury in
India, and the judges were all paid servants of
the Crown, many of them removable at pleasure.
What guarantee was there for the safety of the
lives and property of the Indians? There was
indeed freedom of the press, freedom of associa-
tion, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. But
these franchises were held by a base tenure.
The despotism, as it permitted them according to
its pleasure, might theoretically revoke them at
will.

The constitutionalist, therefore, looked with a
somewhat uneasy eye on the Indian Empire. But
being a practical man, he was not inclined to
interfere with an institution of which he was
proud, and which was obviously conferring untold
benefits both on England and India. He doubted,
but acquiesced.

Some of the men of formal law felt rather
uneasy as to the success of the Indian experiment.
“If” they said “despotism and bureaucracy work
so well in India, may not that be perhaps at
some time used as an argument for introducing
something of the same system here?” Those who
knew anything of the history of Rome were aware
that the empire was the revenge of the provinces.
The fear was really baseless, because none of theDISSIDENTS 71

conditions which rendered the despotism desirable
in India existed in England, and the nature of
the case would have rendered it impossible that
a despotism and bureaucracy set up in England
could have been fenced round with the precautions
which render the system innocuous in India. No
one, however great an admirer he may have been
of the Indian system, ever supposed that its
introduction into any state accustomed to and
still capable of self-government was desirable.
Despotism and bureaucracy are the last resources
of a dying nation, which do but enable it to
postpone the fatal day of total dissolution. The
constitutionalist, therefore, on the whole, though
uneasy in his mind about India, did not think it
desirable actively to tamper with the general
administration, reserving himself for occasional
interference, when it appeared to him that the
Indian Government was straying too far from the
spirit of English institutions. This interference
did an enormous amount of good, and a certain
appreciable amount otf harm. It became more
baneful as agitators in India discovered that it
was possible to get sympathy among a powerful
English party, when they wished to attack certain
isolated acts of the administration. On the whole,
though, the existence of this party was a preser-
vative for many years. But as is only natural
when British statesmen in official positions began
to declare that the Indian administration must beSethe sere https

 

72 THE LOST DOMINION

brought more into harmony with current political
ideas, they found a sympathetic, if somewhat
surprised, audience among the constitutionalists.

Other relics of the Whig party found refuge
among the sentimentalists and subversives. Both
these parties have had considerable influence over
the destinies of India, and seem likely to have
more in the future. It will therefore be necessary
to deal with them at length. But before entering
upon that enquiry, it is necessary to attract
attention to the lonely and august figure of the
mugwump.

In India we do not call them mugwumps; they
are lumped together under a generic name which
it would be libellous to apply in print to any
class. I therefore use the word mugwump to
describe the members of a particular school. |
have borrowed the word from the United States,
but do not use it in the sense in which it is
there now applied. I return to the original
etymological meaning.

 

The mugwump is a superior person—a great
man. He is superior to the vulgar prejudices of

his race and age, particularly to those prejudices

which, being based on instinct and not on reason,
are probably deeply rooted, and on the whole,
presumably salutary. An instinct is a hereditary
race-memory, and was acquired by the race through
the method of survival. At one time, therefore,
it was essential to the security of the individual,DISSIDENTS 73

and therefore of his community, and the burden
of proof that such a race-memory now indicates
the road not of safety but of destruction is always
on the assertor.

The mugwump either does not possess these
instincts, or he refuses to regard them as safe
guides, and is eager to impress his views on the
community. Macialism, patriotiem, respect for
national honour are anathema to him. The
methods by which a healthy community will
vindicate its rights, punish dissidents, suppress
the foreign foe, are therefore, in his view, sinful.
The national ideals, the national religion, the
national morality are all suspect to him as being
tainted with particularism. He pays little respect
to use and wont. He considers anything as an
open question, the utility of which is to be tested
not by any apparatus of pragmatism, but by
the medizeval a priort and deductive method.

The mugwump is a convincing debater. His
methods of pleading are one of two. ‘There is the
cold demonstrative mugwump who deduces his
ethic by reasoning of the type of a flawless mathe-
matical theorem from his little bundle of axioms
and definitions. The fact that the definitions are
not necessarily accurate, and the axioms are not
axioms, but propositions of exceedingly doubtful
truth, is apt to escape the auditor. ‘There is the
emotional and rhetorical mugwump who can point
out with great force and power of ridicule thea a

 

74 THE LOST DOMINION

ilogicality and unreasonableness of prevalent ideas.
Here the defect of the process is that the ideas
are based not on reason but on instinct, and the
demonstration, therefore, that they are irrational 1s
no demonstration that they are not true.

The genuine and convinced mugwump 1s often
really a great man, and his disappearance would
be a sad loss to the world. There is little doubt
that theories based on instincts ought to be tested.
Many of the teachings of instinct are now erroneous,
and should be neglected. In some cases, the in-
stinct itself has now become obsolete, and is, there-
fore, a dangerous guide. It is probably chiefly by
the efforts of the mugwump that progress is made.

Some of the greatest men of the Huropean race
have been mugwumps. Cato of Utica was a
mugwump. In fact, the taunt of Cicero may be
regarded as the ultimate definition of mugwumpery.
“This man imagines that he is living in the
republic of Plato, instead of in the dregs of that
of Romulus.” . .. Dante was a mugwump; he
boasted with true mugwumpishness that he was
proud of having made a party to himself, and
as he loathed the Guelfs whom he had left, so he
abhorred the Ghibellines with whom he was allied.
The Girondins were strongly tainted with mug-
wumpery, and it is to this fact that the total

failure of continental liberalism is due. The
peoples felt blindly that this sort of thing will
never do. ‘This teaching is very admirable andDISSIDENTS 75

convincing, but it is clearly false. Let us vote
for the Catholics or the Socialists, who are in touch
with the questions of the day.” That liberalism
in England has been the great power that it has
been is due to the fact that the founders of the
party were practical politicians, and not idealogues.
Mugwumps there have been many in England, but
their influence has, up till recently, been negligible.
Now, in the general dissolution of the national
organisation—due not to the progress of en-

lishtenment, but to obscure economic causes,—the
mugwump is coming to his own. Use and wont,
and instinct, furnish in the England of to-day a
guidance which appears by no means safe, and
people are eagerly looking round for a new gospel.

Mugwumpery is unknown in the Kast,
instinct and use and wont are all powerful.
have been daring sceptics and teachers who have
lifted whole populations out of the ancient well-
trodden track into new ways, but they have invarl-
ably cloaked their scepticism, and have never used
the method of rationalism. Such mugwumpish
literature and teaching as exists in the Kast does
not pretend to be genuine. It is obviously and
confessedly an appeal by the Oriental fanatic for
the assistance and support of a faction powerful
among the masters.

In ancient days, the mugwump was not a popular
character. The Greek states formally legislated

against him, ‘The accusation by Anytus of Socrates,- A oe
a ae

Peettre ONT yee een Tchr Hs ioe Ft aaee CA i eee Lytenten® PTT th bn
toy! steel tM LLU ery Oro ae) a ee eb be ba |

a

on

 

 

76 THE LOST DOMINION

if translated into modern English, is nothing more
than an accusation of mugwumpery. The ‘“‘ Clouds”
to the intelligent reads much like one of the
“Noctes Ambrosian,” or a modern causerie in
‘Blackwood.’ And, indeed, the dialectic method
of Socrates was a terrible solvent applied to the
ancient world. It was not for many ages that the
teachings of the pupils of Socrates became the
basis of a new organisation which was to supersede
the old one. Socrates was to the ancient world
“The Vitruvius of Ruin.” It was more the mug-
wumpishness than the impiety of the Christians
which made the minds of the Roman statesmen
turn towards the toga molesta and the Numidian
lion.

We live under a milder dispensation, and the
mugwump is, in times of order, safe. His fate, in
times of revolution, is generally certain. Our mug-
wumps are safe enough, because we have found
out a way to give a lie to Critias, and our revolu-
tions have not yet been bloody; and in the United
States he has so far escaped anything worse than
tar and feathers. But in countries where “ political
changes are bringers of death,” a slaughter of the
mugwump is inevitable. He has generally ushered

in the revolution by destructive criticism of existing
institutions. At first, therefore, he is regarded as
an infallible oracle and divine leader by the revolu-
tionary party. As the struggle becomes intense,
power falls more and more into the hands ofDISSIDENTS 77

extremists and fanatics, and the one thing that
a fanatic will not tolerate is negative and destruc-
tive criticism. Hence the mugwump goes to the
tumbril amid the howls of joy of an enthusiastic
population. He has probably regretted when the
revolution (as it must, if it is to endure) settles
down into a state of equilibrium between the
extremists, but our sorrow for the Girondin must
not blind us to the fact that his proper place is
in the study or common-room, and not on the
tribune.

The Indian Empire was for long immune from
the attacks of the mugwump. There was a con-
vention that this part only of the Imperial system
was to be immune from destructive dialectic. This
convention, as the strife of parties at home became
more embittered, could not last; and it is not to
be expected that the Indian system will escape
criticism of the idealogue.

It is necessary, therefore, to see what the
principles of the modern mugwunp are. We can
then apply them to existing conditions in India,
and see how far the existence of the Indian Empire
is compatible with the undoubted influence of
mugwumpery in England. It 1s a great and
growing party.

For it must be remembered that, just as every
one who put on a cloak, and grew a beard, and
read Cleanthes, was by no means a Stoic, so the

ereat majority of those who talk the jargon ofa
Ei a
Ee

 

78 THE LOST DOMINION

the mugwump are not mugwumps at all. The
mugwump is generally a great intellect and a pure
character, and it is for that reason that he is really
rather lonely in the world. But he raises a banner
round which gathers a really infernal crew. The
pacificist, who is not a pacificist but a coward; the
conscientious objector without a conscience; the
internationalist who is an internationalist mainly
in the sphere of finance; the humanitarian who has
excellent personal reasons for objecting to jails
and the triangle; the frondeur who supposes that
the whole of existing society is banded together
to annoy him; the brocanteur who sees in the crash
of empires merely a magnificent opportunity for
peddling the remains ; the rebels and unemployables
to whom all existing things are abhorrent, and
on whom any organisation presses hardly; the
degenerates whose sin-excited nerves require a
détente, which the ordered system of things as
they are refuses; the disinherited who are moved
by malignancy against the thing which has ruined
them,—all these and many more—the old
party of Catiline—march to a more successful
Faesulae in the uniform and under the banner of
mugwumpery. These classes are increasing in
England, and possess a solidarity which the normal
classes lack.

It is worth while, therefore, to ascertain the
principles of the leaders and thus divine the plan

of campaign, And it is fortunate that we possessDISSIDENTS 79

a little work which will help us in ascertaining
what the whole doctrine of mugwumpery, in the
sphere of Imperial affairs, is at present. There is
a life of a recent English king which is written by
someone well acquainted with the doctrines of the
school. The book is one of pathological interest,
but at present it is chiefly of value to me as a
‘“Mugwump’s Manual,” or ‘‘ Defeatist’s Dictionary.”
This is not to say that the book is not otherwise
valuable. I find myself in agreement with a
great deal of it, but then I have myself strong
mugwumpish leanings, and I was always a
defeatist.

The doctrines which I extract from this work,
and from similar works, discussion of which is
relevant to the present enquiry, seem to be these.

There is no such thing as race. An Englishman
is a man living in England; a Frenchman is a man
living in France; an Andamanese is a man living
in the Andamans. If you took a family of Andam-
anese and settled them in Glasgow, then even in
the absence of interbreeding the descendants of
that family would become Scots.

Every race is entitled to self-determination. It
is entitled to retain its ancestral territories what-
ever may be the use to which it puts them. For
any foreign power to interfere 1s an act of tyranny.
It is particularly wrong for Britain to interfere.

Nevertheless, the said race is bound to conduct
its policy as we think fit. It must do what is

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80 THE LOST DOMINION

right and avoid what is wrong. What we think
right is right, what we think wrong is wrong.
Thus for the Boers to exclude settlers of British
blood from the franchise is right; for the
Rumanians to exclude Jews is wrong; for the
Zulus to massacre European settlers is right; for
the Turks to massacre Greeks or Armenians is
wrong.

Democracy is not merely a form of government.
Belief in democracy is a religion. Just as to the
Christian the teachings of Christianity are always
and universally true, so the democratic formula 1s
always and universally applicable. Wisdom is
from below.

Government from above is always wrong, and
particularly so when the government 1s autocratic.
The sole exception was the autocracy of Russia.
Dissenters are generally liberals; liberals are
generally democrats. ‘The Czar was a member
neither of the Church of England nor of the
Church of Rome. Therefore he was a dissenter,
and indeed an armed apostle of dissent. Therefore
the Russian Government was really a democracy
in disguise.

The people is always right, except the people of
Great Britain, which was apt for about fifty years
in the century to go wrong. They were too in-
clined to be led away by the jingo and by the
financier.

War is always wrong. ‘To wage aggressive warDISSIDENTS Sl

is the unpardonable sin. Almost as bad is to
prepare for a possible war. It is obvious that if
you do not prepare for war you cannot fight, and
that, therefore, you cannot commit the unpardon-
able sin. ‘lhe people of other countries are always
risht. There is, therefore, no reason to fear that
any one wil wage a war of mere aggression on
Kneland. If any other power does attack England,
it can only be because the right is on the side of
that power. In that case to resist would be sinful.
Therefore, as war must be either aggressive or
defensive, he who contemplates the waging of war
as a possibility is contemplating a sin. Such a
man is a jingo. A jingo is generally a fool,
but very frequently a knave who appeals to the
basest passions of the mob in order to gratify his
own childish ambitions. He is also generally the
tool or the accomplice of the financier. The
financier is grievously suspect. Any one who,
having lent money, should expect repayment, is
clearly a person of a base and sordid nature. So
obvious is this that it needs no demonstration, that
when a State interferes on behalf of a financier in
order to enable him to recover his claims from
foreign debtors, the rulers of the State are acting
merely from corrupt motives.

lt is wrong for the powerful to make use of their
power. Rights should never be pushed to extremes.
If you discover and disarm a burglar in your plate-
room, compound with him. Let him take the

FE82 THE LOST DOMINION

spoons, provided he will leave you the forks and
the ladles. It is unchivalrous to push a defeated
enemy too far. He is probably really right. It is
also dangerous. ‘This is particularly true about
the action of Governments, because Governments,
unless indeed the members of the Government are
mugwumps, which is rarely the case, are generally
wrong.

The Governments of the world, in so much as
pure democracy has not yet permanently triumphed,
are generally wrong, and are too much under the
influence of the jingo and the financier. In such
circumstances the Governments are capable of
great atrocities. Therefore, there is no antecedent
improbability that they will commit atrocities.
Therefore, any story, of however doubtful or sus-
pect an origin, is good evidence on which to
formulate an accusation of tyranny against a
Government or its agents.

Particularly is this true when the Government
is operating among “inferior” races. Although
“the people” is invariably good and wise, yet the
individual members of the people are ambitious,
rapacious, selfish, tyrannical and lecherous. Give
to any man the opportunity of being a Caligula
and he will become one. This is particularly true
of the Englishman.

My views are right. Any one who differs from
them and holds other views is wrong. At the best,
therefore, my opponent must be a fool. But theane

DISSIDENTS 83

truth of my opinion is so self-evident, that it is
hard for the most charitable to suppose that my
adversary is merely a bone-head. He is, I fear,
wilfully shutting his eyes to the light, and he can
only be actuated by some sinister and base motive.

The above does, I think, fairly represent the
doctrines of the modern mugwump, in so far as it
is necessary to ascertain them for the purposes of
this inquiry. For I am merely trying to ascertain
what the modern mugwump would think of the
India of to-day and of to-morrow.

It is unnecessary to criticise the above doctrines ;
they are obviously attractive. It is good that men
should be optimists. It is good that they should
have a high opinion of the nobleness of man. It
is good that men should hate tyranny. It is good
that the victor should spare the vanquished, It
is good that men should require that Governments
also should obey the moral law. But it is also
easy to see what ruin these principles can work,
not only in the physical but also in the moral
sphere, when they are applied, not by austere and
selfless men, but by the party of Catiline to the
furtherance of his anarchic purposes. ‘The children
of Belial, moreover, have by no means forgotten
the arts of their ancestor, and, like that unexalted
spirit, know how,

With words clothed in Reason’s garb,
To praise ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,

Not peace.:
}
j

 

84

CHAPTER IV.
DISSIDENTS (II)

ANOTHER party which regarded the Indian empire
with interested suspicion was the party of senti-
ment. It cannot be denied that this party was
of much service to the maintenance of the empire.
No section of public opinion in England was
likely to tolerate overt and confessed tyranny.
But there was always the risk that the governing
classes in their caste-prejudice, and the party of
material interests in their appetite for gain, might
shut their eyes and refuse to recognise as’oppression
what was really such. The empire was therefore
fortunate in possessing a very vocal and influential
class, which almost invariably threw its weight
into the scales of humanity and justice.

It is perhaps worth while to deal at some length
with this party—the humanitarian. No one has
yet written a history of sentimentality, though
perhaps the materials exist. Small traces are found
of it in classical times. Euripides may perhapsDISSIDENTS 85

be classed as a sentimentalist, but Euripides does
not represent even Athenian, much less Greek
thought. In Rome there are certain incidents,
such as the feelings of the populace at the elephant
massacre of Pompeius, the indignation aroused by
the execution of the slaves of Pedanius, the protests
against the first execution of Christians, that indi-
cate clearly enough that the sentiment was not
wholly absent from the city of the ergastulum and
the amphitheatre. In the Middle Ages, the senti-
ment was confined to the cloister, and was not by

any means found in every cloister. In England

it does not appear in any of the better writers of

Elizabethan and Jacobean days. The second half

of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the
eighteenth centuries were periods of progressive
brutalisation. A study of the Annual Register
from 1757 onwards is instructive enough. In the
earlier volumes human suffering is treated with a
calm callousness which is surprising. Later on, we
get sentimentalism in full blast over the question
of the negro, And both the real and the imaginary
wrongs of India excited for a time this passion (so
noble and yet so often irrational) to the full.

But in its modern form, the sentiment was
a discovery of the French. Rousseau and the
Encyclopedia are the Prophet and Law of what
was almost a new religion. This doctrine made
many converts among certain of the Whigs, but

it was suspect to the masses of the middle class,86 THE LOST DOMINION

on account of the lewdness and impiety with which
it was connected. It was not till it was combined
with a particular form of Christianity, and a
peculiar and strict code of morals, that it spread
among the political classes in England. How little
the doctrine derives from the doctrines of the
ancestors of the Liberal party may be realised with
ease by him who would consider how Cromwell
and St Vincent would have dealt with Governor
Wall on the one hand, and with Governor Hyre
on the other.

It is true that to hate injustice and cruelty is
the right of every man, and not of one particular
faction. It is more especially the duty of those
who administer affairs among a subject population
to cultivate that feeling. But severely to punish
those who openly set themselves against the laws,
promptly to crush an incipient rebellion ruthlessly,
to trample out a flagrant insurrection, these are
equally the duty of an administrator. When there
is a doubt some will give it 7m favorem vite, others
in favorem republice. And here is the difhculty.
It is no small check over a vigorous administrator
that he knows he will have to justify any act of
severity at the bar of a clamorous, powerful,. and
prejudiced tribunal.

This sentimentalism therefore, so long as it is
kept within due bounds

 

as long, that is to say,
as it is an advocate, and not a final tribunal,—is
a great power for good. The empire may continueDISSIDENTS 87

for a time under weak and timid administrators,
but an empire which habitually gives itself over
to injustice and oppression 1s not a city of God
but a den of thieves. Empire is consistent with
Arcadius. It is not consistent with Rhinotmetus.
The wise man was therefore duly grateful to Messrs
Stiggins and Chadband and their political associates,
and suppressed any temporary natural feelings of
indignation.

For the left wing of the party was very irritating.
The impatient young othcer was apt to say. “These

men are ignorant. They do not know that it 1s
possible to be as incontinent in the marriage-bed
as in the maison tolerée; that a man can be a
thief in his counting-house as well as on Bagshot
Heath: that the smug villa at Clapham, with its
gravel and calceolarias, may be a house of tyranny

?

)

no less than the castle of the Burgrave.

One is apt to figure this left wing as made up
of men married to elderly or unattractive Wl1ves ;
of widowers of middle age, with pale faces and
clammy hands; of unattractive virgins of tempera-
ment: of wives unhappily mated or sterile.
Symptomatic it seemed that this very party was
‘nterested above all in “ purity. Such types are
familiar to the alienist and the correctional police.
To such people the most fantastic tales of blood
and lust are agreeable, and therefore credible.

It is true also that this humanitarianism 1s apt

to be connected with a form of religion which to88 THE LOST DOMINION

many appears revolting. Their god is not the
Jehovah of the Calvinist, but the soft Syrian
Adonai. It is he who pardons the adulteress, not
he who decrees the death by stoning. It is he
who weeps over Jerusalem, not he who sends up
the legions against the perverse, rebellious city.
To them are attractive the tears and agony of
Gethsemane, the scourging in the pretorium, and
the blood—particularly the blood—of Calvary.

It was perhaps wrong to say of these extremists
that they thought it a sin to kiss a white girl’s
mouth, and a virtue to kiss a black man’s—
foot. But it is perhaps no exaggeration to say
that their humanity never slumbered save when
an Englishman was murdered, or an Englishwoman
violated by a negro or an Asiatic.

To this party the Indian empire was highly
suspect. ‘'here was the memory of the oppression
and extortion of the days of Vansittart. There
were the calumnies of Burke and Macaulay. There
was the fact that before the Mutiny many of the
officials in India lived lives which were, according
to Christian doctrines, reprehensible; there were
the exaggerated tales from the hills as to the
morals of more recent days. There are black
sheep in every community. Isolated cases of
corruption and oppression occurred from time to
time, and it was not always possible for an
administration which governed by law to punish
offenders with the severity that the public opinionDISSIDENTS 89

rightly demanded. There were too many men
who, while stainless and upright administrators
and valiant soldiers, adopted the blustering, bully-
ing, “damn-nigger” attitude. The administration
and the administrators had much distrust of the
missionary, and the missionary was the ally and
informant of this party. The local official, civil

or military, was rarely drawn from those classes

which furnished the bulk of the party, and if

he was, he soon lost all sympathy with them.

The axioms of Clapham were paradoxes in Caleutta.

The people of the cathedral and the people of

the chapel, the pupil of the public school and
the pupil of the select seminary—between these
there lie oceans of misunderstanding. In fact
the humanitarian knew that the Anglo-Indian
was not a Radical and doubted if he was a
Christian. Can anything good come out of a
system which is held together by men like these ?

The palace has its latrines; the temple its
sewers; the empire its swashbucklers, its con-
cessionaires, and its petty tyrants. There are per-
sons who prefer to direct their gaze towards that
which is sordid rather than to that which is
magnificent. There are those who are so blinded
by the magnificence that they forget the reverse.
He is to be envied who keeps a steady eye and
an impartial mind, and observes both, I suppose
Apollo is best pleased, not with him who is always
nosing about the lavatories, or him who concen-90 THE LOST DOMINION

trates on the sacellum, but with him who pays
due attention both to naos and apodyterium.
The influence of this party was damnatory to
India in two ways. In the first place, its mania
for atrocity-mongering was continually embarrassing
the administration in its attempts to suppress
crime. But at present it is necessary rather to
refer to the other branch of its activities

 

namely,
its tendency to press on the Government of India
measures which, desirable enough in the abstract,
were by no means acceptable to the Indian people.
Purity-legislation may be construed as an attack
on the Hindu family or the Hindu religion ;
factory acts, as an attempt to handicap the Oriental
rivals of Manchester ; opium legislation, as a wanton
interference with the habits of the people, or an
ill-judged attempt to embarrass the finances in the
interest of the British consumer of raw materials;
free trade, as an attack on the economic develop-
ment of the country; pacificism, as an attempt to
use the blood and treasure of India for extension
of British commerce. A long list might be given
of various measures, excellent in themselves, which
were pressed on the Indian Government, and
reluctantly adopted, or reluctantly rejected, in
each case rendering the good faith of the British
Government suspect.

The political Indian laughed in his sleeve at
the sentimentalist. The enthusiasm of the party

for purity was unintelligible to the Indian. TheDISSIDENTS 91

Oriental is saturated with sexuality from the cradle
to the grave. He regards the satisfaction of the
sexual instinct not as a thing to be tolerated or
apologised for, but as the duty of man. The
virgin of both sexes he regards as a traitor to
humanity. The Moslem steps into a more austere
world when he passes the door of the mosque,
‘but there is no monachism in Islam.” The Hindu
in most of his temples finds the divine power dis-
played chiefly in the energies of sex, and the
divine unity at the same time velled and mani-
fested by sexual symbols. A few devotees there

4
—
¢

were of both creeds who abjured allegiance to
sex, but the very fierceness of the revolt was con-
clusive proof of the predominance of the despotism
from which the ascetic freed himself.

The active humanitarianism of this party was
also surprising and unintelligible to the Indian.
Few Indians are cruel in the sense that we use that
term. To see blood and suffering rarely gives
pleasure to the Indian, whether a Hindu or a
Moslem of Indian ancestry. Exceptions there have
been, no doubt, some of the Moslem rulers 1n
particular having been victims of the blood-lust,
but it will generally be found that cruelty in India
has been the work of alien races, particularly
that of the Finno-Ugrian stock — the Turk.
Still less it is a pleasure to the Indians to
commit atrocities. Nor will he, as a judge, a

juror, or a legislator, countenance the shedding of92 THE LOST DOMINION

blood, or the actual infliction of positive physical
pain,

But this calm, and perhaps effeminate, repug-
nance to the infliction of suffering is very different
from the hysterical passion excited in the senti-
mentalist by the smell of blood. The Indian has
himself little fear of death, which he by no means
regards as the worst of ills. Whether a population
is annihilated by famine or the pestilence, by the
lance of the foreign foe or by the rifles of the
domestic ruler, is really a matter of very little
importance. Mere efflux of time would, anyhow,
in a few years have swept away alike victims and
oppressors, All men are under sentence of death ;
it is for the gods to decide when the sentence shall
be executed, and by whom. As regards pain, sad
it is that men should suffer; but existence, from its
inception to its end, is associated with suffering,
and he who will not pay the price can always
decline the prize. ‘‘ We will not ourselves inflict
pain on any sentient creature, because that is
a positive act, and therefore presumably sinful.
But we will not interfere to prevent the infliction
of pain or to alleviate the suffering of the victim,
because that again is a positive act, and may
well itself be sinful. In any case, we do not
understand how anybody can be so excited about
the sufferings of his brother, the man, and so
indifferent to the wrongs of his sister, the cow,
and his cousin, the bug.”DISSIDENTS 93

Massacre, as part of the activities of Govern-
ment, is by no means in itself abhorrent to the
mind of the Oriental, and the Indian was familiar
enough with it. There are several forms of the
political massacre, and there was nothing about
any of them which was repugnant to the Indian.
There is the massacre which is the resource of the
weak Government. If offences are not punished
from time to time, and particularly if dangerous
agitation is tolerated, then it invariably happens
that the Government must ultimately abdicate
or fight. In England, where the divergencies
between parties are not vital, the Government
abdicates: but should it ever be the case that
there was a revolutionary party in England which
obtained considerable strength, so that it felt
itself strone enough to defy the Government, but
which could not command sufficient political
support in the country to insist on the abdication
of the Government, then I suppose there would
be the solution by massacre. Matters have not
come to this pitch for many years in England,
because the parties have not yet been sufficiently
irreconcilable. The Gordon riots are perhaps
the only case in point. ‘here are, however,
precedents in British history which tend to show
that, when the occasion arises, the British will
display a surprising energy and thoroughness in
this branch of administration. The ‘‘administra-

tive massacre,” as this kind may be called, 18, ofiz
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94 THE LOST DOMINION

course, familiar enough to the Oriental. An
Oriental dynasty lasts for about seven generations.
The first three generations are generally repre-
sented by active and efficient rulers who have
fought their way to the throne and have a
summary method of disposing of enemies. ‘The
last two generations are represented by dolts and
dastards, and under them the kingdom is the
sport of powerful factions, contending as to which
should supply the new ruling house. The two
intermediate generations are represented by rulers
who neglect the affairs of the State, but are not
so incompetent that they can be set aside as a
matter of routine. In these two generations, then,
the administrative massacre is common. ‘The
ruler is, as I say, negligent, and allows particularist
factions to become strong. Eventually he finds
that some faction is dangerous, and yet cannot
be dealt with by the ordinary routine. He is
not prepared to abdicate; massacre is obviously
the only solution.

The Oriental has such a horror of anarchy, and
requires in the candidate for the throne such
evident proofs of his superiority to the actual
incumbent, that he will regard this administrative
massacre as highly laudable, rather than re-
prehensible. In fact the Oriental writer on
statecraft blames the over-weak rather than the
over-severe monarch.

There is an instructive story of one Ziyyad. HeDISSIDENTS 95

is known as Ziyyad-bin-Abihi, because there were
numerous claimants to his paternity. He, how-
ever, succeeded in affiliating himself to the clan
of Abu Sofian, which at that time ruled Islam.
He soon displayed great competence as an ad-
ministrator, and was specially appointed by the
Khalifa to govern Basra, Basra was a sort of
military colony, and the inhabitants (a very
mixed race) were both seditious and irreligious.
On his arrival at the seat of Government, Ziyyad
found matters in a sad state: the ordinances of
Islam openly flouted; strong Alid sympathies ;
no man’s property, and no woman’s honour safe.
So he called on the people to desist, and they
laughed at him. He found that much of the
crime and many other abominations were per-
petrated at night. People, instead of devoting
the dark hours to sleep or domestic duties, to
prayer or study, were perambulating the streets,
thronging the wine-shops, consorting with painted
women, frequenting proscribed conventicles, in-
vading the domiciles of the respectable, and
behaving generally like sons of Belial. Therefore
he issued an edict that no one should be found
in the streets and squares of the city after
evening prayer. So they laughed at him.

The first night he perambulated the city with a
competent armed ouard and executed four thou-
sand offenders; the next night four hundred. On

the third night he marched through a vast and96 THE LOST DOMINION

silent wilderness of empty streets and squares till
the dawn, when he came to a remote market-place.
Here was an old shepherd sleeping among his
flock. So the governor said to him: ‘‘ What make
you here?” The shepherd said that he had come
in during the night, before the gates were closed,
in order to sleep in the square, so as to be the
first at the market. ‘“ What about my edict?”
The shepherd had not heard of it. ‘‘It is the
duty of the subject to acquaint himself with the
laws.” The shepherd urged that he could not
read or write and lived in a remote district, and
was really unaware of the newrule. Ziyyad said,
“| acquit you of intentional disobedience, but
the matter does not rest there. If I once admit
excuses on the part of those who disobey the
laws, I shall be flooded with excuses. Excellent
ones too, most of them. Thus the laws will be
utterly set aside, the ordinances of Islam made
vain, the blood of those whom I have already
slain will have been shed uselessly, and I shall
be responsible before God for the blood that must
flow hereafter. And Paradise is better for you.”
So he slew him.

Ziyyad, as a strong supporter of the Ummaiyyids,
is not popular with Mussulman writers, and most
of them gently censure his dealings with the
shepherd, but his policy in general, as far as

keeping order goes, is regarded as a model.
To come nearer home, Muhammad Tughlak wasDISSIDENTS 97

a ruler of almost insane cruelty. He was otherwise
a great prince, scholar, ghazi, and ruler. His
cruelty was such that (a rare thing in the Kast)
the subjects revolted out of mere desperation, as
the Romans did from Maximin. We have a con-
temporaneous account of his times from the learned
and amiable Ibn Batuta, who twice himself nearly
perished at the hands of Muhammad. He does
censure the tyranny, but very mildly.

Another form of massacre not unknown to the
East is the political massacre. This differs from
the administrative massacre, because it 1s not
really necessary. It is done ex maore cautela,
If there is a party, or faction, which may become
powerful and so dangerous, it is often wise to
massacre it in time. This form of massacre ls
common enough in Europe, the most well-known
example being the St Bartholomew. It is gen-
erally approved of by Oriental public opinion.

Closely allied to the political massacre 1s the
pogrom, which is a massacre not carried out
directly by the armed forces of the Government,
but by its friends and sympathisers. This form
is not looked on with much approval by the
Oriental political writers. They do not in general
approve of amateur statesmanship and admin-
istrative effort, and prefer that the Government
should itself decide on the necessity of a massacre.
It of course often happens that the political
massacre begins as a pogrom and ends as an act

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98 THE LOST DOMINION

of state, and then the viciousness of its origin 1s
condoned by its ratification.

The wanton or capricious massacre by the
Government of persons to whom the ruler has
taken a personal dislike is not looked on with
approbation, though such an act is a true kingly
act, and the Oriental likes his king to be a king.
The slaughter of the sons of Barmak excited
horror and compassion owing to the nobility and
innocence of the sufferers, and the terrible peri-
pateia expressed in the two entries in the state
accounts: ‘‘To a robe of honour for Jaafar the
Barmaki, one hundred thousand dinars,’ and a
day or two after, “to reeds and oil for burning
the body of Jaafar the Barmaki, five farthings.”
But the Oriental regards Harun Al Rashid with
very different eyes to those with which we look
on Nero or Caligula.

To apply this to better-known instances, The
Oriental would approve of the tables of Sulla,
mildly and hesitatingly disapprove of the acts of
the three disciples, strongly reprobate the Cinnan
severities, and suspend judgment as to the dealings
with the Gracchans.

The political Indian, however he might smile at
the humanitarian, soon learned to use him. It
was found possible to represent almost any act
of severity ‘as a wanton massacre or unjustifiable
execution, or a gratuitous torture. Hence the
paralysis of the executive powers of the govern-DISSIDENTS 99

ment. Hence in due course disorders and hence
necessarily the shedding of oceans of blood.

It is not to be supposed that | approve of
massacres. In fact my main objection to the
policy of the humanitarian is that it makes them
necessary. It will be seen from the analysis of
the reasons which make massacres part of the
mechanism of Oriental rule that they may all be
reduced to one, namely, the feebleness of the
executive. Where there are proper laws rigor-
ously and justly enforced, and where the power
of the Government exercised through loyal troops
and active administrators is unshaken and un-
doubted, there is no reason for massacres, and it
is for that reason that they are not at present
common in the West. But the Oriental ruler who
hesitates to arrest the preacher of sedition, or to
disperse the first few disorderly mobs, will soon
find himself struggling desperately to preserve the
last traces of social order. It is then not a question
whether there shall be a massacre. The question
is merely whether you or your adversaries shall
be the subjects.

I have seen riots put down with severity, but |
never knew one riot which could not have been
prevented had proper precautions been taken in
time. To him who is fond of the Indian peoples
it is a matter of indignation. You see the artful
agitator at work. No one interferes. You see

some seditious doctrines preached publicly. That

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100 THE LOST DOMINION

is a point of view which the subject may properly
hold and express. You see the first beginnings
of disorder. These are mere temporary ebullitions ;
let the angry passions of the people find that
vent. Next day you are struggling with the
whole mobilisation of anarchy. One mob is loot-
ing the bazaar, another is killing swine in the
mosques, a third cows in the temples. Flames
are going up from all the public buildings.
Isolated Europeans are flying for their lives;
stragglers are being clubbed to death. Women
are being left for dead. Loyal Indian officials are
plundered of all they have and are being put to
death with tortures. Then the troops are marched
into the city. There is street fighting. The
troops are reluctant to fire on their compatriots.
At last they warm to their work. There is a
great effusion of blood. The People discover that
the Sirkar is not dead. All disorder disappears
as if by magic, and you see nothing but corpses
and ruined buildings, and smiling faces and
salaaming multitudes. The agitators are honoured
and rewarded, There is a howl from England for
the heads of the civil and military chiets.

This form of administration is not intelligible
to the uninstructed Oriental. I personally am not
much enamoured of it. A Government that can

only be carried on by periodical massacres seems
to me little better than anarchy, and there is no
particular reason to import foreigners at vast
expense to confer on India the benefits of anarchy.DISSIDENTS 101

The Indian can provide that by swadeshi efforts
in as great a quantity as may be required by the
most exigent.

A very instructive incident occurred some years
ago. There was an area which we will call Pongo-
land. The Pongos were a simp le Dravidian people
recently reclaimed from forest life, and addicted
to drink. They were totally illiterate, and re-
markably bad agriculturists. The landholders were
degenerate Rajputs, who treated the cultivating
Pongo with every sort of oppression and contumely.
Pongoland was not directly under British adminis-
tration, but under political control, so the Govern-
ment was not responsible for the relations of
landlord and tenant. There were, however, many
Pongos in adjacent British districts.

Presently a holy man appeared. He preached
the Word among the Pongos. He made them
give up drink and excessive sexual licence. He

made them take vows of fidelity, erading all his
converts according to their progress 1n the divine
science into classes, and expounding the doctrine
with greater clarity to the higher illuminati. To
the inferior ranks, implicit obedience to the new
Messiah was recommended. ‘To the higher orders,
temporal dominion as well as eternal bliss was
promised. The people now began to refuse to
pay rent to the landlords, and to resent illegal
demands for duty-labour and servile dues. ‘The
landlords and their caste-men tried force. This
was met by force, and the landlords were driven102 THE LOST DOMINION

into the towns. The chiefs applied to the
Paramount Power. A high official was despatched
to negotiate. He found the ascetic with a large
force on a strong high hill, which was to be the
New Jerusalem. The people would not listen to
the high official, but drove him into a fort and
beleaguered him. Government now sent a sufficient
force, which approached the hill. The majority of
the Pongos now showed signs of wavering, and
were about to disperse. Then suddenly the British
force fell back. The commandant had just received
a telegram directing him to try further negotia-
tion. The Pongos were now, of course, convinced
that their leader’s claims to divinity were un-
impeachable. Had he not, merely by his divine
presence, caused the forces of the Sirkar to retreat
without striking a blow? They laughed at the
efforts for negotiation, and sent out runners all
over the country to call the whole Pongo nation
to arms. They met with a ready response, and
an insurrection was on the verge of breaking
out in four districts. Next day, however, the
troops were ordered to advance. The Pongos had
no arms except swords, spears, and bows, but they
were now convinced of their invincibility. They
would neither fly nor surrender, but maintained
the position on the almost inaccessible rock. Con-
sequently when the troops did fight their way to
the summit, it was a bad business.

I never met any Indian who was not convincedaeauaae

DISSIDENTS 103

that the Government was desirous of having a
massacre, so as to strike terror. All attributed
to Government the wily policy of Kruger. The
object of the first recall of the troops Was, they
thought, to stiffen the resistance, and to collect
as many of the fanatics on the hill as possible, so
that when ‘“‘the tortoise did put out its head,”
might be more conveniently decapitated. .
vain I used to point out that the action of the
Government, though apparently imbecile, was
really intended to be humane. They used to
agree cordially and change the subject.

Another evil effect of the influence of this party
at home is produced elsewhere than in India.
The humanitarians, of course, highly disapprove
of war. ‘Therefore they regard expenditure on the
fighting forces as wicked. At the same time they
are, many of them, wealthy burghers engaged In
trade. To England and its trade, command of the
seas and free access to the markets is essential.
Now as things stand, this command and access
cannot be maintained or acquired without, at any
rate, a show of military force. For the last two
hundred years our wars have been principally
directed to these two objects. For other nations
imagine that, by excluding British commercial
enterprise from these transoceanic regions, they
may themselves secure the riches which now fall
to England. Hence a time comes when the

humanitarian finds his material interests are104 THE LOST DOMINION

menaced by some foreign foe. Then Goverment
is pressed actively to intervene. Or again, some
foreign power may give itself up to an orgy of
massacre of its own subjects. The sympathies of
the humanitarian are aroused. He insists on a
stiff Note being despatched to the guilty power.
The foreign Government is required to desist from
its enormities. The true path is dogmatically
indicated to it. No ultimatum is actually issued,
but severe threats are made in case of recalcitrance.
All that seems needed is the mobilisation.

This démarche is generally mere bluff, because
the forces of the Crown are not sufficient to impose
the will of England on the recalcitrant power.
But the bluff is often successful. Occasionally,
however, some state calls our bluff, whereon we
throw in our hand. Fortunately, foreign policy
is little known to the average Englishman, but
there are incidents, particularly in the dark years
between the first and second Reform Bills, which
make the most hardened blush for shame. As
for more recent incidents, it is undesirable to refer
to them. |

The Oriental is an acute detector of bluff. He
is used to fine-sounding titles covering mere
emptiness. He also has had his “Kings of the
World, whose rule extends from Delhi to Palam.”

He has no use for a coward as ruler, and a
coward is no less a coward because he cloaks his
lack of manliness by fine talk about being tooDISSIDENTS 105

proud to fight, or the horror of blood-guiltiness.
Where the Oriental makes his mistake is where so
many have gone wrong. There always, up to the
present, has come a point beyond which, in the
matter of concession, the British have not been
prepared to g0. It LS possible to drive them
into war.

It is then the duty of the humanitarian, as far
as possible, to embarrass the Government. He
should agitate among the people of England on
the topics of the wickedness of war, the atrocities
of the troops, the effusion of blood, the disturbance
of commerce, the waste of wealth wrung from the
labour and sweat of the toiling masses.

At the same time, he should press for the con-
clusion of a premature and inconclusive peace, and
he should, if possible, arrange that the vanquished
foe should at the peace conference be restored to
his old position, and particularly that he should
be enabled to revenge himself on the friends and
allies of England.

The political Indian, therefore, thinks that if
he could only bring about a general rising, there
would be much chance that the British would
evacuate the country. If they fought, he thinks
it would be possible so to spin out the contest
that the humanitarians might have time to
intervene.

The Oriental politician, with his rather childish

mind, does not understand that general principles== ee ee — ————eEeEE—E—E———————

Pl 106 THE LOST DOMINION

I

| |, ) do not always apply to particular cases. This is
i peculiarly true in cases of dispute with the British
| | Government, which never prided itself on its logic.
He is also unaware that the laurel is the object
of desire to all. It is only where the laurel is
a not to be won without much dust and struggle
that competitors are few. For an easy and sweat-
less conflict, the competitors are many.

Some there are who, looking at certain pheno-
mena, have been inclined to deduce the existence
of a Church of Anarchy. What may be called
for convenience Western Civilization is, they say,
menaced by an organisation which is sworn to
destroy it. It is this organisation which has
prescribed the policy to the realisation of which
the efforts of the discontented are directed;
which supplies the strategy; which provides the
leaders; which engages or subsidises the apostles.
The progress of anarchy during the last five
generations is, they say, too regular and too ob-
viously under discipline to be fortuitous.

What the organisation is, 1s doubtful according
to these people. Some refer to the Illuminati,
others to the Freemasons, others to the Jews. |

ny
:
:

do not regard the existence of any such organi-
| sation as proved, and on a prov grounds [|
consider its existence extremely doubtful.

As for the [lluminati, if they were ever of
importance, they soon merged in the Freemasons.
The founder of the sect lived till 1830, but wasDISSIDENTS 107

of no consideration for the last forty years of

his life. Such is not the fate of the successtul
apostle. Not so does Satan reward his servants.
That certain forms of Freemasonry have been
infected with anarchical doctrine, and that certain
lodges have been conventicles of Satan worshippers,
is probable enough. But a great deal of the
suspicion against the Freemasons has originated
in the fact that Freemasonry has tended to be
anti-Catholic. Pius the Ninth, having risen to the
Papacy largely through the influence of certain
lodges, was not prepared to be the vassal of his
associates, whose policy he found inconsistent
with that of the Apostolic see. He therefore
prohibited Catholics from entering Freemason
lodges. The policy of the Grand Orient had long
been secularist, but the elimination of Catholic
members necessarily made the organisation purely
secularist, and therefore anti-Catholic.
Unfortunately, the legends of the Freemasons
were connected with the building and maintenance
of the Temple of Solomon. This fact tended to
make the superstitious Catholic suppose that the
craft was in some way a Jewish conspiracy.
Further, the abominations falsely attributed to
the Templars, who were themselves closely con-
nected with the ideal Temple, were now attributed
to the Freemasons. And the craft, anxious to
assert its antiquity, anxious to keep at bay the

Papal spy, and apparently also from pure love108 THE LOST DOMINION

of mystification, by no means discouraged this
accusation. Very possibly the Grand Orient and
derivative systems may be anti-Catholic and
secularist, and very possibly some lodges may
have adopted a burlesque and blasphemous ritual.
But the evidence adduced by the Catholic writers
to prove that the Freemasons derived from the
Scottish rite are the worshippers of Baran Satanas,
and as such pledged to the destruction of Western
civilization, is not worth the name. It is possible
to be an anti-Catholic or a secularist without
wishing to annihilate European civilization. That
civilization might, for all I know, exist without
being supported by any positive religion at all.
If a “transcendental policeman” is necessary, the
needful sanctions might be imposed by the word
of Apollo or of Mithra, or the Beelzebub of the
Comtists, as well as by that of the Man of
Sorrows. Huropean civilization existed in essen-
tials before Christ, and may very likely sur-
vive him.

There was more to be said for the Jewish
theory. Many subversives have been Jews.
But there is no evidence that the forces of
anarchy were directed by any purely Jewish
corporation. The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, though possibly published in good faith,
were based on older tendencious forgeries or
mystifications. A prior, it is extremely unlikely
that the Jewish race, which has profited so muchDISSIDENTS 109

in the last century by Western civilization, should
wish to destroy it.

That many subversives should be Jews is not
a matter of surprise. It 1s not to be marvelled
at that the oppressed should rebel, and that if
his’ rebellion is successful he should wish to
avenge himself on his late persecutors. The Jew
is disinherited and, on the whole, poor. The
social order thus denies to this talented race
those opportunities for advancement which it
promises to all its members, but reserves in fact
for those who have money or influence.

The existence of large masses of disinherited is
a menace to: any social order. Far greater is
the danger when among the disinherited are
found thousands of men conscious of great powers,
yet denied the profitable use of them. ‘* We,
the twice-born, may without fear strip the pariah
of lands and houses, the exercise of professions,
the use of arms. We have done this for long
centuries, and the pariah now hardly resents it.
It is doubtless a divine decree that we should
have all, and he have nothing. The gods hate
the pariah, If he rebels, as we have crushed
him in the past, so we shall crush him in the
future. This two-legged animal, hated by the
gods, what chance has he against the wealth,
the science, and the solidarity of the twice-born ¢
But let there arise intelligence among the pariahs,

either by inclusion in their body exiles from110 THE LOST DOMINION

ours, or by spontaneous generation in his own,
is there not then a serious menace? And if
the process continues, so that the pariahs are
by no means lacking in leaders of an intelligence
equal to ours, then, seeing that they outnumber
us ten to one, is there not great danger to the
ereat lords of cattle and dividers of bread ?”

These considerations, I think, are sufficient to
account for the emergence of the Jew in all
revolutions, without supposing the existence of
any general Jewish conspiracy against the
civilization of the West. As a matter of fact,
the civilization of the Semite is not radically
different from the civilization of Western Europe.
It has a different conception of the Deity, and
the status of woman is slightly different, and
perhaps inferior. There is here nothing like the
divergence between Western civilization and that
of, eg., the Mongol races, or even between
Western civilization and the original Slav civiliza-
tion. Much of the apparatus of our civilization
is borrowed directly or indirectly from the
Semites.

It may perhaps be admitted that the Jew,
while using our civilization, has a poor opinion
of it. This is not unnatural He has seen so
many civilizations pass. He has used them all.
The more degenerate they became, the greater
the influence, and thus the greater the profit of
the Jew. He has seen bud blossom and wither,DISSIDENTS 111

the civilization of the Babylonians, of the
Persians, of the Ptolemies, of the Romans, of
the Caliphs of Baghdad and Cordova. He was
always present, and always able to accommodate
himself to the demands of the age. He was
generally able to exercise great influence over the
Government, and always found aiders and favourers
among the powerful. Thus he was in a position
to profit. himself and his friends. But he was
never so bound up with the current civilization
that he shared its fall. This being so, what is
George more to him than Belshazzar ‘

The heathen imagine a vain thing, and their
devices come to nought, but the Kingdom of
Zion is an enduring kingdom.

One may imagine a Society which knew no
other game than Bridge. Such a Society would be
convinced of the superiority of the Ace of Spades
to any other card of the fifty-two. And there might
be another Society which played all card games.
Such a Society would know that there was nothing
absolute about the value of the Ace of Spades.
They would be perfectly aware that im other games
the Knave, and in others the King of the trump
suit, whatever it might be, was far more valuable
than the said Ace. But this «knowledge would
not prevent the Cosmopolitans when playing Bridge
from attributing as much value to the Ace as the
Bridge Fanatics, though he might smile a little

when he recollected how short a time ago it was112 THE LOST DOMINION

that the Ace of Hearts was the valued card, and
the Ace of Spades occupied the unfortunate position
of the people of Megara.

The Jew, then, may be perfectly loyal to the
ideas of the society in which he lives. Yet his
belief in them is not of that degree that is requisite
for martyrdom. Just as the most valiant and
loyal mercenaries will break and fly after suffering
losses which a national and volunteer army would
bear without wincing, so the Jew is rarely prepared
to stake all on the maintenance of a social state
in the absolute value of which he has no belief.

As a capitalist also he is inclined to compromise.
It is after all necessary to imsure. Is it really
desirable to push Catiline to extremes? The pro-
oramme of Catiline seems unattractive to me as

¢<

a capitalist, but how can I tell that a “massacre
of the equites” is not one of the items of the
programme of the optimates? Perhaps it is better
to make terms with Catiline while it is yet time.
He will doubtless be rapacious, but my experience
is that every man has his price. I am not by
any means sure that the price of Antonius will
not ultimately be as high as that of Sergius.
Again, the instincts of the Jew are towards
broking. Excluded for so long from the guilds,
forbidden to hold land, he was driven for a living
to this sterile form of business, for which his inter-
national connection admirably equipped him. He
does not, ¢.g., himself grow apples, but he dis-DISSIDENTS 113

covers that A. owns one hundred tons of apples,
and that B. needs one hundred tons of apples. He
introduces A. to B., and takes his commission.
But what a magnificent commission there may be
for the broker between Julius who wishes to pur-
chase, and the Roman people who wish to sell,
the Crown.

Retail trade is also an hereditary occupation of
the Jew, but here again he was hindered by the
regulations of the corporate cities. Consequently
he was relegated to the less esteemed trades such
as the second-hand business. To buy up bankrupt
stock in the bulk and dispose of it in retail 1s
a profitable speculation. And how if the concern
in liquidation is an empire ?

It is but recently that the influence of the Jew
in politics, and particularly in foreign and imperial
politics, has awakened uneasiness in England. The
Englishman prided himself on his liberality, and
regarded the anti-Semitism of the Continent as
a base and ignoble feeling. And in this he was
no doubt right. The Jews were not numerous in
England, and their control of many important
industries was unknown. In a country lke
England, where the small share of power which 1s
not monopolised by wealth was wielded by in-
telligence, there was thus every probability of the
Jew becoming one of the dominant castes. Jews
were welcomed as intimates, advisers, and sons-in-
law by leaders of both the great parties. Jews

H114 THE LOST DOMINION

provided the empire with statesmen, lawyers,
men of the pen, and men of science. I cannot
for the moment remember any great Jewish
general or admiral, but I have no doubt that
many brave and loyal officers of that faith have
shed their blood for England, as they have for
the Tricolour and the Stars and Stripes. For
many years they abstained from an active share
in politics.

This latter policy has been abandoned in recent
years, to the regret of the old-fashioned pious
Jew. And here, I think, the Fromme Jiide was
right. No one can be blind to the beginning of
a reaction against Jewish control. The case of
Lincoln disturbed many. The strange revelations
of the war created a vague uneasiness. The large
influx of poor Jews who, by their superior industry
and lower standards of living, compete with the
indigenous worker in certain trades has alarmed
powerful interests. The alleged monopolisation by
the foreign Jew of certain reprehensible trathes has
revolted the pious. There is therefore a vague
anti-Jewish feeling floating about in solution in
England which needs but a shock to crystallise 1t.
The fall of the Coalition is principally to be ascribed
to an uneasy and probably erroneous idea that
the Jew exercised too much power in the counsels
of that remarkable body, and that that influence
was being applied to unpatriotic ends. Hrroneously,
no doubt, it was supposed that the last rags ofDISSIDENTS 115

honour of the British people, the last pieces of
gold in an exhausted treasury, the last drops of
the blood in the lacerated body of the republic,
were about to be jeopardised, in order to decide
which of certain Jewish financial houses were to
have the profitable business of liquidating the
Turkish Empire. The mere absurdity of the sup-
position is convincing proof of the reality of the
general uneasiness.

And as usual the uneasiness of the people,
though in itself apparently baseless, was not
actually without a rational basis. Jo return to
first principles, it is inexpedient, in a world where
rightly or wrongly the idea of nationalism has
such power, that the affairs of the nation should
be conducted by men who, in so far as they are
not citizens of a foreign nation, are cosmopolitans
by birth, training, and inclination.

Thus it is that the Jew is wrongly suspected
of subversivism. It is not true that subversivism
is a Jewish invention, or machine for battering
down the walls of the mystic Babylon, The
mystic Babylon, though not the true home of the
Jew, is an agreeable sojourning - place for that
nomad, and he has no desire to see its pleasant
places wasted with the fire of insurrection.

On the other hand, many Jews are subversives,
and the race as a whole is rather inclined to make
terms with the foe than to withstand it to the
utmost.116 THE LOST DOMINION

Further, the fact (if it be a fact) that certain
of the organisations deriving from the Freemasons
have become seminaries of subversive doctrines,
coupled with the fact that Continental Freemasons
are often Jews, cannot but spread a sympathy with
such doctrines among those sections of the Jewish

©

race which inhabit countries where that form of
Freemasonry is powerful.

For the last three generations organised labour
must be counted among the subversive forces. In
the propagation of Socialistic doctrine individual
Jews have taken a considerable part. But to
suppose that the diffusion of Socialism among the
labouring classes is due to the efforts of a small
subversive secret society is ludicrous. All attempts
to make Socialism an international church directed
by an extra-nationalistic directorate have hitherto
failed.

No; the apostle of anarchy is misery. The
baptism of the anarchist is the bitter sweat of
hopeless toil, and the tears of oppressed women
and children. His church is not the hall of the
freemason, nor the synagogue, but the barrack,
the jail, and the casual ward. The deity of his
adoration is not Baran Satanas, nor Baphomet,
but the transcendental vision of Man-to-Be. His
paradise is not a mystical Zion, but a city here
on earth, which is even now being builded. And
if the path to that city must lead through blood
and fire, the subversion of thrones, the crashing |DISSIDENTS 117

of empires — well, the path of God has ever lain
over the abyss. Non pacen sed gladvum.

There is in all societies a body of wretched
men. These are they for whom civilization
reserves its penalties and to whom it denies its
boons. They are the pariahs.

The existence of this body is due to causes
which vary from country to country or from age
to age. It may trace to the survival of an inferior
and conquered but not extirpated race. Such
are the real pariahs. It may trace to the survival
of a conquered but not an inferior race. Such
were the Helots. It may consist of the survlvors
of external, defeated but not necessarily inferior,
races who have been introduced into the body
politic for some economic or social reason. Such
were the inhabitants of the Roman ergastulum.
It may consist of members of the community who,
for some reason, have found it impossible to move
forward on the march of development followed
by the bulk of the community, and who thus
represent a primitive epoch in the national social
history.

Needs must there be compassion for the pariah.
Evil is the tyranny of race over race. Terrible
things have been done in the darkness of the
abyss. From these imagination averts herself,
shuddering. But for none can there be more com-
passion than for the pariah of modern civilization.

For these men are our own flesh and blood.118 THE LOST DOMINION

They are where they are, not on account of any
original inferiority, nor on account of their own
fault. They represent the result of careful selection,
for which they are in no way responsible.

They are there because the squire drove their
oreat-oreat-srandparents from the common lands;
because the manufacturer wished for cheap labour
and found it among the children ; because there was
a war; because there was a new invention; because
a trade route changed; because their ancestors in-
fected them with the virus of syphilis and alcohol;
because some pretty girl in the eighteenth century
was tuberculous or feeble-minded; because the
capricious gibbet spared some primeval brute;
because the parson was a pluralist; because the
schoolmaster was a pedant; because the mother
died, and the stepmother was harsh.

The optimist denies the existence of the pariah.
He asserts that you have only to catch the pariah
young, and bring him up in favourable surround-
ings and with a good education, to eliminate the
pariah taint. This is not true. You may prevent
members of the community whose stock is sound,
and who are in danger of falling into the pariah
class, from incurring that penalty, but the real
pariah is the victim of hereditary taint which
renders him irreclaimable. He is unemployable.
For him there is nothing but precarious bread,
the casual ward, the jail, the asylum, and the
pauper’s or the felon’s grave.DISSIDENTS 119

Into this class we ourselves may at any time
fall, and into it will certainly be merged some
of our descendants.

Wretches who through no fault of their own
are thus condemned from birth to misery, cannot
be expected to be very satisfied with a system
which seems a negation of natural justice. Add
to this righteous indignation the natural instinct
of the brute to burn, plunder, rape, and destroy,
and it is not a matter of surprise that there 1s
pressure on the dykes which preserve civilization
from the flood of anarchy.

For this class is a growing class. No one ever
rises out of it, and many are continually falling
into it. As the elaboration of civilization becomes
greater, so proportionately becomes greater the
efficiency required in those who are to benefit by
‘t. Those who fall below the ever-rising standard
of efficiency—for such there 1s nothing but the
pariah’s doom. ‘The savage English criminal laws
of the eighteenth century, and the total ignorance
of sanitation, prevented the increase of the pariah
body. We are now more humane and know better
how to preserve life, even of the wretched. Thus
over all the west the people of the Abyss increase.

The people of the Abyss are themselves utterly
incapable of overthrowing the social order. The
most they can effect is to revolt and devastate
for a few hours or days some small part of the
lands of civilization. By reason of the very fact120 THE LOST DOMINION

that they are pariahs, they are incapable of form-
ing a definite policy of faithful co-operation or
of leadership, nor can they subordinate for one
moment the desire for personal gratification to the
common weal. But no potentially powerful party
will long want leaders.

The pariah finds his leaders among men of the
sound stock. There are always men of this stock
who have some personal reason to be displeased
with existing conditions. There are men who
commit some grave offence against the code of
the caste, and are expelled from the community.
Such are the Exiles. There are others who have
become bankrupt, either in fortune or reputation,
and voluntarily withdraw themselves. from a society
which they find irksome. Such are the Dis-
inherited. There are many to whom the existing
order, though it imposes no disabilities on them,
is distasteful. Such are the Rebels. There are
those who, ambitious and competent and yet handi-
capped, think it on the whole wiser, at any rate
for the present, to seek to advance themselves by
revolutionary means. Such are the Arrivists.

The pariahs will therefore never lack leaders,
many of them men of great ability, some men of
genius, some of them selfless and unpractical
altruists, many of them rotten-hearted, self-seeking
egoists.

Such is the real subversive party. I do not think
that there is any real danger to civilization from
it. The pariah himself is no menace. The leadersDISSIDENTS 121

are cranks and fanatics, or themselves unemploy-
ables or temperamental traitors, who for due reason
would be as ready to abandon the cause they have
adopted as that which they have already betrayed.

But it cannot be denied that subversive doctrines
find favour among large and sound classes of the
community.

If men consider positive pleasure as the summum
bonum, very few attain it. There is, of course,
no such thing as lasting positive pleasure. But
those who are excluded from what they suppose are
opportunities of enjoyment resent this exclusion.
For the vast majority of men life must be hard,
toilsome, full of pain, full of apprehension, cramped,
monotonous. And to the citizen of the modern

industrial area, situated generally in some cold

a/

 

wet region in the North—a citizen whose life also
is spent under the shadow of the dead Calvinism
which teaches that enjoyment 1s sinful,—there is
none of the joy in living which even the poor
man, a denizen of sunnier climes, knows. Small
wonder that men who are by predilection loyal
citizens, honest and capable workmen, devoted
fathers and husbands, should blame a social order
which denies them a fuller and securer life.

Then comes the prophet, and says: © 3rother,
you work hard all your life. Your houses are
sordid, Your food is distasteful. Your wife 1s
a slattern. Your children are disinherited. You
shall work hard all your days. If you are lucky

you will, after paying the taxes, and the rent, and“
4
|
:
t
;
‘A
E
A

 

122 THE LOST DOMINION

the shareholders’ profits, have just enough over to
pay for food and clothes, and perhaps some small
surplus for emergency. When you grow old there
is nothing for you but the pauper’s dole. At your
feet is the abyss yawning for you. Come with
us. We will show you a better way.” Or, ‘‘See
men and women

 

those who batten on your sweat
who have never done ‘an honest day’s work in
their life. Is it right, is it just, that they should
squander on an hour’ idle pleasure the wealth
that it takes you a year of labour to produce?”
The workman is no anarchist. He wants security
with reasonable freedom. The Capitalistic State
seems to deny it. The apostle of anarchy seems
to promise it. Is it not reasonable enough that
he should sympathise with the subversive ?

I was once in a crowded carriage immediately
after the war. We were a very mixed lot of
passengers, and as it was night and the hght was
bad, it was impossible to read. Conversation began,
and I listened with much interest. The principal
person of the dialogue was a naval officer, who was
haranguing the public on the unpatriotic attitude
of labour to the war, both as regards strikes while
the war was in progress, and as regards the attitude
of labour to unskilled labour after the war.

The cudgels were taken up by an artisan, who
was a man of some reading and much virulence.

He expressed the usual views about the war, about
the fighting services, about the capitalist, and aboutDISSIDENTS 123

the colonies and India. The whole universe had
been banded together for ages to make the toiler
a slave. Now the old régime had committed formal
suicide, and labour intended to enter on the in-
heritance. Then the naval man used the usual
arcument, that a rise in the nominal wages of
labour was of no advantage to the labourer, as
prices rose in proportion. To which the workman
replied: “‘All I can say is that, before the war,
very few of my mates could send their children
to the ‘Igh School, and now they all can.”

I was disappointed. I thought | had discovered
at last a Bolshevist, and that I should learn what
form the abstruse doctrines of Marx had taken m
the Mechanics’ Institute; whereas that one phrase
was sufficient to show me that here was no pro-
letarian, He was a bourgeois. He had obviously
love of family, desire to improve, desire to save,
desire that his own should be superior to those
of others—in fact, all the base bourgeois virtues.

And I am convinced that not one in a hundred
of those who vote ‘“‘labour” have any sympathy
with the real policy of the Labour party. That
is, with Bolshevism, to be realised by constitutional
means.

Then there are the ardent and enthusiastic
young people who feel a generous sympathy for
the oppressed, and seek a fairer field for the
exhibition of great talents than that to which

the beaten tracks lead.aersty MW pree4

 

 

124 THE LOST DOMINION

Then there are the idealists. Men must have
something to worship; something, if necessary,
to die for. Men cannot live by bread alone.
An immense hope has traversed the heart of
man; in spite of reason we must lift our eyes to
the heavens. Surely from somewhere must come
the redeemer ?

Whither is he who seeks an ideal to direct his
eyes? ‘'o the heavens? They are empty. To
the throne? It is tenanted. To our country?
Patriotism is the last resource of the scoundrel.
To learning? It is vanity. Where, then? Only
to struggling humanity, the protagonist in a
cause which seems lost, and therefore which needs
noble champions in a cause which must ultimately
triumph, when we too shall march behind the
victorious car, participators in the glory.

Anarchy has therefore a great strength, more
The doctrines of

anarchy are fallacious, and to put them into

than properly belongs to it.

practice would lead mankind, not into a radiant
paradise, but back to the kitchen midden.
Particularly in England would disaster ensue from
a very slight application of the treatment, and I
do not think that the fate of any English Lenin
or Trotsky would be enviable. In a few weeks,
however, such a fanatic, vested with the absolute
powers that can be conferred on the supreme
active executive under the English Constitution,

might reduce England to a graveyard. ‘TheDISSIDENTS 125

actual holders of power, therefore, are timid, and
seek above all not to increase the numbers of
sympathisers with anarchy. The doctrinaire and
humanitarian must be courted. Concessions must
be made to labour. No risk must be run of
alienating any classes which might be in the least
inclined to throw in their lot with anarchy.

It will not have escaped the observer that the
history of anarchy has, up to the present, pro-
ceeded much on the lines of the Christian Church.
Christianity began as an anarchical religion. The
Ma

peeans. It made its earlier converts as a world

onificat and the Nune Dimittis are the pariah’s
religion among the disinherited. It called men
to turn away their eyes from a world full, to
them, of grievous oppression to a brighter and
better universe. It gave men hope where they
had no hope. Round this nucleus gathered am-
bitious men, idealists, and pure souls panting for
redemption, yet it still remained an anarchic creed,
looking to the destruction of the social order, of
the State, of the globe itself as the desired pre-
liminary for the salvation of the human race.
War was formally engaged between the Church and
the Empire—a war in which both might have
perished. So far, the history of the Church and
the history of anarchy is identical. Will there
arise a Constantine, who will know how to make
anarchy the purifier and preserver of the State ?
If not, I think both must perish,126 THE LOST DOMINION

The Oriental has no sympathy with anarchy.
To him the social order is God-appointed, and
he no more dreams of trying to destroy society,
because it presses hardly on him personally, than
he would think of burning down a temple because
he personally did not get a place of honour
therein at the darshan. Anarchical sects there
have been both among the Zoroastrians and
among the Moslems, but the sword of orthodoxy
has always ruthlessly, and with general applause,
disposed of them.

Some of the political Indians are inclined to
coquet with Bolshevism, and some to take the
money of the Bolshevist. But some Indians
would take money from Satan himself, and rejoice
that they had, to that extent, crippled the
resources of the enemy of mankind. Themselves
in revolt against Western civilization, they
naturally seek allies among the enemies of their
enemy.

To the subversive, of course, the Indian Empire
is an abomination. ‘‘ Not content with making the
garden of the world a den of slaves, it 1s necessary
that the capitalist system, in its eagerness for
new fields of labour to exploit, must invade the
tranquil and immemorial Hast. In happier days
capitalism and the wage-slave were unknown there.
Each peasant cultivated his own little plot of
land, and found by the simple process of barter

the means of gratifying all his desires. TheDISSIDENTS 127

artisan worked for himself with his own tools. Huis
customer supplied him with the raw materials.
Thus there was no need of capital, and the
worker was his own landlord, foreman, and
employer. Thus he was never crushed down by
the iron law of wages. No foreign enemy came
to disturb the inhabitants of this earthly paradise,
or, if he did, he was met, not by the hired
mercenaries of capitalism, but by the free and
noble warrior castes.

‘Now the scene has changed. From a thousand
factory chimneys there rises into the pellucid
Indian air the smoke of the burnt-offering to
the capitalist Moloch. The English boast that
they have made the country secure. Yes! that
they may be undisturbed in their exploitation.
They boast that they have introduced law and
order. But law is the rich man’s weapon. It
is by the law that he is enabled regularly to
orind the faces of the poor, and order means
only that the law can function undisturbed.
The country is intersected with roads and
railways, in order that the wealth produced by
the sweat of the toiler may more conveniently
be carried off by the brigands of capitalism.
The English boast that they are the apostles of
a higher morality. Yes; the morality which the
master teaches his slaves, that they may be
content to be profitable slaves.”

Also, the Indian empire being a great andi

 

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128 THE LOST DOMINION

outwardly imposing thing, to destroy it would be
most impressive. It is effective to blow up an
opera-house or a cathedral, to burn a museum
or a picture-gallery, to breach a railway or a
barrage. That makes the cowardly bourgeois
tremble in his filthy shoes; that gladdens the
heart of the pariah. Much more impressive would
be the eradication of an empire, particularly
when such eradication would hit the capitalist
very hard in his only very sensitive spot—the
pocket. ‘There would be, moreover, the agreeable
side-product of a great effusion of blood. The
debacle could not but be accompanied with stimu-
lating incidents of looting, and massacring, and
rape. The party, or its sympathisers, produces
a certain amount of imaginative literature—I do
not mean political brochures, but fiction and
poetry,—and when its fancy turns to a regenerated
world, it is on the incidents of a servile war in
India that it rests with peculiar pleasure.

Such were the results of the survey by Panditji
of politics in England, and such the opinion which,
erroneous or right, he had formed. Briefly, then,
the Tory party was annihilated. Little could be
hoped from the Unionists except passivity. That
could be relied on; in power, they would let
things drift; in opposition, they would regard any
criticism of Government proposals in the matter
of India as factious. The Liberal party embraces
many minor parties, on whose sympathies and onehyubyie
‘

DISSIDENTS 129

whose active support, on occasion, Panditji could
rely. Some of these parties would need careful
handling; others would be only too glad to lend
a hand to any subversive work, but they might
prove dangerous allies.

As regards the country in general, apart from
the politicians, there was really nothing to fear.
The mass of electors knew nothing of, and cared
nothing for, India, which they conceived of as a
vague sort of place full of tigers, and cobras, and
sepoys, where a servile black population, fed on
rice, was ruled in summary fashion by bullying
white men dressed in topis and pyjamas, riding
in palanquins, nurtured on brandy -pawnee and
curry, living in bungalows where they main-
tained each a considerable harem. Some imagined
the empire as a vast heathen land panting for the
Word, and only restrained from gratifying its
desires by the obstructive tactics of the Govern-
ment and the evil example of the whites. Others
who had read the works of Max Miiller, and
had perhaps made a hasty trip to the show places
of India, were aware that India had at one
time possessed a civilization not inferior in
promise to that of the other Nordic races.
hat that civilization had long ago come to its
acme, and had rapidly declined, they could not
know. The trading classes who had business con-
nections with India knew little beyond a few

sreat cities.a
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130 THE LOST DOMINION

This community was on the whole Liberal, but
in any case traders do not look very far beyond
the next balance-sheet. This community valued
in the Indian system only the peace which it
preserved, and the communications that it opened.
It was grievously suspicious of its courts, and it
resented the checks which the Government, lke
all bureaucratic administrations, applied to private
enterprise in the region also of commerce. Con-
tinual political disorder would soon set this class
looking about it for another system which might
promise better hopes of tranquillity, and throw
open wider fields to commercial exploitation.

The Anglo-Indian was entirely without weight.
He was cut off from politics owing to his long
exile. Where there was an Anglo-Indian in the
House he was generally a man with a grievance
or other frondeur, whose chief pleasure was to
attack the system which had inflicted on him
personal injuries. As for the press, the Anglo-
Indian was not a good controversialist. Accus-
tomed to the minute, the memo., the report—those
stately vehicles for the interchange of opinion
between official and official—he found it im-
possible effectively to manipulate the spicy par,
the bright entrefilet, and the brainy, breezy article
which modern taste exacted from the journal-
ist. He occasionally came out with a volume
of memoirs, but these were read merely for the

anecdotes.DISSIDENTS 131

In any case, however, he was not likely to
prove a very effective champion of the existing
system. It is more or less rudimentary that
it is not the man who is well acquainted with
the details of a system who is capable of form-
ing or expressing a philosophical view of the
whole.

It is Macaulay and Bentham, not Mansfield or
Stowell, and still less Eldon, who writes the
codes; it is Vegetius and not Stilicho who writes
the Art of War; it is Clerk of Eldon and not
Rodney who invents the breaking of the line; it
is Aristotle, and not Eubulus, who writes the
Politics.

Some great writers there were, but they appealed

oO

only to the cultured. The works of Kipling, works
of genius as they are, were apt to give a false
impression. ‘Their form condemned them to re-
present merely isolated and striking incidents,
and their tone was highly offensive to many. Out
of mere contrariness, if not from a nobler senti-
ment, many were prepared to challenge the
justice of a white predominance so energetically
proclaimed.

The actual administration of India, therefore,
was conducted in accordance with a tradition that
had remained undisturbed through nearly a century.
That century had been one of revolution in solution.
Was it too much to hope that this tradition,
supported merely by a convention that India|
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132 THE LOST DOMINION

a

should not be treated as a party question, might
be abandoned ?

Certain it was that any statesman who was
inclined to lead India into the pleasant paths of
revolution would meet with small opposition
from loyal colleagues, a bewildered opposition, an

apathetic electorate.eee ea

133

CHAPTER V,
THE RAJ,

In the meanwhile India had been undergoing

changes which, necessary in themselves, were never-
theless such as would facilitate the designs of

Panditj1.

The Company had been dissolved. The President
of the Board of Control was now the Secretary of
State for India, and invariably a Cabinet Minister.
The Board of Control had been abolished, and its
place was occupied by the Council of the Secretary
of State. This Council, composed of retired
Anglo-Indian officials or merchants, had no author-
ity, and its views might be safely neglected, Its
principal use was to serve as a screen for the
activities of the Secretary of State. At the same
time, Indian affairs being very uninteresting to
the average elector in England, and to his repre-
sentatives except to a few apparently negligible
cranks, little control was exercised over the Secre-
tary of State by the Cabinet. Moreover, circum-
stances had tended to increase the power of theSenne

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134 THE LOST DOMINION

Secretary of State over the Government of India.
A Secretary of State of strong views would have
little difficulty in realising those views.

The Executive Council of the Government of
India had increased in numbers. The new mem-
bers were not drawn from the Civil Service, but
were, as a general rule, experts despatched from
England. Able men were selected, though natur-
ally here, as elsewhere, party claims were con-
sidered. The Executive Council tended more and
more to be a congress of heads of departments,
and the theory of corporate responsibility, though
not entirely obsolete, was becoming so. In such
a body, the influence of the Governor-General, or
rather of the Viceroy, was very great; and the fact
that it was from the civilian members of the
Council that the Lieutenant-Governors of Provinces
were selected, or the members of the Council of
the Secretary of State were appointed—such selec-
tion of appointment depending on the goodwill
or good word of the Viceroy,—by no means tended
to diminish it. In the minor Presidencies no
such change had taken place, and the abolition
of the post of Commander-in-Chief in those
provinces reduced the Council to a body of three,
namely, two civilians and the Governor. In this
case the civilian influence on the general admin-
istration was perhaps excessive, and that admuin-
istration did, to a certain extent, give colour to

the attacks on a bureaucratic system. Moreover,THE RAJ 135

as will appear later, the civilian members of the
Councils were not very much in touch with actu-
ality. A tactful Viceroy, or a Viceroy of great
personality, could carry any measure he pleased,
and so could the Secretary of State if he appointed,
or found in office, a Viceroy who was contented
to be his agent. A policy, therefore, which was
merely the expression of the views of some
individual statesman might be brought into force
in India, and made to appear as the results of
the considered judgment of the Parliament of
Great Britain and of the Government of India.
In the days when it took a year to get an
answer from India, much had to be left to the
man on the spot. It was not possible for the
Home Authorities continually to imterfere with the
details of the administration. They contented
themselves with laying down the general lines of
policy, and with selecting men who they thought
were capable of carrying out the policy thus
generally indicated. But the application of steam,
the opening of the Red Sea route, the cutting of
the Isthmus of Suez, and the invention of the
telegraph, had brought India very close to England.
Continual interference from home was, therefore,
possible and inevitable. In such a state of things
it is invariably the case that the local agent, know-
ing that he, if he acts on his own initiative, may be
censured and exposed to the humiliation of having

his policy reversed, prefers, before doing anything,136 THE LOST DOMINION

to get preliminary sanction. In this case you have
the man on the spot who is legally responsible but
impotent, and the official at home who is all-power-
ful but in no way responsible. This cannot but
result in the general enfeebling of the Executive.

Moreover, a very vicious system had sprung up
of private correspondence between the Viceroy and
the Secretary. This was a copy of colonial pre-
cedents. In the Dominions the Governor is really
an Ambassador, in so far as he is anything
more than a figurehead, and with an Ambassador
it is right enough—that the state which has
appointed him should correspond through a secret
and confidential channel. In India the Governor-
General was the supreme head of the Executive,
and the views, wishes, and orders of the Secre-
tary of State could not constitutionally be com-
municated to him otherwise than through official
channels,

Thus Mr Q., the Secretary of State, might think
that the Simla monkeys should be forced to wear
trousers. He would write a private letter to Lord
A., the Governor-General, asking what he thought
of the proposal. Lord A. would write back and
say he did not think much of it. The monkeys
were amusing little beasts, and their nudity was, to
enlightened Indian opinion, rather gratifying than

otherwise. Mr Q. would reply privately, to say
that the more he thought over the imbraccation
of the monkeys, the more he came to the con-THE RAJ 137

clusion that the measure was necessary. Lord A.
would write back privately to ask whether Mr
Q. had considered that it would be necessary to
cut off the animals’ tails. Mr Q. would then reply
that a trifling consideration of that kind would
not be allowed to stand in the way of a needful
reform. Public opinion in England could no longer
tolerate the public indecencies of Indian admin-
istration, and the condemnation of Homo caudatus
to a perpetual state of inferiority to Homo sapiens.
Lord A. would then sound his council privately,
talking over the matter at dinners and other
social entertainments in a friendly and hypothetical
manner. He would report that the Commander-
in-Chief was indifferent, the matter being non-
military. The finance member was doubtful, as
he was not sure where the funds were to come
from. One of the civilian members was opposed
because he thought that the measure would give
offence to the Indians. ‘He tells me, what 1s
very interesting, and what I never knew before,
that some Indians regard monkeys as sacred.”
Another member was factious, and would probably
oppose anything. Mr Q. writes back privately
directing the Governor-General to push the matter
through. The objecting civilian member 1s ap-
pointed Lieutenant-Governor somewhere, and a
member whose vote can be relied on appointed
in his place. The factious man 1s won over by

some small concession, and a measure which, had138 THE LOST DOMINION

it come up for consideration in the ordinary routine,
would have been laughed out of court, is carried
by the unanimous vote of the supreme council.

This system of setting up the Viceroy against
the Governor-General was another cause of the
enfeebling of the Executive.

Although, theoretically, the Governor-General in
Council was still the legislature, in practice there
had been a modification. Certain individuals were
added to the Executive Council when it was sitting
as a legislature. These individuals were nominated.
Sufficient officials were nominated to secure that
the Government had a permanent majority, but
there were other members nominated from the
more important communities, Kuropean and Indian.
This is not the place to discuss the relations of
the Executive and the legislature. It may merely
be said, that as an Executive parts with any of
its Imperial powers, and as it encourages criticism
of its acts, so it directly enfeebles itself. It is true
that this enfeeblement may be amply compensated
for by accession of strength gained from conciliation
of public opinion, but in this particular case there
was no such accession of strength. India had
little or no public opinion, except on a few vital
points, and it was not used to expressing that
opinion through the legislature, and, in any case,
the Indian legislatures were extremely unsuitable
organs for any such purpose.

On the whole, then, the structural changesTHE RAJ 139

described had all this one effect, the enfeeblement
of the Indian Executive, and it was on the Indian
Executive that the laws cast the duty of main-
taining the English interest. This silent revolution
was, therefore, noted with satisfaction by Panditj1.
The administrative machine was not yet showing
any signs of decrepitude. It was, however, being
called on to deal with problems unknown before,
and to work through appliances hitherto untested.
It remained to be seen whether it would not be
possible so to tamper with the rather complicated
mechanism that it would be unable to function.
Just before the Mutiny, the appointments to
the Civil Service were thrown open to competition.
After the Mutiny, officers of the Indian Army were
appointed by seconding from the corps of officers
of the Royal Army. ‘This corps was also appointed
from candidates successful at a public examination.
The advantage of a competitive examination as a
means of selection of public offices 1s apparent.
It does away with patronage and possible corrup-
tion. No doubt it excludes many who would be
admirable public servants, and whose intelligence
is not in defect, but who have not the particular
ability necessary to satisty the examiners. On the
other hand, it does not exclude cranks. But it
does exclude wasters and unemployables. ‘o some
it may appear advantageous, because, though
apparently a democratic measure, ‘la carriére
ouverte aux talents,” yet it ruthlessly excludes140 THE LOST DOMINION

the children of poor parents, unless those parents
are capable of great self-sacrifice.

At first it was provided that European ancestry
was a necessary qualification, and with that limita-
tlon no very great change in the composition of
the services was probable. The Anglo- Jndian
officer or official was generally intelligent enough
himself, and selective enough in choosing a mate
to render it probable that his children would be
of rather superior intelligence; and the services
were well-off, and could thus afford to give their
children the best education possible. But that
limitation was soon removed. It was a generally
accepted axiom that, in contradistinction to the
case of Kuropean candidates, literary ability among
Indians was rather a proof of lack of administrative
ability. But there were whole provinces in India
where the duties of an executive officer did not
seem to call for much administrative ability, but
merely for the conscientious and loyal carrying
out of routine. In such circumstances, the Indian
in subordinate posts had shown great competency.
Office was the ambition of every literate Indian ;
it would clearly be unfair to exclude him from it.
Individual Indians there were who were men of
spotless character, unsuspected loyalty, and high
attainments. ‘There were also many judicial posts
which did not require executive ability, and the
Indian had developed a great love for the law.
He was, therefore, admitted to the competitionsTHE RAJ 14}

for the Civil Services. There was no fear of his
flooding them, for he was handicapped by the fact
that the examinations were held in England, and
by the curriculum.

In addition to this infusion of the Indian element
into the Civil Services, certain appointments which
had been up to that time reserved for members
of those services were taken away from them, and
assioned to a new service composed of persons
nominated to it by the Indian authorities. In
this way, it was hoped to throw open to [Indians
of birth and character, who were not capable of
passing into the services through the portals of
Burlington House, an honourable and _ lucrative
career in their own country.

This reform, so just and necessary in itself, and
yet so dangerous, was watched with a pleased
eye by Panditji. This path might lead to great
things.

The increase of the country in wealth and
civilization, and the progress of political thought
in the West, which tended more and more to throw
on to the shoulders of Government duties which
had hitherto been laid on the Church, the muni-
cipality, or the private citizen, had extended the
operations of the Indian Government. Numerous
fresh departments were created, and officials 1m-
ported from England to fill them. These officials,
many of them men of great ability and high

education, were poorly paid and badly treated.

/142 THE LOST DOMINION

They were accordingly not over well affected to
the Indian system, and particularly to the pre-
dominance of the Civil Service, to whose malignancy
they attributed all their woes. Panditji observed
the discord between the men of the dominant race
with a pleased eye. He knew well how the spirit
of faction will triumph over the calls of patriotism,
loyalty, duty, and religion. Moreover, it was on
the working of these very departments, useful
indeed, but enforcing policies hateful to the
Oriental, that he depended for the spread of dis-
affection among the masses.

This increase in governmental activity led
necessarily to increased expenditure, and the
finances of India were by no means robust. Many

of the claims on it were payable in sterling, and

g,
the ratio of the standard coin of India, the
rupee, to gold, was continually falling. In a
Western country the loss of value of the current
coin would have been compensated for by an
automatic rise in the proceeds of the taxes
already existing, or by the application of new
taxation to the new areas thrown open by the
change in the currency. This was not possible
un India. The bulk of the revenue was the
land revenue, which was fixed in some cases per-
manently, in others for periods of thirty years.
Moreover, the rise in prices did not benefit to
any very great extent the actual payer of the
land revenue. Neither income tax nor sea customsTHE RAJ 143

were very productive. ‘The former was abhorrent
to the people, and introduced only in obedience
to imperious necessity. It was, moreover, easily
evaded. The tariff was still an object of muis-
trust in England. It 1s unnecessary to plunge
into the controversy whether the rupee had de-
preciated or the sovereign had appreciated. The
question was merely academic. England as a
creditor nation was in no case likely to become
a convert to bimetallism, or to accept payment
of anything but gold in liquidation of debts
promised to be paid in that metal.

This embarrassment of the finances opened a
vast field before Panditji. A king with an empty
treasury 1s not very formidable to the foe. Nor
is he long able to retain mercenary atlection.
Even loyalty uf not well-watered with the streams
of Pactolus is apt to droop. New taxation might
be imposed. Few people who have hitherto
escaped taxation like its extension to them. ‘The
Indian certainly does not, and abhors anything
like a direct tax. New taxation would therefore
create disaffection. Besides, the measures could
easily be misrepresented in England. “Will the
great British people continue to tolerate in their
Empire, a gang of foreign blood-suckers, battening
on taxes wrung from the blood and sweat of
the toiling millions of the East?” On the other
hand, if fresh taxation was not imposed, the

machine would soon cease to function, and an144 THE LOST DOMINION

administration which is bankrupt must be abol-
ished. Panditji had probably read Carlyle’s hymn
on the Divinity of Bankruptcy.

The dual system of Courts had been abolished,
and each important province was now provided
with a High Court. The chief justice was an
English barrister, and it was required that a
certain minimum of the judges should be barristers,
and a certain minimum civilians with judicial
experience. The Court had original jurisdiction
in the presidency towns, and appellate jurisdiction
and a right of supervision over all the Courts in
the province. It still, of course, retained its power
of pronouncing on the validity of the Acts of the
Government. The change was in itself beneficent
enough, but there were possibilities which did not
escape the attention of Panditji, and one of the
results was largely to increase the wealth, power
and influence of the Indian lawyers, a body ex-
tremely hostile to the administration.

Another cause of the enfeeblement of the
Executive was a tendency which at first sight
seemed to strengthen it. This was the progress
of what is called centralisation. Just as the affairs
of India were tending more and more to be
directed from Whitehall, so the affairs of the
provinces were tending more and more to be
directed from Simla, and the affairs of the districts
more and more from the provincial capital. ‘Those
who call the administration of India bureaucratic,THE RAJ 145

show merely that they do not know English, for
the district otheer was not, and is not yet, a mere
functionary. Much depends on his initiative and
personality, but there has been for long a
tendency to fetter his initiative and check his
personality. his was due partially to inevitable
causes. the same namely as those which led to

the growing dependence of India on England,
and partly to the infusion of the Indian element
into the administration. For the Oriental, as soon
as he ceases to be a barbarian (and often before
he ceases to be so), becomes essentially a bureau-
crat and a paper-chewer. He 1s accustomed, that
is, in the physical as well as in the religious sphere,
to look for the ‘“‘superior command. As soon
as he finds it he is happy. Its existence frees
him from. that odious thing, responsibility. As
he possesses no right of private judgment, so,
if the superior command 1s absent, or 18 I1-
applicable to the particular case before him, then
he has not the right of supplying what may
possibly be an intentional omission. The best
squree an. such a, case 18 to do: mathing., | He
cannot be blamed. It was necessary, therefore,
for the superior directorate to exhaust themselves
in imagining all kinds of hypothetical cases, and
framing rules to meet them. But it is impossible
to imagine all cases, and the more the directorate
deal with isolated cases, the more the general
principle becomes obscure.
K146 THE LOST DOMINION

Thus a functionary, finding a boy roasting a
purple cat alive, will turn up his book of regula-
tions and find that his duty is laid down only in
the cases where the victim is a black, a white, a
yellow, or a tabby cat. Being a humane man he
will sigh and will shut the book with the remark,
‘The case is unforeseen,” and return to the filling
up of his forms. The less polished official would
say, “This is shocking cruelty, and I cannot
tolerate it.” He would rescue the cat, extinguish
the fire, and kick the boy, and would then sit
down to justify these actions by extracting from
the principles laid down in particular cases, the
general principle which he conceived applied to
cat-roasting in general. As long then as there
was a continual flow of vigorous administrators
employed in the higher executive branches, the
progress of centralisation did little harm, and was
often beneficial. When the administrators began
to lose trust in the efficiency of the directorate,
and particularly when the directorate began to
show evident signs of, and intention to, sacrifice
its local agents to agitation, then the evil effects
of the process would no doubt become more
pronounced. If a directorate wishes to be served
by polished slaves it soon will be. Strong per-
sonalities can be eliminated, initiative, resource
and daring can soon be atrophied. Thus we arrive
at the white babudom of the times of Honorius.

Another evil of excessive centralisation, com-aac eeee

THE RAJ 147

plicated by the differentiation of the functions
of government, was an increase of the departmental
spirit. It is mght and proper that the department
and the departmental chief should think the work
of that department the most important, and
indeed the only thing of importance in the
universe. Nothing is sacred for a sapper, and
the P.W.D. would pull down the Taj itself
for road - metal if there were nO other equally
convenient source of supply. The educationalist
sees with a sigh money which might extend
the blessings of education to the remotest villages
wasted on cannon and manceuvres. ‘The forest
officer would like to see the people excluded from
the richest lands, so that the mimosa plantations
should flourish. This, as I say, is right and
proper, but it is also right and proper that the
directorate should control M. Josse. The activities
of one department must be regulated in accord-
ance with the general requirements of good
government. ‘Lhe departmental spirit, having
spread even to the Government of India, there
was little or no check on the fanaticism of
the departments, and popular prejudices and
popular rights were likely to meet with very
scanty consideration.

Moreover, the secretariat assumed an unhealthy
importance, the secretaries often tending to eclipse
the council which was constitutionally their

master. The governor often preferred to apply148 THE LOST DOMINION

for information and guidance straight to the
able expert, and only put before his council a
scheme which had taken shape already during
these irregular confabulations. Here again was
an element of weakness in the administration.
Moreover, the secretariat became rapidly divorced
from actuality. A clever young man was taken up
to the Olympian heights, and passed for the whole
of his service from one staff billet to another,
never again returning to the inglorious, un-
comfortable, unremunerative, yet vital district
work. From the secretariat were chosen the
members of council, and it was thus easy and
common for a man to spend thirty-five years in
India, and rise to supreme control of a great
province, and yet know little more of India and
the Indians than he would have known had he
spent those years in Whitehall. The Simla body,
as the supreme directorate and its staff may
generically be called, was a small and select
band, and like all such coteries, was engaged in
an endless internecine struggle for posts and
decorations. As usual in such communities, the
petticoat played an important part, and the
wearer of the petticoat was not always free from
the imputation of irregular influence. In such an
atmosphere no great policy can be conceived
and produced. With difficulty, through the noise
of the grinding of axes, can be heard the footfall

of the approaching barbarian, or the challengeTHE RAJ 149

of the sentinel. ‘Truth is apt to be disagreeable,
and to say disagreeable things in polite society
is really unpardonable. If any rough, blunt
officer spoke his mind, the perturbation of all
was piteous to behold.

During the period under consideration, the
Government of India was not entirely imprisoned
in the seraglios of Simla and Delhi. It spent
part of the year in Caleutta, where 1t was to a
certain extent in touch with healthy public
opinion. But the public opinion of Calcutta was,
in some respects, misleading. It is the most
provincial of the great capitals of the empire,
and has always regarded the rest of India as a
sort of appendage to Our Lady of the Hoogli.
This corrective was, therefore, not very effective,
and such as it was, 1t was soon to be removed.
The seat of the directorate then abounded in
very able men, great writers of minutes, supreme
intriguers, capable functionaries, but there was
a complete lack of statesmen.

These evils were still mainly in germ, and it
still appeared that, given a continuance of peace,
the machine might function. But peace was
denied to it.

Russia, crossed in Europe, began as usual a
period of expansion 1n Asia, and her intrigues
spread to Afghanistan. Afghan affairs had been
sadly mishandled since the Mutiny, and ruler
and nobles were, by such bad handling, convertedi
ce
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150 THE LOST DOMINION

from willing friends into very mistrustful foes.
Hence these intrigues were not unfruitful. A
mere glance at the map (and the larger the
scale the better) will convince any one who has
the most rudimentary knowledge of strategic
geography that India would be untenable if
Afghanistan were strong and hostile, or were the
outpost of a great and potentially hostile civilized
power. My own belief is that, even at the
eleventh hour, Shir Ali might have been con-
verted into a friend; or, if that were impossible,
that, with a little expense and diplomacy, a
friendly Amir might have been enthroned. The
Government of the time, however, decided on
war, and, as usual, found that it was easy enough
to win victories over the Afghan armies, but
not so easy to make peace. The campaign,
successful enough on the whole, and indeed
abounding in brilliant military feats, dragged on
without much prospect of conclusion; and in
the meantime a bitter, unscrupulous, and factious
agitation was being carried on in England against
the policy of the Home Government and the
Government of India. The elections proved
unfavourable to the party in power. The policy
was reversed, the Viceroy resigned, and the

British evacuated Afghanistan in circumstances
which made every one believe that they had been
driven out. From ’79, therefore, must be dated
the beginning of a belief among the IndiansTHE RAJ 151
that the Raj was not invincible, and that the
Home Government were prepared to accept defeat
if it seemed that to try to conquer would be
expensive or dangerous. It is not good that
subject races should be taught this lesson.

This idea was, of course, strengthened by the
results of Majuba and Khartum, as also by the
Penjdeh incident.

Towards the end of this epoch fall also the
victory of the Abyssinians over the Italians, and
the successful campaign of Turkey against the
Greeks. These were the first successes won by
Oriental races against the Latins or the Franks
for over two centuries, and it looked as if a new
epoch was beginning. Meanwhile, no one could
be blind to the rise of Japan. Here was an
Oriental country which had been of no account,
apparently destined merely to be a rich field for
exploitation by some restless predatory Frankish
nation. It had been wise enough, while preserving
with care its essential Orientalism, to learn the
arts of the West; and in the short space of thirty
years it was a menace to Frankish predominance
in the whole Pacific. ‘There was, therefore, nothing
wonderful about these Franks. It was not true
that God had given to the Franks a charter
whereby their perpetual dominion was secured.
That dominion, like any other dominion, was a
precarious thing oranted and revocable at the

will of the Lord, and it seemed as if it might152 THE LOST DOMINION

now be the case that the Lord was tired of the
Franks. An evil day was the day of Tsushima
for the usurpers of eastern lands from Fez to
Hong-Kong. It was not only the Russians who
were led captive through the streets of Port
Arthur. All this it is true was in the future,
but the future can be foreseen.

One of the results of these wars and menaces
of wars was a change in the composition and dis-
tribution of the Indian Army. That army had
been considerably cut down after the Mutiny.
Many of its functions had been transferred to the
civil police. One of the sequele of the Afghan
war was an excessive contempt for the soldierly
qualities of any man born south of the Vindhyas.
The Hindustanis were already mistrusted, owing
to their part in the Mutiny. Towards the end
of this period the army was centralised under
one Commander-in-Chief, and the views of Simla,
already partially realised, were put into full force.
The area of recruitment was much reduced, and the
army drawn more and more from a few races,
some of which were not Indians at all. In such
a body disaffection might spread rapidly, and if it
led to an outbreak there would be no such power
as those who dealt with the Mutiny possessed,
of playing off caste against caste, religion against
religion, Presidency against Presidency. An
honourable and lucrative profession was closed

to spirited young men who did not belong to theTHE RAJ 153

favoured communities, and there were vast areas
of India over which the sight of a soldier was as
unusual as the sight of a dinosaurus. Few people
believe in the existence of a power which is not
shown, and whole populations in India believed
that the Raj had no military force. This illusion
was fostered by the necessity of cantoning the
troops in remote areas in the north-west where
they could at once be moved into Afghanistan,
or beyond the borders of that country, if occasion
demanded. European troops were more numerous
than they had been, but they were not the tough
old veterans of pre-Cardwell days, and the Indian,
who did not know how these boys could fight,
felt a certain contempt for them.

There had also been serious disagreement between
the Civil Government and the soldiers, which was,
however, to bear fruit only later.

As Panditji did not contemplate a renewal of
the experiment of ‘57, the condition of the army
was indifferent to him. He watched, however,
with pleasure the resurgence of the East, and the
lessons of Majuba and of Candahar were by no
means lost on him.

The worst of summing up in a few pages the
history of forty years, 1s that a false impression
is apt to be created. ‘The Government of the Raj
was still strong and respected. It was still per-
forming a very beneficent task. External foes

were excluded; disorder was rare; solvency wasoe

a

7

4

LI

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154 THE LOST DOMINION

somehow maintained; wealth and prosperity in-
creased; the European official, if not loved, was
respected and appealed to as an impartial arbiter.
The British people had in no way lost faith in
themselves or their mission. Discontent and unrest
there was in India, but it was vague and un-
organised. It was confined to a few classes. To
the countless millions of peasants, and those in
close touch with the peasants—that is to say, to
all the population of India except about a million
souls,—the Raj appeared a cold abstraction which
was somehow beneficent. People do not love
cold abstractions, particularly Orientals. But even
Orientals appreciate beneficence. The population
showed not the slightest desire to shake off the
English dominion, and any proposal to transfer
a British district to the most enlightened and
progressive native state elicited the most vigorous
protests. To continue our metaphor, Panditji was
looking about him, and summing up the situation,
but had not yet decided on the line of attack.
There was an apathetic content about the popula-
tion which must be broken. But that could only
be done by the descent of the spirit of God
on to the sleeping waters, and there seemed at
present no likelihood of the birth of a redeemer.

The Indian administration were aware of the
cryptic activities of Panditji, but they despised
him. This was reasonable enough. To the re-
quest of Panditji, “Evacuate the country thatTHE RAJ 155

I may take your place,” they could reply, ‘‘ he
people prefer us to stay here.” To the allega-
tion, “I shall make a better ruler than you, there
was the obvious retort, “There is no evidence
that this is so.” To the argument, “The people
require a national Government,” the reply was,
“The people would not shed a single drop of
blood, or spend a single rupee, to instal such a
Government.” But the Indian Government on its
remote Olympian heights did not observe the
working of certain causes which might, in the long-
run, arm Panditji with considerable support, or if
it did so observe them, it was unable or unwilling
to counteract them. The practical statesman, and
particularly the British statesman, is apt to look
only to the act. But the act is unimportant
except as the result of a thought. It 1s thought
that destroys empires, and constructs them anew.
It is the Logos and not the Demiurgos that 1s
the Destroyer and Creator. The ideas of Panditji
were spreading. This malignant energy posse ssed
a fecundating property, and the god might be
born.

And there were many agencies at work prepar-
ing a matrix hich would be duly receptive of the
Spermatic W ord.

English education was spreading. It had been
decided as early as the thirties that it was the
duty of the Government to open the doors of the

temple of knowledge to their subjects. The menhey
i smh eae alleen -
a I
- ase
~The.

 

156 THE LOST DOMINION

who were responsible for this were both lenorant
and contemptuous of Oriental culture, and were
apparently unaware of the existence of the vernac-
ulars. Their object was twofold. In the first
place, they wished to create a class from which
useful subordinates might be selected, and next
they hoped that the Western culture (which was
so obviously superior to the Oriental) might com-
municate itself through the medium of the in-
structed few to the eager many. In no other
way had European culture come into existence in
Kurope than by the spread of ideas from a small
educated class to the lonorant and_ barbarous
masses. ‘They foresaw a certain danger to European
supremacy from this process, but the danger they
foresaw was not the danger which actually arose.
They thought, that is, that the European culture
would rapidly oust the Oriental culture, and that
the Indian would become a European. In that
case there could of course be no excuse for the
continuance of European control in India. But
there would be no reason to desire such continu-
ance. Kngland would obviously have fulfilled her
mission.

Science was not much esteemed in the thirties,
and neither Mendel nor Weismann had yet de-
livered their message. The best intellects were

still obsessed by human perfectibility illusions.
They were perfectly aware that if you cut off a
man’s arms, his son will nevertheless be born withTHE RAJ 157

two arms. But they imagined that education of
the individual would extinguish, not only in him
but also in his progeny, those deep-seated racial
memories which are instincts. The matter is still
obscure, but it is pretty certain that you cannot,
by modifying the individual, affect the stock,
except perhaps by a long process of selection and
a suitable change of environment. A dominant
race could no doubt supply itself with a perpetual
succession of one-armed slaves, but that could only
be by performing the operation of amputation on
every child of the servile stock after birth.

It is extremely doubtful whether this process,

if persisted in for a thousand years and applied
rigorously, say, to the left arm, would result at
the end of that time in a tendency in the servile
stock to produce children whose left arms were
in any way less robust than those of the masters.
It was clear then that literary culture applied to
a few males in each generation could in no way
modify the instincts of that stock.

The experiment had been tried, accompanied
also with interbreeding on a orand scale and a
total change of intellectual environment (neither
of which were attempted in India) on several
occasions. Syria had been Hellenised. Egypt had
been first exposed to Hellenistic, and then to
Romano- Hellenic culture. Arab civilization had
taken root and borne copious fruit and flowers in

Spain. As soon as the foreign domination was:a ca ed Ae
gen a ST a

158 THE LOST DOMINION

removed the culture perished in a day. The like
fate would surely attend in India the superficial
Kuropean culture. There was no real danger of
the creation of a permanent stock of intellectual
mestizos.

The real danger was quite other. Impotent
permanently to modify the Oriental culture, the
foreign culture would work as an irritant poison
in the society affected by it. The society, there-
fore, would make convulsive efforts to get rid of
it. Hostility would grow towards the foreign
culture, and also to the domination which was
poisoning society with a drug which was all the
more dangerous because it was attractive.

Unhappy is the individual who is the result
of a physical cross between two disparate stocks.
Every cell is the theatre of a civil war. Hardly
less unhappy is he whose intellect has accepted,
but whose instincts reject, a foreign culture. It
is therefore among the Orientals who are educated
in Frankish lore, and particularly among those
who have been educated in Europe and have
returned thence to the East, that there is to be
found the most bitter hatred of the Frank and
of Frankish civilization.

This is true of the Oriental who is the subject
of a free Oriental country, and the result was even
more probable in the case of the Indian. Clever,
studious, and intelligent to a certain point, he

was able rapidly to absorb the foreign culture,wea

THE RAJ 159

and in the class-room and the examination-hall
he could easily beat his British fellow-students.
Yet the British Government, which with pertect
justification did not admit that superior literacy
was any sign of superior administrative ability,
or of superior character, showed evident signs of
confining him to the inferior branches of the
administration. This he probably thought was
unjust, and if he admitted the justice he rebelled
against the cruelty. Cruelty there was, though
the cruelty of nature, not of the British Govern-
ment: but he who is suffering from the agonies of
wounded self-esteem is apt to attack the thing
nearest at hand to which he can with any reason
attribute his sufferings.

The net result, therefore, of this experiment
was that a few individuals became thoroughly
occidentalised, and had consequently much to bear
from their Oriental kinsfolk and associates. A
much larger mass became, more or less, super-
ficially occidentalised, and in proportion as the
virus had penetrated more deeply, so they loathed
the Western culture and all that it stood for.

Moreover, quite apart from this acerbation of
racial feelines by the conflict of jarring cultures,
the culture, and the men by whom it was com-
municated, were not such as to render the pupils
very satisfied with the Indian system.

The culture was English—that is, 1t was per-
meated with Whig and Liberal ideas all very

—a. | 160 THE LOST DOMINION
; 4 e . =
H unfavourable to racial predominance, despotism,
He | and bureaucracy. Such a culture was easily

convertible into a means of propaganda of vague
a. ued humanitarian, atheistic, and subversive ideas, mas-
querading under the form of democracy and
' self-determination. These ideas were abhorrent
4 to the Oriental, and banners inscribed with those
strange devices have time after time gone down
before the might of the armed slaves of God
| and slaves of the King of Kings. But it was
dificult for the Indian Government, and still
more for the British Government, to reply other-
wise than by the rather ineffective argumentum
baculinum when some bright young B.A. asked,
‘“By what authority do you hold us in subjection ?
If it is the name of your superior culture, that

culture itself is hostile to your claims.”

Much difficulty might have been avoided had
there been a wise choice of instructors, but the
instructors were by no means friendly to the
administration. The Government was rather con-
temptuous of education, and exercised little or
no supervision over the choice of the teachers,
or their methods when appointed. Many of the
officials of the educational department were men of

4 great attainments, who might easily, if they had
wished, have passed into the Civil Service. Yet
they found on arrival in India that they were
totally neglected, badly paid, and treated as a
sort of inferior caste. They resented this, and

 

th
‘es
i
ts
iTHE RAJ 161

their resentment was reflected in their teaching.
With this Government did not interfere. Priding
themselves on their impartiality, they left the
universities very independent, and many of the
colleges became active centres of subversive pro-
paganda. Despotisms are apt to make this
mistake, from which democracies are generally
wholly free. That is because they regard only
the overt act. The Indian despotism, used as it
was to tolerate all sorts of opinions and ideas,
reserving to itself only the right to punish any
illegal act which was the manifestation of the
antecedent ideas, did not see the necessity, and
perhaps did not possess the ability, to check the
spread of ideas which, unlike the old ones, were
not likely to manifest themselves in actions which
were plainly criminal according to the jus gentewm.
The new ideas were extremely likely ultimately
to realise themselves in actions, but those actions,
though criminal according to the law of the land,
might appeal to a higher tribunal, and if that
appeal were made in the holy name of liberty, it
might well be successful.

The result then of this process was that a large
class of Indians was coming into existence who
hated the Government. Its hate was partially a
hatred for an institution which induced them to
accept a culture which they felt was poisonous,
and yet refused to accept them as equals. Partially
it was caused by resentment of a hypocrisy which,

L

Se canna162 THE LOST DOMINION

while continually hymning the praises of liberty
and democracy, nevertheless denied to them the
rights which liberty and democracy seemed to
promise them. From this class were selected all
the inferior agents of Government, and many of
the superior agents. The judiciary was filled with
them. The schools and colleges were almost
entirely in their hands. The Bar was recruited
almost exclusively from their ranks. The press
was owned by them. They could with ease
represent their case in England. Against all this
menace the Government opposed nothing, either
in the material or in the spiritual sphere. It
was this class that was Panditji’s agema.
Another department, the importance of which
was neglected, was the judicial Government
had rather a scorn of it. The constitution and
the powers of the High Court have already been
given. Below this, there was in every district
a district judge—a member of the Civil Service.
With the subordinate judiciary we are _ not
concerned. The collector and his assistants had
considerable magisterial and police powers. ‘There
was an appeal from the magistrates to the Sessions
(District) Court, and from the District Court
to the High Court. Suits against Government
were brought either in the High Court or the
District Courts. Important criminal cases were
tried according to venue, either in the District

or the High Court. The civilian judges wereTHE RAJ 163

often men who had been found unsatisfactory in
the executive branch, and the judicial department
was regarded as rather a penal settlement. Once
there, they were totally neglected by Government,
and neither rewards nor honours fell to them.
This, while perhaps good for their impartiality,
did not make them particularly devoted to the
Executive Government. The whole department
from the High Court downwards seemed to have
adopted as its motto the novel maxim, bona
judicis est intercedere. This was a survival of
the old Whig days, when legislation was com-
paratively unknown, and the law courts were
the scene of many a victory or defeat of the
contending factions. In such a state of affairs
an impartial readiness on the part of the judiciary
to butcher any one who could be brought
within the four corners of some law, however
obsolete, or to acquit any one, however notorious
his guilt, could he but find some _ technical
defence, was, of course, highly valued.

The courts in India displayed much ingenuity
in interpreting the law so as to secure the
acquittal of notorious criminals, and also a
jealous scrutiny of the acts of the Executive.
Heavy damages were given against officials who
had exceeded their legal powers, and even against
some who had not. Injunctions were freely issued
prohibiting the exercise of executive powers. At
present this tendency (which is an excellent check

einai164 THE LOST DOMINION

on a despotism, however wise and _ beneficent)
led to little more than an interesting sort of
parlour-game—the Executive, through its creature
the legislature, attempting to draft statutes which
would bind the courts, and the court then in
high glee driving a coach and four through
them. But it is clear that this game might turn
to deadly earnest. Suppose there was not a
docile legislature, and that, consequently, powers
proved to be inadequate could not be extended?
Suppose that the tribunals were manned by men
who were not merely frondeurs, but were hostile
to the Empire? In such a case the Executive
Government might be wholly paralysed. In one
province it was already almost impossible to
obtain a conviction for sedition or any political
crime. Suppose this symptom occurred in all
the provinces, and became accentuated? Both
the District Courts and the High Courts were
becoming filled with Indians, and with Indians
who had a strong bias against the Government.
These men were learned and able, and incorruptible,
and, as far as any man can be, impartial. But
this might not always be the case. The judges
were selected from the Bar after the English
fashion (unknown save in Anglo-Saxondom), and
the Bar was filled with proselytes of, and
sympathisers with, Panditji. The time had not
yet come when European blood was considered

as a disqualification for high judicial office, butTHE RAJ 165

it was evidently approaching. Foolish is the
ruler who entrusts the sword of justice to hostile
hands.

India is cursed, and always has been cursed,
with a seditious press. The English were the
first offenders. Nothing can exceed in scurrility
some of the rags of the time of Hastings. There
was not likely to be reputable journalism at a
time when at first the offender could be expelled
from the country by the mere fiat of the Executive,
or when later the journalist was controlled by
a severe censorship. These checks were removed
and a more reputable English journalism sprang
up. The journals were, however, still anti-Govern-
mental, although the majority of contributors to
them were themselves Government servants. It 1s
always more interesting to read a condemnation
than a panegyric, and all people like rather to
dwell on the faults than the virtues of their
friends. Anti-Governmental writing, therefore,
paid, and was therefore supplied in vast quantities.
This peculiarity was copied by the Indian press,
which was freed by the same measure as that
which had freed the English press. There were
some reputable Indian papers, but too many of
them depended for existence on blackmail and
indecent advertisements. As an inducement to
subscribers they gave, not mnews-service, which
was expensive, but endless and venomous diatribes

against the Government and individual ofhcers.

   

: een

—
SS VERS aT

—
0 anneal166 THE LOST DOMINION

The editor, who was often also the proprietor,
the printer, the reporter, the leader writer, and
the office boy, was generally a member of the
literate classes who had picked up some small
smattering of education, but whose attainments
or influence were not sufficient to obtain for him
the humblest Government post. As time went
on, the columns of the vernacular press teemed
with libels, incitements to rebellion, and to
murder.

Government, which had regarded these ignorant
and malicious effusions with amused contempt,
somewhat tardily took alarm and passed an act
to control the vernacular press. The result was
magical. The overt preaching of sedition and the
sacred duty of murder ceased at once. This fact
was made the excuse for repealing the act (in
the sacred name of Milton) by the next ad-
ministration, on the hypocritical pretence that
The fact, I suppose,

that no one has yet broken into the vaults of

it was no longer necessary.

the Bank of England is an excellent reason for
abolishing those vaults.

I do not wish to enter into the controversy as
to the benefits of a free press. I am acquainted
with the arguments in favour of liberty, but I
do say that a free press and despotism are in-
compatible. Further, I do say that the existence
of a free press and a foreign dominion are

incompatible.

These may be excellent reasonsTHE RAJ 167

for abolishing the despotism, and for removing
the foreign dominion, but you cannot have both.
In the case of India, however, the matter is purely
academical, because no native government would,
for a moment, tolerate any hostile criticism.

Government, having thus freed the press from
preliminary censorship, still reserved the right of
prosecution for the crimes of sedition, abetting
murder, criminal libel, and the like; but it
never exercised it. A formal tral gave an
agreeable advertisement to the erring sheet, and
was really equivalent to a Government subvention.
Such a trial also spread the doctrines which were
the subject of the prosecution far and wide.
And the courts practically refused to convict in
any case, however grave.

Government had yet a third weapon at their
disposal, that of counter-propaganda. But this
it never applied. By this time it had got
hardened to ill-instructed and ee ant criticism,

a)
and thought it might safely neglec it. There
was supposed to be something Cea tise

about a subventioned newspaper or a Government
organ. ‘The foulest calumnies and most dangerous
‘neitements were allowed to be spread freely
among an ignorant and excitable population,
without check and without antidote. Here again
was a sad instance of the unwise tendency of
Government to consider only the act, and not
the idea. During the whole of this period the

_apee a amenttmaieeniiieiin168 THE LOST DOMINION

Government of India reserved in its own hands
the right of sanctioning prosecutions in press
cases, and such sanction was never accorded,
even at the most pressing requests of the
provincial governments. Only in the rarest
cases was an injured private individual, who
happened also to be a Government servant, allowed
to appeal to the courts for protection against
the most wicked and groundless accusations.

As a means of propagating disaffection among
the literate classes, and even among those who,
not themselves readers of papers, had friends who
were, this system could hardly be rivalled. As
a means of preparing the ground for intensive
agitation Panditji welcomed it.

The trade of India had been thrown open, and
there was a great increase in such trade, the more
so as increased transport facilities rendered the
export of bulky staples possible. The jute fibre
had been made available for the purposes of com-
merce by European science. Tea had been planted
by English enterprise. The American Civil War
had revealed India’s potentialities as a cotton ex-
porting country. There had been a great increase
of wealth, and much of that wealth was invested
in industries in India. There was also a great

influx of EKuropean merchants and agents.

The Europeans were mainly Scotch Radicals,
and they cordially disliked the Government. In
the first place, the ideas of the Government wereTHE RAJ 169

not those of Glasgow or Dundee; in the next
place, the Government was rather distrustful of
the European man of affairs, both by tradition,
because it feared the growth of a naturalised
European community, and because it feared that
the individual European might oppress, in pursuit
of gain, the Indian, and thus lead to discords.
There had been much trouble in this respect with
the indigo concerns. Mistrust begat distrust, and
the European suspected that the Government was
inclined to favour the Indian at his expense, and
attributed to a reactionary bureaucratic spirit what
the Government supposed to be necessary and
reasonable limitations on the right of private
exploitation. A very serlous cause of hostility
was the childish feeling of pique that private
merchants, however rich, did not figure on the
lists of precedence; and that, therefore, at public
and state functions, their wives were liable to be
“sent in” after the wives of very humble Govern-
ment officers. Zantene animis? Remember the
history of the Roman consulate. The whole of
this body was therefore ill-affected to the Govern-
ment, and not unwilling to embarrass it. On the
other hand, in certain cases its practices were by
no means such as commended the nationality which
it represented to the Indian. Among a large com-
munity there must be some black sheep, and one
fraudulent bankrupt, one perjurer, one insurance
robber, one swindler, stood out in particular black-Ca ee ea ans —

 

170 THE LOST DOMINION

ness against a spotless background. And it was
on these very exceptional cases that the Indian
was likely to concentrate when he was considering
the claims of the foreigner to continue to rule
owing to his superior morality.

The new Indian mercantile community had also
what it imagined to be just grounds for dissatisfac-
tion. Its money was invested in cotton mills, and
in both the processes carried on in those mills it
was exposed to the rivalry of Manchester. India
had been for long a great market for Manchester
goods, and Manchester was not particularly anxious
to lose that market. The principles of Christianity
and the principles of Cobden prohibited active
discouragement of this nascent Indian industry,
but the same principles prohibited the introduction
ito India of anything like a tariff which might
operate as protection to Indian manufactures.

You had then the unedifying spectacle of a
Government, forced by sheer necessity to raise
revenue by a tariff, anxiously exploring how much
import-duty sharkfins and scrivelloes could bear,
and yet refusing to impose any duty on articles
which formed the bulk of the imports. When
the same necessity drove the British Government
into permitting taxation of Manchester mill pro-
ducts, it coupled the permission with the condition

that an equivalent excise duty should be raised
on the products of Indian mills, This was galling
to the pride and deleterious to the profits of theaac eeeee

THE RAJ 171

Indian mill-owners. The political Indian noted
that after all to India was not conceded the
financial liberty which was the right of the
smallest white colony—of Newfoundland or the
Falklands. That the whole population, and partic-
ularly the peasants, profited by cheap clothes, did
not interest him.

The Indian did not prove a very good captain
of industry. Numerous limited liability companies
were formed, and entrusted to the management
of Indian managing agents, on which the Indian
system con fers unwholesomely large powers. The
agent often used the capital put at his disposal
for frantic speculation. If the speculation was
successful, the lion’s share of the profits went to
him. If unsuccessful, then the loss fell on the
creditors and the shareholders. Hence widespread
ruin. In India, the Government is regarded as a
sort of superhuman being, all-wise and all-powerful.
When any disaster then occurs which affects large
classes of the population, those classes are naturally
apt to doubt its beneficence.

The effect of these industrial changes were
disastrous to many. India was still the country
of the hand worker. ‘The condition of many of
these people became truly pitiable, especially that
of the weavers. Their foreign market was lost long
ago, and their home market was now threé atened,
both by foreign competition and by the competition
of Indian mills. They were precluded from enter-~~

 

172 THE LOST DOMINION

ing new occupations by the caste system. They
lingered on in misery. Government were unable
to do much for them, and made no attempts
to do so. It was not among these classes, who
were really hard hit, not by the foreign domination
but by the same set of causes which had made it
possible, that active disaffection spread ; but starving
operatives would furnish on a day of disorder no
insignificant body of street-fighters. So also would
the new element in Indian society—the factory
hand where he existed. The factory hand came
from the most depressed classes of the population.
He was taken away from his village, where he was
exposed to and fettered by the influences of the
caste and social system, and thrown pell-mell into
a great town where there were few restraints. He
got what to him was an enormous pay. There,
too often, he learned how to drink, and an attach-
ment to other vices. He was the victim of
oppression from manager and foreman. He was the
golden sheep of the slum landlord, The class did
not become hopelessly demoralised, first, because
the Indian is naturally moral and religious in
his way, and according to the jus gentium, law-
abiding. He was also not permanently domiciled
in the industrial towns. He kept up close con-
nection with his home, and his one ambition was

to make enough in the mills to return to his little
village and buy lands there; but he was not the
member, while in Bombay or Cawnpore, of a com-ee cadimaetaiee ieee

THE RAJ 173

munity. He was a mere unit in a mob, and as
such was easily inflammable. ‘The extension of
the factory system in India, therefore, furnished
Panditji with a valuable force for the purpose of
street-fighting, and he was totally indifferent, so
the mill hands fought, whether they killed or were
killed. In fact, he preferred of the two contin-
gencies, the latter. A massacre of Europeans by
mill hands might, even in Labour circles at home,
excite resentment. A massacre of mill hands by
the arms of the Government might easily be
represented as an atrocity.

Social changes were added to these political
and industrial changes. There were many visitors
to India, and many Indians went to England, either
for study, or intrigue, or for recreation. The two
peoples were getting to know one another better,
and, as is usual in the case of peoples who are
very disparate, began to dislike one another all
the more. The Indian was at first, when he was
a rarity, a lion or a pet im English society; but
views soon changed, and he became something
like a pariah. He was confined there also to the
society of his own countrymen, or to that of
classes of the European community which were
not the most admirable. In England he was also
exposed to the seductions of cosmopolitan sub-
versivism, if he returned at alljane returned
Glled with loathing for England, and Western

civilization 1n general,1 \
1% 1
; Cs

 

174 THE LOST DOMINION

Of course in a society like England, where
wealth is so important and a new sensation is
So prized, there were always certain sections who
would welcome any foreigner whatever his colour,
or character, or antecedents, so long as he was
wealthy, and generous and amusing; and Indian
chiefs and nobles found themselves treated with
an enthusiasm in exalted circles which they
could not expect to win in their own country.
This did not tend to make them any more
satisfied with the system in force in India. It is
galling after you have been the friend of dukes
and the intimate of countesses, to be told by
some subordinate official of the Government that
you really must not roast your step-grandmother
or your salute will be cut down.

Moreover, the arrogant contempt of the ordinary
Anglo-Indian for the culture—literary, artistic,
of the Kast could
not but gall an Oriental who now knew how
shallow, and in many ways contemptible and
false, was the boasted culture of the West.

To sum up, then, results of all these causes:
there was during this period a considerable influx
of Westernism which pressed hard on a decrepit
Oriental society. This influx, at first welcomed,
soon became distasteful, and finally unendurable.
It was necessarily odious to the orthodox, but it
soon became equally so to those classes that had
accepted it at first, but had found it poisonous.

 

political, religious and socialem

THE RAJ 175

There was thus a real reaction, and that reaction
took the form of nationalism.

Nationalism was a spurious product in India.
There being no Indian nation, there could obviously
be no real nationalism. There could be no
national soul capable of positive achievements.
But there was a sort of negative nationalism.
The inhabitants of the sub-continent were divided
into many races, creeds, and castes. But much
as they might differ among themselves, various
as their instincts, inconsistent as their ideals
might be, there were certain things which were
disliked by all of them.

‘IT am a pagan, you are a Mussulman, X is an
animist, but we are none of us Christians. I am
a polygamist, you are a polyandrist, Re Tee
universalist, we are none of us monogamists. |
wear a cap, you wear a turban, X goes bare-
headed, but we none of us wear a hat. I would
rather die than be ruled by you, you would
rather die than be ruled by me, and X& would
rather die than be ruled by either of us. But
we are all excluded from the Government alike.
Would it not be possible for us to combine
against the Christian, monogamist, hat-wearing
monopolists, leaving for subsequent decision our
own differences?”

In this way a sort of nationalistic spirit sprung
up. Being merely negative and destructive, it
could accomplish nothing positive. But the176 THE LOST DOMINION

nationalist party, impotent in the material sphere,
might well become powerful in the moral sphere.
It had no real root in the country. It could not
call to arms one soldier. It could not attract
to its coffers one rupee. It might, the Government
thought, safely be left in the sterile bog to which
it was condemned by the very condition of its
existence. The Government was unaware that an
idea, even an idea of pure destruction (which is,
after all, often the necessary precursor of a
creative idea), is an enemy that can by no
means be despised.

The party was wide-spread, indeed covered the
whole of India. It had a common vernacular
English. In possession of the press, the schools,
and the bar, invading the administration and the
judiciary, and in touch with powerful English
parties, its influence bore no proportion to its
material strength. All that was for the present
necessary was to provide it with some sort of
organization.

It is unnecessary to go into the history of the
Ilbert Bill, though the subject would repay
careful study by those who wish to learn how
not to do things. The dispute, however, which
was the right of Indians to try Europeans for
offences committed by the latter, raised the racial
question in an acute form. Government, finding
among the Europeans factious opposition to a
reform which it thought just and _ necessary,THE RAJ 177

appealed to the support of “enlightened Indian
opinion.” This naturally supported Government
on that subject through thick and thin. The
Government valued this support, and thought it
might prove useful to it in the career of mild
liberalisation which it intended to follow in Indian
administration, and hoped also that the same
support might be extended to the administration
in general. ‘The Indians are now thoroughly
convinced that we mean well to them. Being
intelligent men, they will, of course, co-operate
with us. We shall thus be able to win for our
other measures popular support, which will
strengthen our hands both in India and at home.
The administration will, and must, remain a
despotism, but a despotism considerate of the
opinions of enlightened public opinion, and there-
fore supported by it.” The Congress, therefore,
came into existence with the sympathy and
support of those in power.

The Congress was a convention of the literate
party. Delegates were elected from those who
paid in each district a small subscription, and
these delegates met for a few days in each year
at some important centre to debate and pass
resolutions.

The Congress, as a whole, as is natural with a
representative body, possessed in an agoravated
form the qualities of its constituents. Some men
there may have been who were statesmen, but

M178 THE LOST DOMINION

there was nothing constructive about the policy
of the Congress. It sought the removal of
grievances, but it never referred to the grievances
which actually pressed on the people. Not a
word was said as to agricultural indebtedness,
or the condition of the artisan, or the oppression
of the courts. In that body the people were not
represented and had no voice.

Its staple product was vague, hostile, and merely
negative criticism of the Government. It had
certainly a list of stock grievances which were
trotted out year after year. They were not
grievances which weighed heavily on the people,
but they all had this in common, that they
referred to conditions which were inseparable
from a foreign dominion. They were also such
as were condemnable in the eyes of liberalism.

Thus there was a clamour for the separation
of executive and judicial functions. That meant
actually the subordination of the Executive
Government to the judiciary, and the judiciary was
to be exclusively Indian. There was a demand
for simultaneous examinations for recruitment of
the Civil Service to be held in India and in
England. That meant the rapid substitution of
the Indian for the European element in the
imperial agency, and ultimately in the directorate,
The repeal or substantial modification of the
Arms Act was another plank. The reasons given
were that to disarm the people was to emasculateTHE RAJ 179

them. The idea of the literate classes, however
well-armed, opposing equally well-armed Pathans
and Rohillas was amusing, as was also the idea
that the possession of a revolver would increase
the virility of a bunnia or Parbhu. The possession
of arms by the people would indeed facilitate
murders of Europeans and even rebellions. The
sale of liquor was attacked by men who themselves
either never drank liquor, or drank it to excess
secretly; because prohibition would make the
Government unpopular among the low castes,
would bring its agents into continual conflict with
peasant smugglers, and seriously reduce the income
of the Government, which might thus be forced
to introduce protection.

Local self-government had been introduced by
the Indian Government. Councils partly elective
and partly nominated under the control of the
district officers had been set up all over India,
both in great cities and in rural areas. They had
Fnancial and administrative powers. Here was an
opportunity for the Indian to show his capacity
for self-government. The elective members were
mostly men of the Congress type. They clearly
demonstrated that the old defects of the Indian,
which had ruined all the native Governments,
were as strong as ever. The same dilatoriness, the
same corruption, the same nepotism, the same lack
of public spirit, the same sacrifice of the common

thing to caste and race prejudices were here to180 THE LOST DOMINION

be found, and the bodies only functioned because
they were under strict tutelage. The Congress,
instead of trying to make these bodies a success,
clamoured merely for extension of the powers
exercised by such, and for removal of the control
and guidance of the district officers. The Congress,
in fact, performed no very useful function.

It was, however, the spiritual home of the dis-
affected party. It served a useful purpose in
bringing together and systematising all the vague
resentments felt in every quarter of the empire.
It enabled the leaders to get into touch with one
another, to settle the lines of agitation, to pro-
pagate sedition, and by convening the primaries,
and by dictating to them the machine- made
resolutions which they were to pass, gave to
seditious agitation a superficial appearance of
widespread public support. It was, however, very
sectional. Instituted by Parsis and Europeans, it
soon became the organ of the literate Hindu. It
attracted few Muhammadans, and no Hindus of
the land-holding and commercial classes. It was
significant that among this body which was so
eloquent on democracy, progress, enlightenment,

and the like, no word was heard as to social
reform. At first there had been a hope that the
Congress might prove a rallying-ground for those
who wished not only to reform the Indian
Government but to reform Oriental society. The
Congress, many of the members of which werenn cictincinninsbncensindalins miata

THE RAJ 18]

very lax Hindus, watched with jealous eyes any
attack by Government on Hindu prejudices and
superstitions. Any member of their body who
hinted a word as to the abolition of child-marriage,
re-marriage of widows, intercourse with Huropeans,
relaxation of inhuman caste rules, was howled
down; and the same papers which contained
eloquent passages, worthy of Burke, on the rights
of the people to liberty, contained also eloquent
panegyrics on sati. Western institutions were
praised, Western civilization held up as odious
and ridiculous. The brotherhood of man and the
duty of expelling the foreigner were preached in
the columns of the same organ.

The Government were not alarmed. The
Congress attracted chiefly the pleader class. It
did not seem likely that from among the “ practi-
tioners of petty and provincial chicane” any
leader would arise who would attack the citadel
of empire. It forgot that, under exactly similar
leadership, the people of Paris had stormed the
Bastille. True, the Bastille would never have
fallen had the garrison been staunch and the
Government firm: but was it certain that the
garrison of the Indian citadel would always be
staunch and the Home Government firm ?

The title of Congresswala expressed both among
Indians and Europeans a sort of contemptuous
dislike, but a similar opprobrium had at one time
attached in England to the titles of ‘ Repealer,”|

 

182 THE LOST DOMINION

“Teetotaller,” and ‘‘Methody.” Empires in diffi-
culties seek strange allies.

It was not, however, to the activities of the
Congress that Panditji looked directly for redemp-
tion. This party was useful, nay necessary to his
purposes, but the British Empire must be shaken
by a lever which was not of laths, and the Rulers
must be terrified into submission by terrors more
formidable than those of a painted mask.Assess x ienhednimmnealimeaananaatall

183

CHAP THR, Vii:
THE REVOLT.

Anp now in India the revolt against Western

5
civilization began. That civilization was pressing
hard on the East, and it was abhorrent to the
Oriental.

Western civilization is compounded of many and
diverse ingredients. It derives at three removes
from Juda, at two removes from Hellas, and at
one remove or directly from Rome. Mixed with
these ingredients are certain other Semitic aliments
and traces of barbarism. Hellenism has, however,
leavened the whole mass.

The primitive ideas from which this civilization
is formed are these :—

The Gods are living things. They are neither
metaphysical creations, nor bodiless abstractions.
They are and reign.

The relation of the God to man is not that of
master to slave. It is that of father to son, or
perhaps that of a gracious leader to a free and
loyal follower. Man has rights against the God,

etait nane aot184 THE LOST DOMINION

and the God has duties towards man. The
clemency of God is not the clemency of the
prudent slave-owner or the capricious despot, it
is the effect of a love resembling that which
unites an affectionate father and an affectionate
son,

The universe is neither the creation of an evil
spirit, nor is it an illusion. It exists outside the
consciousness of both the God and man. It is
a beautiful place, and the city of God. The
beneficence of the God is shown in this, principally,
that the phenomenal universe zs so full of beauty,
and is also so full of things which subserve the
happiness of man. KEvil exists, no doubt. That
we cannot explain. The good much exceeds the
evil, and human effort may diminish evil. Very
possibly evil merely exists because the God knew
that there is a delight in conflict, and therefore
made man a fighter, and gave him an antagonist.

The God governs the universe by law, and
consequently man is subject to law. But this
law is not a crushing necessity. The God has
left the will of man free. He can choose the

good or choose the evil. If he choose the good
he will survive; if he choose the evil he will
perish. There is no absolute good and evil: it
is for man to find out what is good and what is
evil at the moment.

It is to help him to do so that civil governments
exist. The God has, of course, therefore decreedTHE REVOLT 185

that there should be civil governments, and all
such governments are God-appointed. But he
has not given over men as slaves to their rulers.
Ruler and subject have correlative duties. The
God does not will rebellion, but he does not
will tyranny. The God has not expressed pre-
ference for any form of government. That is the
best form which at the moment preserves order
while allowing progress. At present, and for the
moment, democratical forms of government assure
this.

There may be a law antecedent to the laws.
With this man is not concerned. Man progresses,
and as he progresses he needs new laws. It 1s
the principal duty of man, as a political animal,
to ascertain what laws hamper progress, and what
new laws are needed to encourage it.

Just, therefore, as man is a slave neither of
God nor of the king, so he is not a slave to any
divine and immutable law.

Man is therefore a free creature, and mixes in
society with other free creatures, subject only to
mild restraints. His relation to his brethren,
therefore, is not that of status. He is a free
agent. He 18s, therefore, free also to limit his
freedom by contract. Having once given his word,
he must not break it. That would, in reality, be
to surrender his own freedom. If he attempts
to do so, both law and religion will restrain him.

Man is provided with senses, and there are in186 THE LOST DOMINION

the universe many objects which please those
senses. It is right and proper that he should
thus gratify himself. It is for this very reason
that things delightful were made. But he must
sratify them in accordance with the principle that
he is a free man among free men, and that he
may damage neither himself nor others. In this
respect, therefore, he must obey religion and the
laws.

You must so use your own, that you do no
harm to others. No man, and no order of man,
has the right to monopolise the beauty and
pleasure of the universe. There must be equal
opportunity for all. It is unfortunately the case
that there is among men no equality of faculty.

Art makes permanent that part of the beauty
and joy of the universe which is transitory. It
interprets this to those who need such interpret-
ation. To the artist is given the vision. It is
for him to express that vision in symbols. It is
for him to find appropriate symbols. But to us
Greek methods of interpretation are at present
most intelligible. The artist who expresses his
vision in symbols unintelligible to the many is
a traitor to his vows.

It is the duty of man to enquire. The universe
is full of strange powers and substances, the
virtues of which are not yet fully known. It is
for man to turn these powers and virtues to his
own use. hus he may become more and morerebatiatt

nn cematrimdensernih tame sa AS LE SCE ee

eed
—

THE REVOLT 187

lord over the phenomenal universe, and ever
increase his material wellbeing. The daring mind
also finds in exploration a pleasure distinct from
the pleasure won from the sensual delights he
may discover in the regions explored.

Woman is one of the most excellent creations
of God. In her is summed up all the beauty of
the universe. But she is not a mere instrument
of pleasure. She is highly specialised, no doubt,
for the performance of her peculiar functions, but
she has other excellencies. Reverence is due to
her, and loyalty as a friend, a partner, and a
priestess.

On the whole, then, monogamy, productive as
it is of graye inconvenience to society and of
hardship to individuals, should be the rule. It
is to the union of the sexes that we look for
future citizens. We desire that man should be
free, and it is impossible that free men should be
born from unions in which one of the parents is in
a condition of marked inferiority to the other.

These are the basic principles of Western civil-
ization. It cannot escape attention that these
principles are of the nature of a religion, ‘The
religion, and consequently these principles, are
not perhaps true, or at any rate not always and
everywhere true. The Oriental would deny every
one of them.

The Oriental would say :—

The relation of God to man is not that of188 THE LOST DOMINION

father to son. The Gods are probably metaphysical
concepts. If they exist they are malignant or, at
any rate, unmoral powers, and are very mighty.
If there be one God, he is the master of his slaves.
He called them into existence by his breath, and
by his breath he can annihilate them. He is his
own law. Man has no rights against him. There
is no appeal against his decree. He can condemn
the whole human race to Hell without staining
his justice.

The phenomenal universe is either an illusion
or the creation of evil, or at least of unmoral, Gods.
Man is there just as the star is there and the
dung-beetle is there. If there be one God the
universe is his slave-pen. Any delights that
man may find there are merely the pleasures that
a wise slave-master gives to his slaves that they
may consent to live. In the world evil is pre-
dominant. It is an act of ingratitude to, and
rebellion against, God to abstain from the grati-
fication of the senses from mere peevish motives.
But wholly to withdraw from the world (if this
withdrawal is done in the service of God) is the
act of a wise and pious man.

Man has no free will. He is the slave of

necessity. He has no choice either of good or
evil. Good and evil are absolute. What God
commands is good, what he forbids is evil. Good
and evil were fixed immutably by divine decree
long before the creation of man.Tee aeael

. * x ore awe o ——— ees
2a anette < =

THE REVOLT 189

There is law in the universe, but it is an
ancient and immutable law. It cannot be changed,
and human ordinances must be consistent with it.
God has revealed his will; but men are negligent,
and the divine ordinances become obscured. ‘Then
God sends on earth a messenger to revive the old
commandments. The civil ruler is merely the
executant of this ancient and immutable law. In
this he is the delegate of God, and rebellion
against an orthodox and efficient ruler is rebellion
against God. On the other hand there is no
sanctity in a government. Ruler and ruled are
alike the slaves of God, and God gives and takes
away kingdoms.

The function of the ruler is merely to administer
the divine laws. His own laws are no more than
the temporary and occasional edicts of a magis-
trate, and die with him. Participation by the
ruled in the government is, therefore, unnecessary
and inadvisable. The duty of the subject is to
obey the authority of God, delegated to and
vested in the ruler. His only choice is to change
rulers when the ruler is clearly incapable of
enforcing the divine laws, or is flagrantly in
rebellion against them.

Man is not a free agent. He is equal indeed,
for all men are the slaves of God. But God can
marshal his slaves as he wishes. To some he
gives privileges, to others he denies them. It is

on the whole more convenient that the relations:
4 i
5 y
:
i

Sen,
a
Mas

 

 

eee

 

190 THE LOST DOMINION

of men should be regulated by status and not
by contract. Where contracts exist they cannot
be allowed to interfere with the immutable law.
No man can contract himself out of these ante-
cedent obligations. If he attempts to do so, the
laws and religion will restrain him.

It is extremely dangerous to do anything unless
the proposed action is one clearly and unmistakably
indicated by the precepts of religion as lawful
and incumbent. By action you may be infringing
the divine ordinances.

In art, the emotions are excited rather by the
contemplation of terror or power than by that
of beauty. ‘The Hellenic symbols are meaningless.
To the man of the West the symbols of the Hast
appear grotesque and offensive.

The spirit of man is no doubt far-reaching and
never-tiring. But it turns away from the material
universe with disgust. It finds free play in the
regions of metaphysics. Physical science is vulgar
and blasphemous.

Woman is one of the most excellent creations of
God; but she is of value only in relation to men.
Her functions are those of daughter, wife, and
mother. She has no possible claim to indepen-
dence. In youth her principal value is as an
instrument of pleasure. Her youth is short, and
the sexual desires of man die only with him.
Monogamy is therefore ridiculous and noxious.

There is clearly great incompatibility betweenTHE REVOLT 19]

these ideas and those on which Western civilization
rests. They cannot really co-exist. When then
the British became rulers of India, and ceased to
content themselves with those duties which are
the elementary duties of all rulers, and began to

introduce their culture, the conflict began.

The two great faiths on which lay the burden
of the championship were Hinduism and Islam.
Islam did not come forward during this period
as an active combatant, but it was preparing to
enter the lists, and it will be more convenient to
deal with the whole question in one chapter.
First, however, I shall deal with the Hindu
counter-attack.

It is unnecessary to give any detailed account
of the Hindu reli

y
©

rious and social system. But
it is necessary to emphasise the fact that, like
Islam, Hinduism is a “city” in the Greek sense.
That is, it not only explains the relation of God
to man and provides man with a temporal govern-
ment; it also regulates the life of the Hindu in
its minutest details.

Sooner or later then the British Government
was bound to come into conflict with Hinduism.
It is not wholly true that Britain conquered India
from the Hindus, for neither Plassey nor Buxar
were insignificant battles, and the conflict with
the God-given Government brought the Empire
near to ruin. Nevertheless, one Hindu power had
been dethroned by the British arms. ‘The hege-ee Lee ee Phat s 2
Bre Miter Geri teal Miata LA Fe)

Le OS WT ee ae | rs
4 ALU reese al lin hse

>
Ps
-
A

Fa ey, .
ria) A een ener

 

192 THE LOST DOMINION

mony of India was won from the Marathas, and it
was particularly among the Marathas that Brahmin
ascendancy in political matters had reached its
height. Moreover, even in the Mussulman courts
the Hindus, and particularly the Brahmins, had
much influence. The British conquest, therefore,
was a serious set-back to the Brahmins in the
material sphere. It soon began to menace them
in the spiritual sphere. With some reluctance,
and after perhaps excessive delay, the British did
put down some Hindu customs which were contrary
to civilized practice. They forbade, eg., ritual
murder, human sacrifice, and sat.

These were not necessary parts of Hinduism, but
the interference was resented. The British, who
had now abandoned their laissez-faire theories and
were brimming over with the liberalism of the
thirties, showed evident signs of wishing to push
the process further. Hindu prejudices were treated
very summarily. Widow re-marriage was legalised,
and a measure was being framed to restrain the
wildest excesses of polygamy. The answer to this
was the Mutiny.

The result of the Mutiny was to crush the
hopes of restoration of Hinduism by force of arms,
and the literate classes flung themselves with
avidity on to the new culture. Scepticism and
irreligion became fashionable, and new religions
and philosophies arose which attempted to combine
Eastern and Western ideas. The result of thisweeaeeaa.

THE REVOLT 193

was fierce reaction, much strengthened by the
[Ibert Bill agitation.

The reaction began to organise itself in Poona in
the later

eighties. Poona was the headquarters of
the Maratha Brahmins, the only race in India which

¢

combined literacy with some executive ability.
They had suffered much from the British. The
Maratha Empire had fallen, and the principality
of Poona, the ruler of which was a Maratha-
Brahmin, had fallen also. So had the little state
of Satara, where the Brahmins had much influence.
The Bombay Government had also for years carried
on a ruthless investigation into titles, and had
in many cases confiscated estates, the title to
which was doubtful, but whose occupiers were
thoroughly convinced that their claim was good.
The Brahmins filled all the subordinate posts of
Government. Much of the official correspondence
was carried on in a script that none but a Brahmin
could read. Finally the Konkanasth-Brahmin made
up for a somewhat doubtful claim to real Brahmin-
hood by orthodoxy and learning.

It was necessary to put the new movement under
the protection of a god. One might have thought
that the god Vishnu would have been the national
leader. On many previous occasions he had taken
form and descended on earth to re-establish the
Hindu religion, and to punish those who oppressed
it or wronged its votaries. But, for reasons which
will appear later, the movement was put under

N194 THE LOST DOMINION

the protection of Shiva. The assistance of other
gods—e.g., Ganesh, who, in our day the amiable,
pot-bellied, elephant-headed God of science and
material success, was in ancient days an avenging
angel, the Michael of the Hindu pantheon—was
not refused.

A libellous account of Shiv worship will be
found in Dubois, but the real truth of the matter
is this. The primal god was perfect and universal.
He could therefore do nothing. For to act requires
an agent and a material. The god, wishing to
become a creator, therefore divided himself into
two beings, the being possessed of the male
energies being Shiv, and that possessed of the
female energies being Devi. The god was now
able to create, and did create. The symbol of this
pair of deities is the emblem representing the
combined male and female organs of generation,
the yoni-lingam or lingam. The symbol is to our
ideas obscene, but the thought it represents is not
necessarily so, nor is there necessarily any peculiar
obscenity about Shiv worship. As a matter of fact,
this was not the first time that Shiv had come
into collision with the West.

A.D. 220 had seen the Baal of Emesa enthroned
in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the mono-
theism of the lingam established in the Roman
world. The emperor, at once hierophant and god,
represented in his own person the bi-sexual deity.
This worship proved unpleasing to the Romans,va
i

2.

aren ineeenienseniealiaal

THE REVOLT 195

and this premature attempt to introduce an Eastern
monotheism failed.

Creation entails destruction, for everything created,
being necessarily imperfect, must perish. It is
rather to the destructive than to the creative side
of the divine pair that the common people look.
Thus, as in order to construct the new Hindu
state 1t was necessary to abolish the British state,
Shiv might well turn his activities in this direction.

There was a precedent in this very Maratha land.
The country had at one time been divided between
two Muhammadan kingdoms. The Deccan Muham-
madans were few in number, not more than four
per cent of the population; they were not
supported by their brethren in the north, and
were cut off from the vigorous tribes of Central
Asia and Persia by great distances. They had an
enemy, an active and powerful Hindu kingdom,
to the south. Yet their rule endured for centuries.
It is not therefore possible that they alienated
their Hindu subjects by religious persecution, and
accordingly the Hindus are found in great numbers
both in the armies and the civil administration.
Occasional outbursts of fanaticism and isolated acts
of persecution there may have been, but the general
policy of these powers was sympathetic to the
Hindu. Yet the foreign ruler and the foreign
culture had a depressive effect on Hinduism, and
there also a reaction had taken place. Saints and
sages had arisen who had revived the fading plant196 THE LOST DOMINION

of Hinduism. Then appeared a deliverer in the
temporal sphere.

This was the celebrated Shivaji, a son of a high
Hindu noble of the Ahmednagar and Byapur courts,
and himself a feudatory of Bijapur. He resolved,
and in spite of opposition from friends and kins-
men was constant to his resolve, to free the Deccan
from the rule of the Turk. This, by means of a
happy combination of craft and audacity, he accom-
plished. The kingdom soon passed from his family,
but the Hindu ascendancy in the greater part of
the Deccan was established for ever, and the
Muhammadan, if he survived there, survived only
as the vassal and mercenary of the Hindu.

The very name of this national hero showed
whose agent he was. Might not Shiva again
send forth a redeemer, a champion of Hinduism,
now threatened by a mightier foe than the diluted
Arab culture of Bijapur ?

No better model could be found, and those who
looked to a violent subversion of the British
Empire studied with care the career of Shivaji.
His powers were small at the beginning, and he
had increased his resources by gang-robbery.
Might not the chests of the national party be
filled in the same way? When menaced by a
great army he had entrapped that army by a
feigned negotiation, and had assassinated the
general. Such at least was the popular story,
though the researches of the historian seem toee iceeeniiienel

THE REVOLT 197

show that he merely anticipated a meditated act
of treachery on the side of his opponent. It
seemed clear then that in the service of religion
the patriot must shrink neither from assassination
nor from fraud. He had revived the national
spirit of the Marathas by means of semi-religious
plays and recitations, and the same engines might
be applied to create an atmosphere favourable
for the new movement.

The new movement tried its strength first
against the Mussulman. These were also aliens,
and moreover were weak. They were also protéges
of the British Government and its officials, and
the Government might therefore be forced into
coming forward as protectors of the Mussulmans
against the Hindus, and consequently appear
hostile to the Hindu religion.

Coercive measures were applied against those
who broke the law, and the movement was for
the moment repressed, but the originators had
succeeded in spreading among certain classes the
‘dea that the British Government was inclined to
favour the Mussulman as against the Hindu.

Then came the plague, and the measures taken by
Government to check the spread of this epidemic
were very unpopular. ‘Two officers of Government
were assassinated, and other assassinations followed.
The assassins were young Brahmins on whom the
Shivaji cult had produced a strong effect.

The movement showed little signs of becoming

=e eee ale198 THE LOST DOMINION

really popular. The Maratha and Kunbi were
rather sceptical of the whole thing. The Brahmins
had taken away the kingdom from the heirs of
Shivaji, and the Maratha did not see that there
was much urgency in replacing the Brahmin in
the kingdom which he had first stolen and then
lost. The Maratha respects but distrusts the
Brahmin. And here was the weakness of the
whole movement. The Brahmin forgot that it
was by the sword of the Mavli (the hill Maratha),
and by the lances of the Kunbi, that the Maratha
Kmpire had been established. Had Shivaji not
commanded these, the dagger would have drunk
Moslem blood in vain. Meantime the movement
spread into Bengal. Bengal was the country
where the English culture had bitten most deeply,
and where consequently the disillusionment and
reaction were greatest. The people of Bengal
had never been warriors, and had passed from
ruler to ruler with perfect indifference. Owing
to the peculiar administrative system of Bengal
the European officer did not have much to do
with the people. His activities were mostly those
of a magistrate or policeman, useful and indeed
necessary, but not particularly conciliatory. The
literate Bengali was the butt of rather malicious
and ill-mannered jests.

Bengal, always fond of asserting its manliness
(as to which it had some doubts) by virulent
attacks on the wholly indifferent British Govern-_asse ne a

THE REVOLT 199

ment, was now particularly agitated owing to
the proposed partition of Bengal. The province
was very unwieldly, and parts of 1t were very
inaccessible from Calcutta. These very parts were
also inhabited largely by Mussulmans, who were
neglected by the Government and oppressed by
Hindu landlords and usurers. It seemed, there-
fore, desirable to divide the overgrown province
into two, and to make a new province out of the
Eastern districts and the small province of Assam.
This measure aroused the alarm of the political
Bengali. It might lead to the eradication of his
power over a large and productive area. The
hated Mussulman might come to his own. The
power of the High Court of Calcutta might be
shaken. The permanent settlement might be
endangered. A wild clamour arose. Government
despised this clamour and proceeded. Partition
is an evil name; it calls to mind partitions of
Poland and the like. It also seems to imply the
separation into two parts of a living organism.
If you picture Bengal as the mother of the Bengali
race, then the partition of Bengal may easily be
figured as an act of cutting fragments off a living
mother, a process of which none can approve.
And it so happened that there was a tendency
already existing thus to regard Bengal as a divine
female creature. Thus a harmless administrative
act became connected with the revolting ideas

of matricide and deicide.a

200 THE LOST DOMINION

It will not have been forgotten that the primal
god divided into two creatures—Shiv, the repre-
sentative of the male energies, and Devi, the
representative of the female energies. Devi was,
par excellence, the goddess of Bengal. She also,
in her time, had destroyed many evil monsters,
the enemies of the human race and of the
Hindus.

It is the custom of Indian ascetics to wander
round the whole of India visiting the sacred
shrines, The tour takes twelve years. There is
still a tendency for these pilgrims to proceed in
companies, and of course when the Pax Britannica
did not exist, the pilgrim, if wise, attached himself
to a large party. Many of these ascetics were
fighting men. Like gathered to like, and in the
eighteenth century it was not unusual for bodies
of thousands of fanatics to move about, well-armed,
and under some sort of military discipline. The
time being one of disorder, when the assistance
of armed men was valuable, such wandering bands
were often employed by princes as mercenary
soldiers. Sometimes under their own leaders
they ravaged the country, and even occasionally
erected principalities. One such body had come
into conflict with a small British and Muhammadan
force in the days of Warren Hastings, and had
wiped it out. This produced a great impression
at the time, when, as now, the slightest check to
the British arms was regarded as heralding theaa5asen sae eS ieee Ran

THE REVOLT 201

downfall of the Empire; but nothing further
happened. About the middle of the last century
a Bengali writer of genius, imitating Walter Scott,
wrote a novel on this subject. His novel con-
tained a glorification of the goddess Devi, whose
votaries had defeated the British, and the author
is undecided whether the goddess he praises is
the goddess, or India, or Bengal; and if the
goddess, whether the actual goddess or the
goddess as she will be when her destructive
energies are laid aside, and she comes forward
in her benignant form of creator and maintainer.
The book itself inculcates the duty of accepting
the British Government for the time, that
Government being the divinely-appointed teacher
of a superior culture; but, as is only natural,

the writer hoped that a time would come when

 

—England havine fulfilled her divine mission

9 a
renovated India would need her guidance no
more. The book also contained a poem, ‘“ Bande
Mataram”: “Bow to the Mother,” in which the
goddess (though which goddess is obscure) 1s
addressed in elevated strains as the protectress,
the hope, and the refuge of the Hindus.

The Mother which was thus Bengal, or India,
or Devi, or some glorious divinity not yet mani-
fested, was thus menaced by the partition. The
body of the mother was to be divided. Her
chosen lands were to be handed over to the
Mussulman, and the English yoke was to be202 THE LOST DOMINION

riveted more firmly than ever on the Hindus.
In Bengal, therefore, the movement started in the
Maratha lands found ready acceptance, but was
here put under the protection of the consort of
Shiv.

And there was no doubt to what goddess the
patriotic young Bengali made his appeal. It was to
Kali the black, fierce goddess, the chosen deity of
the sorcerer, the convener of orgies where votaries,
fed with unlawful meats and maddened with
unlawful drinks, meet in the darkness and waste
places, and give rein to their primal passions;
Kali the drinker of blood, who dances maddened
on the bodies of the slain: Kali the wearer of the
necklace of skulls; Kali the mistress of the pesti-
lence. She would soon manifest herself in all
her terrors and avenge herself on her enemies.

The worship of Devi, always popular in Bengal,
became now ten times more popular, and it spread
to regions where it had indeed been known but
despised by the votaries of the bright gods as
something only fit for outcastes. The Maratha
had indeed always worshipped one particular form
of Devi with enthusiasm, for the principal festival
of the goddess fell at the end of the rains. Then
the rivers became fordable and the plundering
hosts could ride abroad. But generally she was not
so much of a national goddess as she had been
in Bengal, and the Bengal ritual was unknown or
unpractised save by the few. Now, however, itTecan
ie i

—— entices EAT

THE REVOLT 203

seemed as if, for her temples, all other shrines
would be abandoned.

It began to be commonly said that the goddess
was athirst and that she required blood, and the
blood of her enemies. Goats must be sacrificed,
but they were to be white and hornless.

o certain

a

This new religion spread rapidly amon
classes. It had indeed an excessive number of
apostles. The press and platform resounded with
eloquent addresses to the youth of India urging
them to redress the wrongs of the Mother, and
to appease her by the shedding of blood. The
preaching did not fall on deaf ears. India teemed
with failed B.A.’s, young men, that is, of the
literate classes, who had been educated in the
new culture, but whose industry or ability were
not sufficient to enable them to attain the very
moderate amount of education considered as quali-
fying them for positions under Government. Their
education fitted them for nothing else. They
were poor and discontented, and inclined to hate
the system which had rejected them. They had
been educated in colleges most of which were
seminaries of sedition. This intellectual proletariat
was just the soil in which the new doctrines were
likely to spread, and, as is usual in such cases,
their numbers were reinforced by the presence of
superior and able men, who had their own reasons
for hating the system.

All over the country, clubs of young literates204 THE LOST DOMINION

Sprang up which were frankly seditious and
criminal. The organisers took as their model
the system of the United Irish, but, as a matter
of fact, the isolation of individual member from
individual member, and of lodge from lodge, was
not practicable in India, where secrets cannot be
kept. The neophyte was, however, admitted to
the lodge under the veil of darkness, and did not
see the persons who dictated to him the unlawful
oath, or who performed the unholy ritual. The
members of the clubs were frequently united to
each other in the same bonds as those that
bound together the members of the sacred band
of Thebes.

These clubs were everywhere a danger. It is
true that, except in Bengal, the movement was
not attractive to the mass of the population, and
an attempt to spread fanaticism among the people
by means of plays, religious recitations and ballads,
was a failure. It was likely enough that the
continual talk as to assassination might not stop at
talk, but the hope of an armed rising was foolish.
Still, if the schools, colleges, and press were all
poisoned with the spread of these doctrines, what
hope was there for the rising generation? It
was to these colleges that Government looked for
the supply of its subordinate agents, and if all
its subordinate agents had been brought up to
believe that the Government was the deadly
enemy of their religion how was loyalty possible ?E ne encanta SINS <a

THE REVOLT 205

In Bengal, where the executive was weak, the
movement did assume a popular character. The
clubs were able to raise disorderly mobs who
could be relied on to terrorise the bazaars, to
extract funds by force, and to destroy English
goods, The executive was too weak to interfere
with effect, even in the case of flagrant disorders.

In Bengal, also, the political dacoity became
common. Just as Shivaji had filled his coffers by
plundering the caravans that painfully threaded
the passes of the Western Ghats, so the devotees
of the Mother hoped to raise funds by plundering
their compatriots who were wealthy, defenceless,
and sufficiently loyal to the Government to object
to blackmail.

And now assassinations began. The first victims
were Kuropean officials, but the Mother was not
particular. The blood of Indians was acceptable
enough to her, provided those Indians were the
loyal servants, or even supporters, of the hostile
Government. Assassinations were common every-
where where the movement existed, that is to
say in all British India except Oudh, Hindustan,
the Panjab and Gnd. In these provinces the
new doctrines had not spread. In native states
there was no attempt to propagate them.

The movement is curious and interesting. In
the first place it is clear enough that the reaction
must indeed have been violent. That Brahmins

should engage in secular affairs was irregular inee

—————

206 THE LOST DOMINION

itself, and indeed was an effect of that confusion
of castes always the Symptom of a decaying dharma,
and in itself actively called for the manifestation
of some liberating and redeeming God. That
Hindus should regard the shedding of human
blood as religiously incumbent on them was also
an innovation, for their religion prohibits the
voluntary causing of pain to any sentient creature.
The Hindus were thus invoking not Hinduism,
but a far fiercer and more primitive religion to
their aid in their conflict with the intrusive
culture. It is easy enough to evoke the spirits
of the abyss. It is not so easy to curb them
when evoked.

Again, none could mistake the physical peculiar-
ities of the devotees of this new cult. The
Brahmin is, perhaps, the most perfect physical
model of a Nordic type which has for ages bred
for intelligence. But the cult found its most
enthusiastic devotees among youths whose rickety
bodies, retreating foreheads, protruding teeth,
harelips, oily and clammy skins, were convincing
proofs of a physical degeneracy which was associ-
ated with a moral degeneracy of which the un-
natural practices referred to were also a symptom,
Not only was the cult itself an insurrection of
the Non-Aryan elements in Hinduism, but it found
its chief votaries among those who were them-
selves representatives of the insurrection of Non-
Aryan elements in the Hindu community itself.io a niacnenemneninll

THE REVOLT 207

It is true that the followers of the new religion
did not appeal to the strange scriptures of Sakhti
worship. They rested their case on the Gita.
But their appeal was not convincing. The Gita
does indeed lay down that the duty of the fighting
castes is to fight, and that no man can ficht in
9 better cause than against the enemies of his
religion; but it, for that very reason, gave no
warrant to the Brahmin to appeal to the secular
arm. It is to check that very confusion of castes
that the Lord incarnates himself. Severe is the
wrath of the Lord against those who, in the
pursuit of worldly ambition, trample underfoot
the ordinances of religion. Moreover, the warfare
of Arjuna was waged in the open field of battle,
not in the dark shades of private murder. His
weapons were the sword and the bow, not the
dagger and the bomb.

The Hindu fanatic was not discouraged by all
this, nor even by the fact that some of his earliest
victims were women. This last circumstance would
have been enough in ordinary times to show that
the favour of the goddess was not extended to
the movement. Every female thing is in some
sense the symbol and habitation of Devi, and no
act could be more displeasing to the goddess than
offering to her blood poured forth by slaughter
from the veins of a woman. Regardless of these
omens the fanatics pressed forward.

They were hampered in the campaign by the208 THE LOST DOMINION

dithculty of obtaining arms. Government has
always, since the days of the Mutiny, prohibited
the importation, sale, or possession of firearms
(especially of revolvers or pistols), except under
very stringent conditions. The Hindu is not an
accurate mechanic or a skilful compounder, and
he found it extremely difficult to construct a bomb
which would work, or to fill it with a mixture
which could be relied on to explode. He was in
touch with foreign agencies which would have
been glad to assist him, but the ports were in
the hands of the Government. He had no love
for the cold steel.

One outside agency was at first in London, but
was afterwards moved to Paris, and carried on the
propaganda among the Indian students in England.
Another was on the Pacific coast of America, and
was there in close touch with the anarchic party
which afterwards was the strength of Bolshevism.
There were branches both in Berlin and Moscow,
and the local governments were not blind to the
potentialities of Bande Matarism. But none of
these outside agencies could supply the deficit.
They helped the cause by local propaganda, by
circulation of tendencious literature, and by
occasional pecuniary donations; but they were
unable to get arms or bombs into the country to
any very great extent. They did succeed in pro-
viding a sort of Bomb-maker’s Manual, but the
scientific acquirements of the young, half-educatedee a eiaenbieneeeniill = reais

THE REVOLT 209

Brahmin were not sufficient to enable him to work
up the formulas.

All this movement was then able to effect
was the creation of a certain amount of dis-
order in Bengal, a certain amount of unpleasant
agitation elsewhere, and some sporadic cases of
assassination.

One cannot help feeling a certain pity for the
misguided votaries of Shiv and Devi. Civilization
had pressed hard on them. One must always feel
sorry for those persons who are crushed by the
triumphal car of progress. Enthusiasm and a will
to die, even in a bad cause, are not things to be
despised. The cause of religion and country 1s
holy, and many men sacrificed on these altars all
that to the common man makes life endurable.
Moreover, if the sheep feed on the insane root,
is the shepherd wholly blameless ?

This movement was watched with apprehension
by the Government, and it found itself in no
very good cause to withstand it. In the spiritual
sphere it had nothing to oppose to it, but even
in the material sphere it was not well armed. Its
armoury was inadequate in two respects. In the
first place, the substantive, and in the second
place, the adjective law was ill-adapted to actual
conditions.

Thus, although to publish in a newspaper an
article urging the public to assassinate a particular
individual might be punishable, yet praise of

O210 THE LOST DOMINION

assassination in the abstract was hardly a crime.
In any case, though the actual writer or editor of
the paper might be imprisoned, yet the paper
itself could not be suspended. It was found that
the more violent a paper was, the greater its
sales. Therefore the tendency was for the press
to get more and more violent. ‘‘ Prison editors”
were easily procurable from ardent youth, anxious
for self-sacrifice, and in no way averse to the glory
and profit of wearing for a short time the martyr’s
crown. The punishment of the editor did not
stop the circulation of the paper. LHven if it had
done so, the mischief would have been done. The
vernacular languages of India are not rich in
literature. Where such a literature exists, it is
written in a literary dialect not intelligible to the
people. The papers, therefore, are practically the
only reading matter supplied to the masses, and
they have for one subscriber ten readers. In
very remote villages where no EHuropean had
penetrated for ages, and where the existence of
the Government was hardly known, boys and
young men read of the atrocities of the Govern-
ment, of the wickedness of the Franks, of the
insults to, and the thirst of, the goddess; and it
was from these very young men that the clubs
selected their assassins, and among whom they
found enthusiastic and blind support.

Similarly, though a seditious speaker at a public
meeting might be punished, yet the continual

ee ———— se rae er PE reemerge

THE REVOLT 211

convocation of conventions and public meetings
for the purpose of making such seditious speeches
could not be prevented,

It was no offence to possess a bomb so long as
it was not filled, and even the illegal possession
of explosives and dangerous arms was not highly
penal.

These are merely a few instances of the in-
adequacy of the substantive law. The defects
of the adjective law were also great.

In some provinces the judiciary had long been
inimical to the Executive Government, and were
sympathetic to nationalistic movements. ‘These
courts had also worked out a system which, even
in ordinary cases, gave the criminal who could
command highly -trained legal advice practical
immunity. When the criminal who could com-
mand such advice was also a nationalist, it became
very hard to obtain a conviction at all, ‘Thus it
was possible for a paper to print with perfect
impunity a passionate appeal to the public to take
to assassination, as long as it was careful to print
at the beginning the formula, “‘ We regret to state
that the tyranny of the Government has led to
the propagation of the following doctrines”; and
to add at the end, ‘‘ Needless to say these are not
our views.” It was held also that no confession,
however elaborate and well supported by outside
evidence, and however willingly it was made, could
be admitted into evidence if retracted before itme RM in CS
Vi AN Tne
an f D a, %
Titec
tig — tare — . 25
37 ravers ro
nearness
one il
ents. as

212 THE LOST DOMINION

was so admitted. It was held also that accomplice
evidence, however obviously true, was insuficient
even if believed to justify conviction. It was
regarded as an axiom that all evidence collected
by the police was presumably false and concocted.
The accusatorial methods of English law (never
very suited to the Hast where witnesses are
not willing to appear in court in the most
unimportant cases) were very ineffective here,
where the witness stood a very good chance of
being murdered before he could give his evidence
in the final stages of the trial. Moreover, the
criminal procedure gave ample opportunities for
delay, and it often happened that years elapsed
between the arrest and the final decision. Govern-
ment, therefore, reluctantly applied to the Legis-
latures for amendment of the law, and obtained
the powers it asked for. It was extremely re-
luctant to use them. The movement was checked
but not killed. Sporadic crimes occurred and the
agitation still went on.

All this was very agreeable to Panditj1.
Government was now unable to govern, except by
the use of “repressive” measures. It was probable
that public opinion at home would not approve of
these repressive methods, and would think that a
Government which could not function except by

means of extraordinary powers was a Government
which had failed, and that power should be trans-
ferred to other hands. The example of Irelandtenet ou aoa

THE REVOLT 213

was not wasted on Panditji. There was clear
evidence that the British Government, deaf to
supplication, was inclined to yield to crime. The
sole question now was whether Panditji could
point to any other persons as being fit to wield
the power which the Government had proved unfit
to possess.

Bande Matarism was not likely to appeal strongly
to the British elector. The shamrock 1s an
‘noffensive emblem. The Lingam might be con-
sidered indecent. ‘The Dark Rosaleen is a gracious
creature. Our Lady of Skulls is not. ‘The killing
of a few landlords, agents, and politicians was not
unpleasing. A movement which would, if un-
checked, fill wells, not only at Cawnpore but in
a hundred cities, with the mutilated corpses of
women and children (even though those women
and children were of English race) might not be
regarded with the same tolerance. On the whole,
the Hindu revival must be kept in the background.
It might not appeal to good Liberals and to good
Nonconformists. But there was in existence a
party which Panditj1 would be glad to see in
power, and whose programme might prove accept-
able to the powers that were in England.

This was the moderate party. The true
moderates were few in number. They were those
who had thoroughly absorbed European culture,
and preferred it to their national culture. ‘They
therefore approved of the continuance of British214 THE LOST DOMINION

rule, at least for the present, till the new culture
could stand without foreign support. Many of
these men were members of the Brahmo-Samaj.
This is a small body of men (chiefly Bengalis)
who had adopted a sort of Unitarian religion
based on Hinduism, but who had done away with
what they regarded as the objectionable and
regressive elements in Hinduism. Like the
Unitarians they were a small body, and their
doctrines showed no signs of spreading. Like the
Unitarians also they numbered among their body
a great number of able men. All the real
moderates were not, however, members of this
sect; some of them were pious enough Hindus.
The whole body was very small. They could form
no real support for Government, even had they been
enthusiastic in its cause. They were thoroughly
denationalised, and if they had any weight in the
country it was not on account of their politics.
Besides, there were a great number of pseudo-
moderates who were crypto-extremists. These
were men who wished well to the Hindu reaction,
but were not prepared openly to support it; either
because they actually disapproved of its methods
as immoral, or because they saw that there was

a possibility of reaction being met by reaction, or
because they did not wish to be martyrs.

Both parties were hostile to the actual Govern-
ment. ‘I'he moderate was trained in Whiggery,
and had learned that the principal duty of a——— ees — = Aa — — ae oe

THE REVOLT 215

loyal subject is to oppose the Government. Thus
the efforts of Government to protect itself against
the Hindu reaction met with small support. A
Press Act? Shades of Milton! Special tribunals ?
The Star Chamber and the Blood Council! An
Arms Act and prohibition of seditious meetings ?
The Bill of Rights! Internment without trial ?
The liberty of the subject! The tone of the
whole party was: ‘The Government is well-
meaning, but... these outrages are very sad,
but .. . the killing of So-and-So is a crime against
humanity, and brings sore disgrace on India, but
law and order must of course be preserv ed,
but... no wise and patriotic Hindu can look
on this recrudescence of savagery save with dis-
approbation, but...” It was found, too, that
many of the extremist war-cries were translatable
easily enough into the moderate vocabulary.
‘Protect cows,” says the extremist. The moderate
would say, “It is thought that a study of
dietetics from the point of view of Hindu science
will inevitably point to the conclusion that
abstention from heating meats, such as beef,
advisable in India. This being the case, and
the utility of bovines, both for the purposes of
agriculture and for the supply of milk, being so
patent, it 1s thought that some legislation tending
to restrict the free slaughter of cattle might not
be unacceptable.” ‘Drive out the foreigners,
gays the extremist. ‘he moderate says, ‘‘In viewa

216 THE LOST DOMINION

of the rapid spread of English ideas and of
English culture in India, it would appear that a
cheap and indigenous agency might with ad-
vantage both to economy and efficiency be
substituted for the costly foreign agency. The
retention of the European soldier might, for the
present, be advisable; but if the foreign trader
or capitalist is still necessary, that is due not
to the lack of real commercial ability among the
people of this great country, but to the patronage
and support of the English administrator.”

Although, therefore, some of the more violent
of the young extremists talked of assassinating
some leaders of the moderates as being traitors
sold to the foreigner, the two parties understood
one another well enough.

The moderate regarded the extremist as a sort
of forlorn hope, the menace of which might induce
the garrison of the inexpugnable fortress to make
terms; and such terms would, no doubt, provide
for the satisfaction of the moderate’s natural
desire for place and power. ‘The extremist, on
the other hand, was confident that no citadel
so manned could long maintain itself against an
enemy which was numerous and determined, and
fighting for the very gods.

It is necessary to mention two other religious
movements of very different origin to Bande
Matarism, but also due to the impact of the West
on the East.nn eeeeemenmneineeniione” sari

THE REVOLT 217

The first of these was a revival of Sikhism of
the fighting type. Sikhism had always strong
Hindu sympathies, and it was not unaffected by
the Hindu revival. The assistance of Shiv or of
Devi was, of course, not there invoked, but the
“sacred sword” might sometime be drawn against
the enemies of the “khalsa.” The dangers of this
Sikh movement had not yet become apparent, but
the loyalty to the British which had proved itself
in ’57 was rapidly vanishing ; and it did not need
much intelligence to foresee that the warrior
Sikh, if entirely alienated from England, would
be a far more formidable foe in the material
sphere than the degenerate Konkanasth or the
unwarlike Bengali. Lfforts were therefore lavished
in the attempt to win him over to the national
cause, and these efforts were later to win a full
meed of success. The second movement was that
known as the Arya-Samaj. This began as an
eclectic religion based on Hinduism. The founder
was well versed in the doctrines of Islam and
Christianity, and developed his creed so as to
oppose antagonists whose arms he adopted. The
Arya-Samajist was a Hindu; but he laid aside as
obsolete a great deal of the ritual and the caste
system of Hinduism, and thus, while preserving
the essence of Hinduism, made that faith more
acceptable to the lax. The orthodox regarded the
movement with suspicion, but it soon proved
its value, There were many Hindus on whomei

 

ee

 

218 THE LOST DOMINION

orthodoxy had weighed heavily. These might
have become unbelievers, or worse still, Christians
or Brahmo-Samajists. The Arya-Samaj allowed
them a reasonable laxity, and thus kept them in
the Hindu fold. Then there were a great number
of people who had abandoned Hinduism, either
for Islam or Christianity. For such, even in the
case of a forced or capricious conversion, the
orthodox religion gave no loophole of repentance.
Outcasts they had become, and outcasts they must
remain. ‘he Arya-Samaj sought out these people,
purified and readmitted them to Hinduism. Then
there were numerous races on the verge of
Hinduism, but excluded from it. These regarded
admission to Hinduism as a step up in the social
scale. They were excluded from it and showed
a tendency to accept Islam or Christianity. The
Samaj extended its ministrations to these races,
and if it did not make them very good Hindus,
at least prevented them from joining either of
the missionary religions which competed with
Hinduism. The Samaj was thus a sort of free-
company, fighting on the side of a power which
regarded it with some mistrust, but which was
nevertheless glad of its assistance. It soon
developed an aggressive, crusading, proselytising
spirit, which rendered it equally dangerous to
Christian and Muhammadan. ‘The Samaj is,
therefore, typical of the whole Hindu reaction.
It was the product of the impregnation of theeewereere-eeiett tt TT

THE REVOLT 219

East by the West, but the offspring of this
irregular union, like the offspring of all such
unions, despised indeed the race of its mother,
but hated the race of its father.

At this time Islam was still torpid, and it
needed severe shocks to arouse it from its long
sleep, force it to don its old armour, and sally
forth against the ancient foe. In India, long associ-
ation and co-operation with Hindus had robbed
Islam of much of its fanaticism. The religion was
much affected by Hinduism. Many of the Indian
Moslems were descended from local converts, more
or less unwilling. All nearly were descended from
Hindu women. There had been some learned and
pious men, and even some great saints in India, but
the atmosphere was to the last that of a camp; and
there were not, save in Sindh, any of those great
saintly families which do so much in some parts
of Islam to maintain the practice of the faith among
the ignorant. The Moslem of Turkey or Persia
looked on the Hindi Moslem as little better than
a Kafr. The Mussulmans had not, therefore,
opposed on religious erounds the extension of the
British Raj, and had indeed rather welcomed it.
The Hindus were pagans, and, strictly speaking,
the slaughter of them was incumbent on the pious
Moslem. The Christians were the followers of a
revealed religion, and therefore by no means as
abominable as the Hindus. The Christianity of
the servants of the Company in the beginning of220 THE LOST DOMINION

things was hardly perceptible. Later on some
earnest Christians were to be found among the
officials; but these were mostly Calvinists, and
there is not, between Islam and Calvinism, any
very radical difference. There was nothing, there-
fore, to arouse the alarm of the Moslem.

The English did not find any social custom
existing among the Moslems which they felt bound
to suppress in the interests of humanity. Slavery
existed, but it was mild, and its legal abolition
was not perceived by the few people affected by
it. The Englishman generally liked the Mussulman
better than the Hindu, and, in cases where the
two races were in conflict, leaned towards the side
of the Moslem. Nevertheless, the material interests
of the Moslems did not thrive under the British
Government. The Hindi is primarily a soldier.
The orthodox Moslem is not a trader; he is a
shocking agriculturist ; his reliance on Allah makes
him thriftless and improvident; the nobles, in
their anxiety not to derogate, are spendthrifts.
The race refused the foreign culture altogether and
were therefore ineligible for posts in Government
service, in which a knowledge of English was
essential. They did not know or wish to know
the vernacular languages of the Hindus, and were
therefore excluded from the very humblest posts.
Thus the inferior grades of the police and: the
army were all that were open to them. ‘They thus
had little power in the civil administration, and
that administration was much in the hands of theTHE REVOLT 221

despised Hindus. The race sank back, and it
seemed as if a very few generations would reduce
it to a miserable population of coolies. Not having
tasted even of the foreign culture it underwent
no reaction against it.

There had indeed been some outbreaks by the
Moslems against the British dominion which was
ruining them, and as usual in the East these
outbreaks took the form of religious movements.
The Mutiny, as far as 1b was Moslem, was one
such: and there was a curious development of
Wahhabism which led to the foundation of a rebel
camp in the horderland hills, recruits for which
were levied as far east as Bengal, and forwarded
to their destination by an elaborate organisation.
The British Government discovered the plot and
extirpated such of the local lodges as they could
discover. This led to a temporary outbreak of
fanaticism and to a few assassinations. The move-
ment was, however, very insignificant, and though
the murdbita are still to be found in the neigh-
bourhood of Sawwdd, their numbers are few and
their power negligible.

The unorthodox Mussulmans, the Mutazilis, had
no objection to English culture, and took to it fairly
freely. ‘They were, however, mostly traders, and
profited much by the general peace and prosperity,
and the wide markets thrown open to them by
their connection with England. No hostility was
to be apprehended from them.

As time went on some of the leaders of the—

 

 

222 THE LOST DOMINION

community saw that they must move with the
times, and did their best to spread English culture
among their co-religionists. The movement was
fairly successful to a limited extent. The disciples
of the new learning certainly did not escape the
fate of the Oriental who drinks the forbidden
draught. He began rather to dislike and despise
the Christian, but he still more disliked and
despised the Hindu.

There seemed no likelihood of a Mussulman
kingdom being set up in India, and there were
several Mussulman states where he could, if neces-
sary, take refuge. If he must be ruled by Kaffirs,
let him be ruled rather by the Christian than
the Pagan. The Hindu reaction was aimed at him
quite as much as at the British, and indeed in
its earlier stages was directed against him ex-
clusively. He therefore had no liking for it, nor
did he welcome the prospect of the peaceful pene-
tration of the directorate and superior agency by
the Hindus. The result of that would leave him
poor, uneducated, and few in numbers, at the
mercy of a Hindu Government wielding all the
powers of the Empire. This was a prospect not
at all attractive to him. He, therefore, as far as
he could, supported the autocracy of the British,
and regarded as traitors to Islam such of his
co-religionists as showed any sympathy with the

congress, or the moderate propaganda.
So matters stood through the whole of thisTHE REVOLT 223

period and the greater part of the next. It has
now to be told how the course of events alienated
the entire body of the Mussulmans, and turned
them into the bitter enemies of England; and as
such made them for a season formidable allies of
the Hindu reaction.

In the districts of Bengal afterwards known as
the province of eastern Bengal, the Moslems were
an oppressed majority. The bulk of the population
consisted of local converts, and were peasants.
There were also many great landholders, the
descendants of foreign nobles, All alike suffered
from the connection with Bengal. The partition
was effected, and a new province with, of course,
its headquarters in this area was constituted. In
this province Moslem influence would be strong.
At present there were excellent laws protecting
the tenants from the greed of Hindu landlords
and usurers, but the subordinate officials, both
in the judicial and administrative departments,
were Bengali Hindus; so was the amla, and so
the bar. Consequently the law was not ad-
ministered in a sense very favourable to the
Moslem. Appeals lay to the High Court at
Calcutta, which was much under the influence of
the upper-class Bengali Hindu.

It was hoped that now there would be a change
in these respects, and that the oppressive Hindu
official class would either be kept under due
control, or would be replaced by Muhammadans.Nan bent

 

 

 

224 THE LOST DOMINION

At present the educational department was
Wholly in the hands of Hindus, who took care
that the Moslem was not encouraged to seek
education even in the vernacular. He was thus
not qualified even for subordinate posts in the
administration. This would, no doubt, be remedied,
and the Moslem who sought education would be
befriended rather than regarded as an enemy.

Calcutta was remote and inaccessible, The
authorities there knew and cared little about
eastern Bengal. ‘The country was rich, and paid
a great sum yearly in revenue. It got little back
in return. Communications, for instance, with
the outer world were poor, and it was impossible
to move bulky staples to the ports. The jealousy
of Calcutta also prevented the creation of any
oceanic ports on the littoral. No one took any
interest in local problems; and if the interests of
the west and east sections of Bengal came into
conflict, the dispute was always settled in favour
of the part of the province nearer the capital.

The nobles had a special grievance. They were
sinking more and more hopelessly into debt. In
other provinces the Government had found it
possible, by state loans and the introduction of
laws restricting credit, and by the creation of a
special department for the administration of
embarrassed estates, to protect this class. N othing
of the sort was done in eastern Bengal, and it
was clear that in a generation or two the oldTHE REVOLT 225

families would be sold up, and their places taken
by new men—usurers and Hindus.

Crime was prevalent and little checked. There
was, for instance, for years a system of organised
robbery and murder on the great rivers which
formed the chief means of communication with
the outer world. Government was for a long
time quite unaware of these practices, and did
little to discourage them when discovered. A
Government situated at Dacca would redress all
these grievances. The Moslems of Eastern Bengal
were therefore highly in favour of the partition;
and the general Moslem community of India saw
with pleasure the prospect of the creation of a
new province in which men of their faith would
have great influence. The Muhammadans, there-
fore, supported the Government against the furious
Bengali agitation, and committed themselves
deeply on the side of the Sirkar.

The Home Government, having decided to
“come down on the side of the Congress,” and
to placate the Hindu reactionaries, cancelled the
partition of Bengal; and relegated the Moslems
of Kastern Bengal to their old condition of slavery
to the Hindus, and their old isolation and neglect.
The condition of the Moslems was thus worse
than before, for they had supported the Govern-
ment against the now reinstated Hindu oligarchy.
Men who had made themselves conspicuous on
the side of the Government were now marked

rEwobskly)
sae
ee
- Nee
oe
ae

 

—

226 THE LOST DOMINION

out for official displeasure, and some were the
victims of pogroms.

It is an old policy of England to sacrifice her
friends to her enemies. The idea is that your
friend is your friend, and will support you anyhow.
Your enemy will be so pleased at being allowed
to punish your friend that he will forget his old
erudge against you, and perhaps himself become
friendly. And the policy is often successful
enough, especially when the friend is helpless
and the enemy placable. It would be possible to
give a long list of cases where the lesson, “that
it is better to be the enemy than the friend of
England,” has been thoroughly driven home. It
is, however, only necessary to refer to the leading
cases of the Catalans in the days of Queen Anne;
the Tories in the revolted American colonies; the
French Royalists in the Revolutionary War; the
loyal Irish; and the rallied Boers. The case of
Frederick the Great is perhaps hardly in point,
as it was not successful.

Frederick was in a position to give effect to
his views on the situation, and, convinced of the
temperamental treachery of the English, exacted
a full revenge.

Other victims of English policy were crushed,
and though they may have talked of perfidy, their
complaints were soon stifled by the gallows or
rifle. If they escaped these, their total ruin made
them unimportant. We, of course, know that theTHE REVOLT 227

accusation of treason is absurd, the Englishman,
both individually and publicly, being a man of
his word. But the victims of ‘‘this revision of
contracts rendered necessary by the coming into
existence of new and unforeseen conditions, and
by the fresh orientation of policy due to a
erowing sense in the electorate of the sinfulness
and obscurantism of the old policy,’ were no more
pleased with the results than is the sporting

.

man who finds his bookmaker 1s also “ revising his
contracts.’ In the present case great indignation
was aroused all through the Moslem community
of India by the surrender of the British Govern-
ment. The policy was not even successful, for
the Moslems were not so weak as was supposed,
and the Hindus were not placated. As in the
case of the wolves who pursued the sledge of
Mrs Ivan, the sacrifice of Johnny only whetted
their appetite for Jimmy.

The Moslems were by no means reconciled by
the creation of the new capital at Delhi. In fact
this was rather an added grievance. Here is
a parable: The Master of Ravenswood was now
driven to the wall. His ancestral lands were in
the hands of his enemies. He could not dig. ‘To
beg he was ashamed. No one would hire his
sword. A gleam of hope appeared. Lord A was
induced to promise him the lease of a small and
fertile farm for three lives at a low rent. The
Master occupied the policies and began to plan—_—
Wits tee tail wt

 

 

228 THE LOST DOMINION

improvements. Lord A now writes and informs
the Master that he is rather doubtful as to his
moral title to the farm. He cannot, therefore, in
conscience, transfer it to the Master, but must
retain it (and its profits) in his own hands till
the true owner, if any, appears. ‘‘ But I will do
this for you: I will take over your old manor-
house and turn it into an up-to-date hydro. You
shall have the lodge, and I have no doubt you
will find my guests (who are mostly Jews and
tradesmen) fairly liberal in the matter of tips.”

The Moslems said, “We were loyal, and are
sacrificed. The Hindus were disloyal, and they
have got all they wanted, Let us also be disloyal,
or at least oppose the Government. If we continue
to support the Government, and that Government
eventually yields wholly to the Hindus, what will
be our position? Shall we not fear the vengeance
of the conquerors? Whereas if we join in with
the Hindu reaction, the Hindus and we may
perhaps upset the Government. ‘here will then
be just the chance that we who are fighting men
and have considerable executive ability, and among
whom there is a certain solidarity lacking among
the Hindus, may put down the Hindus under our
feet.”

Such was, therefore, the new policy of Islam,
and the Moslems were fortified in it by external
events,

The Indian Moslem had been long cut off fromTHE REVOLT 229

the general body of the Islamic world. As I
have said, his peculiarities were such that he was
regarded as little better than a pagan by the
Moslems of the Near East. But the world was
now smaller than it was, and the whole Moslem
world was more sensitive: thus an impact delivered
at any part of the Moslem world was likely to be
felt in every part thereof. Moreover, everywhere
the Moslems, menaced now in their own home
lands by the invading and restless Frank, showed
sions of drawing together into one body and
appealing to the new doctrine of nationality. The
Hindi Moslem was therefore, perhaps, not solely
dependent on the perjured British for protection
against the pagan—he might find a protector
among his own brethren, The city of Islam was
creat. Its rule extended from farthest Morocco
to the bounds of China. At present it was
decrepit and suffering from domestic factions and
the incompetence of its rulers, but might not
there be a renascence? God had only to speak.
For many years God, for some inscrutable reason,
had favoured the Frank: but now it looked as 1f
there was to be a change. The Greeks were
beaten, and their Christian brethren were helpless.
Menelik had broken the Italians. The Japanese
had broken the Russians. The predominance of
the man in the hat was passing.

Abdul Hamid had seen the potentialities of the

new spirit in Islam, and while keeping up to the230 THE LOST DOMINION

best of his ability his power as Sultan of Turkey,
also patronised a movement directed to the ex-
ploitation of his position as Khalifa. His title
to this office was extremely doubtful, and the
Khilafat of the Sultan had never been recognised
by the Mogul emperors. Since the extirpation
of the house of Timur, the Indian Moslems had
indeed paid homage to the Khilafat; but this
acknowledgment meant very little more than the
acknowledgment in the sixteenth century by the
subjects of Henry and Francis, that the Emperor
was the temporal head of the Christian world.
But the movement might grow. There is not
in the orthodox sects of Islam a distinction between
the spiritual and secular headship of the world.
The Khalifa is the deputy, not of Allah who is
always and everywhere present, but of the Prophet,
and Muhammad was both Prophet and King. Till
the recent revolution in Angora, therefore, it was
impossible to confine the Khalifa to a sort of
spiritual headship. Moreover, a member of the
house of Othman would hardly be likely to pos-
sess the qualities of a true head of the Islamic

Church, if the qualifications were piety, learning,
and general acceptance. True it was that in the
days of the Abbassids the Khalifas had for long
been relieved of the burden of secular rule; but
by a fiction familiar to the East the Turk or
Mameluke who performed the actual duties of
sovereignty was supposed to be the mere delegateee ee

THE REVOLT 231

of the Khalifa, who might, theoretically, at any
time revoke his mandate, and either himself ex-
ercise the temporal authority or delegate it to
some other person. That there could be a per-
manent and de jure separation between the spir-
itual and temporal headship of Islam was among
orthodox Muhammadans inconceivable.

Islam postulates that the temporal sovereignty
should be in orthodox hands. There was not in
India an orthodox ruler, or a ruler holding by
legal delegation from such a ruler. ‘Therefore,
theoretically, the actual rulers were usurpers. ‘This

did not at present produce any practical difficulties,

as there was no claimant to the vacant throne of

the Moguls, and the de facto rulers did not set
aside the ordinances of Islam. But if the Khilafat
movement grew; and if an idea sprung up that
the Sultan of the Turks must come forward as
the head of a Mussulman conspiracy to re-establish
the temporal rule of the Mussulmans over the
lands which were inhabited by the people of that
faith, then the position of the Indian Moslem might
be altered, and he might be bound religiously to
rally round the sacred banners.

The propaganda of the Yildiz Kiosk was there-
fore not without effect. It did, at any rate, make
the Indian Moslem feel that he had friends outside
the British Empire, and that he had power not
only as an Indian but also as a Moslem. During
the reign of Victoria matters did not go much232 THE LOST DOMINION

further. The Tory party was in power, and the
Tory party, though regrettably inclined to interfere
on the side of the rayyah, was yet on the whole
pro-T'urk. It hoped that Turkey would reform
itself, and so become a civilized and progressive
Power, capable of forming a check to Russian
ambitions. The hope seemed vain, as the Ottoman
Government appeared to be hopelessly corrupt
and inefficient, and its attempts to reform itself
ended generally in a revolting massacre of hostile
elements.

Then came the revolution of Salonika and the
fall of the Sultan. The orthodox Moslems of India
at first regarded the party of Union and Progress
as little better than atheists, and considered them
as rebels and usurpers. They did not acknowledge
the successor of Abdul Hamid as a lawful Khalifa,
and dropped his name from the public prayers.
Still, no Moslem could be indifferent to the fate
of Turkey under whatsoever rulers it might happen
to be, and there was a hope that the new Govern-
ment, irregular as it was, might renovate Turkey.
This hope was frustrated partly by the ineptitude
of the dominant party, but still more by the
hostility of Europe. Europe was divided into
two camps, under the leadership of Russia on the
one hand and Germany on the other, and England
was clearly throwing in her lot with Russia. The

policy of Russia for many decades had been to
keep the Moslem countries independent but weak,THE REVOLT 230

and to set her face against reforms which might
embarrass her policy. With this policy England
was now forced to concur, and the sad story of
Persia was not unknown in India, Russian policy
was thus hostile to the Committee of Union and
Progress in so far as it seemed likely to be an
agency of reform, and the official policy of England
became therefore itself hostile to a reforming
Turkey. The Treaty of Berlin was trampled under
foot, with nothing more than a formal protest on
the part of the signatories thereto; and every
movement in Turkey itself hostile to the new
Government, whether that movement proceeded
from the Christian races or the old corrupt
camarilla, was sure of diplomatic support.

In the meanwhile the Young Turk party, though
also dabbling in odd movements like Pan-Turanian-
ism, were actively carrying on the Khilafat pro-
paganda. ‘Islam was really a democratic religion,
and the Moslems form one nation. Let them
therefore lay claim to a separate nationality ; and
who can the temporal sovereign of that nation
be but the Sultan of the Turks, no longer a despot
but the chief of a free nation, ruling through
the leaders of the nation chosen by the nation
itself ?”

The Indian Moslems began with some hesitation
to accept these attractive doctrines. Might not
the new Islamic nation, if given a little time,
rally round a regenerated Turkey ‘ The TurksAt i he BE I ie ak oi 4
a
~~  e

234 THE LOST DOMINION

had for ages been the sword and shield of Islam.
Some new Alp Arslan, some new Zanghi, some
new Murad might rule over a united Islam. The
Hindi would then have no need to fear the
dominant Hindu, or to rely for protection on the
broken word of the perfidious Christian.

Great was the disappointment when these hopes
proved vain. No breathing-space was given. The
Christians had, it seemed, sworn that no pact
with Islam should be sacred. The Italians, with
no regard to the public law of Europe, seized
on Tripoli. The Balkan States, with the open
sympathy of the Entente Powers, annihilated the
Turkish rule in Europe. Both events were accom-
panied with stories of Turkish heroism and of
inhuman cruelty on the part of the victors, which
could not but deeply stir the hearts of all Moslems.
It was from the date of the Tripoli expedition
that the Indian Moslem became convinced that
the Christians were still the deadly foes of his
faith, and that they were merely biding their
time to wipe out from the world the very name
and memory of Islam. One hope remained. The
Christians are disunited. Let us band ourselves
together. Away with distinctions of race and
creed; away with the accursed culture of the
Frank. Let the people of the Unity be again a
united people, and to the prayers of a purified
and a united people God will assuredly grant
His speedy relief.THE REVOLT 235

Then came the war, and the Christian peoples
began, with their own hands, to pull down their
faith and kingdom.

Thus, under the banners of Hinduism and
Islam, the East began again the secular war
with the West.236

CHAPTER VII.
DECAY.

Tue policy of Panditji seemed thus likely to
bear fruit. It seemed difficult for the Govern-
ment of India to preserve a merely passive rdle,
Some positive measure must be taken in respect
of an agitation which, negligible enough in the
material sphere, seemed likely to become extremely
dangerous in the moral.

The Government of India had, in theory, several
policies open to it.

It might have said boldly :—

Our mission is a high and holy mission. We
are here to govern India as delegates of a
Christian and a civilized Power. We are here as
representatives of Christ and Cesar to maintain
this land against Shiva and the Khalifa. In
that task we shall not falter, we will oppose ideal
to ideal, force to force, constancy to assassination.
We shall maintain the directorate and the chief

executive in our own hands, for the workman
must have confidence in his tools. If you agitate,DECAY 237

you will be punished; if you preach sedition, you
will be imprisoned; if you assassinate, you will
be hanged; if you rise, you will be shot down.
And know that in this we shall receive the
support of your own countrymen, for our path
is the path of peace and prosperity, and your
path is the path of ruin and anarchy.

It might have said this, and, supported by its
principal, the Home Government, might have
acted accordingly. It might have secured to
itself the organs of public opinion, and firmly
controlled the colleges and the courts. It could
have armed itself with the necessary laws. It

might have considered the commission or advocacy

of crime as a disqualification for office and reward.
It might have reserved its favour exclusively for
those who were loyal to it.

It might also have come down from its Olympian
heights and mixed with the people. It should
have regarded its subjects, not as ‘“food-units,” or
taxpayers, or aloebraical expressions, but as men.
It should have abandoned its arrogant contempt
for Oriental culture. It should have conciliated
public opinion—not the public opinion of intel-
lectual hybrids, but the real genuine inarticulate
public opinion of the masses. Its agents should
have been taught that cold aloofness, even when
coupled with austere and pure impartiality, 1s a
vice in a ruler. The qualities it should have
required from its district officers should have been,238 THE LOST DOMINION

not so much efficiency and ability as geniality,
sympathy (in its true and not in its debauched
sense), and courtesy. The district officers should
have been relieved of a mass of routine work,
and given real leisure. Free intercourse with the
people should have been the principal duty of
such an officer. Freed from the excessive tyranny
of the secretariat, he should have been vested
with, and encouraged to use, far wider powers than
those which he in practice exercised. Enelish
might well have been deposed from its privileged
position as the official language, and Hindustani
substituted. The English official would thus ne-
cessarily have become perfectly acquainted with
one great vernacular, and from that to the study
of the classical languages of the East would have
been a short step.

Ihe Government of India having thus clearly
declared its intention, and there being no chance
of a change of policy, either by control from
England or by change of views in India, would,
I think, soon have crushed opposition. The
Oriental is very pertinacious. As long as there
is any hope of upsetting a decision he will appeal
from court to court, and leave no possible avenue
of success, however foul, unexplored. But he is
also a fatalist, and when a decree is final and

irrevocable he will accept it with marvellous
resignation. In an agitation clearly hopeless and
extremely dangerous few Orientals, except crazedpee ee ase

DECAY 239

fanatics, will long indulge ; and a strong and well-
served Government, confident im itself, can afford
to despise crazed fanatics.

Such a policy, however, was not likely to be
adopted by the Government of India. =~ That
Government had not that fervid faith in itself
which could alone justify such an attitude. It
was not in the least likely to come down from
the rarefied air of the hills into the hot, brown
plains of the peasant, or the crowded and fetid
hazaars of the trader and artisan. It was still
attempting to turn its local representatives into
functionaries, and would still continue to value
in those representatives rather ability, punctuality,
discipline, and despatch than personality, which
was always inconvenient, and might sometimes
be dangerous.

Moreover, such a policy would at once be re-
pudiated at home. After twenty years the Liberal

 

party was coming to ‘ts own—a party exasperated
by a series of events, and one which for the first
o tinged with

time possessed an extreme left wing
sympathy for the subversives. ‘The Liberal party
had shown itself on occasion by no means dis-
‘nelined to use coercion, and is of course in a far
stronger position so to do than the Tory party ;
but no Englishman, whether Tory or Liberal, was
at all likely to endorse a policy which might
clearly be represented as contrary to all that

England stood for.te

 

 

240 THE LOST DOMINION

It is right and proper that England should hate
tyranny. All beneficent organisations assuredly
have their repressive side. Pity there may be
for the noble leaders of lost causes, but Aske must
go to the gibbet. To crush out, however, a strong
nationality ; to force on it a loathed dominion; to
continue for centuries to eliminate the noblest and
best by the police spy, the gaoler, and the hangman
—this is sorry work for the vicegerent of God.

It is to be observed that the current dictum,
“you can do anything with bayonets but sit on
them,” is, as regards the last clause of the
Sentence, not universally true. Provided the
bayonets are sufficient in number; provided also
that they are driven well home, so that the
victim ig.incapable of writhing; and provided that
they are neatly and symmetrically arranged in
any convenient form ; it is possible to erect thereon
some sort of framework which, covered with a
cloth of state sewn with stars or lilies or bees,
will provide a permanent enough consular chair
or imperial throne. But such a throne is by no
means agreeable to a free prince, however delightful
to a Vitellius. The British people, at any rate,
showed no anxiety to occupy it.

So the problem arose which ever confronts the
statesman, When does agitation cease to be
factious? When may it be crushed? When is

abdication no longer a great refusal, but an act
of tardy justice? The Empire has the right toDECAY 24]

call on its servants to be its loyal agents. It has
no right to call on them to be the slaughter-slaves
of a tyranny.

A policy of constructive repression would have
borne the appearance of tyranny. In my own
opinion, this would have been a false appearance.
In my own opinion, therefore, that policy as it
would have been effective, so it would have been

laudable. But I am not arrogant enough to assert
that my views are right. In any case, in order
to carry out a policy so alien to British ideas
there would have to have been great unanimity
among the British people. There was no chance
of such unanimity. The reasons have been given.
Moreover, to enforce it would have needed resolution
and the strong faith of a believing pedple. But
in England there was no faith in anything much,
except in the doctrine that two and two make
four, and that four thousand a year 1s better than
three thousand a year. ‘This article of faith is
held strongly. It has the merits of truth and
evident demonstrability, but it 1s not a faith
which enables men to withstand gods.

Another possible policy was devolution. The
hostility expressed to the Government was justi-
fiable only on the erounds that 1t was the
Government of foreigners; that 1t was, therefore,
ignorant or negligent of the wellbeing of its
subjects; that 1t gave no opportunity to Indians
to exercise the functions of Government in their

Q242 THE LOST DOMINION

own country ; that it was contemptuous of Oriental
culture, and the apostle of a foreign culture,
Many of these objections would be removed if
Government withdrew from direct administration,
It might constitute all over India vassal states,
There was no lack of persons qualified to be
native princes. India was full of representatives
of deposed or mediatised houses who were looked
on with considerable veneration by the people,
There were precedents, such as the case of Mysore,
which had been eminently successful. In selected
areas free states might be erected, and there on
a small and safe scale it could be tried whether
the Indian of the literate classes was capable
of self-government. There would be much lack of
eficiency, and the ryot and trader might have
reason to complain, but it is impossible to satisfy
all classes. The states would be restrained from
grievous oppression by the control of a Resident.
The details of administration in respect of
finance, control, and residuary jurisdiction would
not be difficult to settle. The directorate and the
agents would remain European, and would retain
in their hands Imperial administration. The local
governments, being themselves Oriental, would

make short work of an agitation which is
actually that of Orientals against the West. It
was significant enough that even in the worst
governed Native State, agitation and disloyalty
were unknown. If agitation persisted, bothDECAY 243

agitators and princes would look to the Imperial
Government for support.

This system, which was that of the Dutch in
Java, had many merits, and of course some dis-
advantages. Possibly in India, with its liability
to invasion, and the consequent impossibility
there of limiting the expenditure to a fixed
and known sum, the necessary limitation and
stabilisation of the revenue might have rendered
the scheme unworkable. In any case, it was
never even discussed.

After mature deliberation and hesitation the
English Government decided “to come down on
the side of the Congress.” As already explained,
it is a habit of the English Government to
“eome down” on the side of its late enemies.
Little official opposition was to be expected in
India. India had just undergone the régime of
a masterful and autocratic Governor-General, who
had concentrated all powers in the Viceroy. He
had surrounded himself with able and _ pliant
functionaries, and crushed out all opposition.

He had just come into collision with an even
more masterful personality, and though on the
question at issue he was indubitably right, he
had undergone a defeat which led to his resignation.
The new Viceroy inherited the administrative
machine as left by his predecessor, but was
content himself to be the mere agent of the

Home Government.244 THE LOST DOMINION

Thus there was in India no opposition to the
proposed revolution. Here was the opportunity
of Panditji, long sought and at last realised.

The actual agent of the revolution was a most
laudable Indian politician, who, after a chequered
eareer, had now settled down as leader of the
moderates. The arguments which his party used
were plausible and specious.

The English statesman to whom the affairs of
India were at the moment entrusted was a Liberal
by training and predilection. But he was a man
of autocratic character, and by no means a
sentimentalist or a humanitarian. He had no
love for disorder. He was well-versed in the
history of the French Revolution and of the
American Civil War, and knew with what swift
ruthlessness a democracy can crush dissidents.
The installation of a democracy was undesirable
and indeed impossible in India, and even re-
presentative Government might not be advisable.
Order must be restored, but this work could
not safely be entrusted to a Government which
he knew to be a despotism and suspected of
being a bureaucracy. It was desirable to find for
the necessary measures some amount of popular
support. The proposals laid before him seemed
to promise it.

“Listen to us,’ said his advisers; ‘there 1s
something radically wrong with the Government

of India. It is both feeble and tyrannical. It isDECAY 245

perpetually calling out for extraordinary powers
which it dares not use except spasmodically.
The subject loves a sympathetic and beneficent
Government, he respects a strong and masterful
Government. He has nothing but contempt for
a timid despotism. The Government of India
can neither wage war nor preserve peace. The
whole country is full of simmering discontent, due
to the habitual violation by the Government of
its duty of respecting the prejudices of its
subjects. These prejudices are perhaps foolish ;
but no wise Government will disregard prejudices
which, however foolish, are deep-seated and
widespread. The policy of the Government is
no policy: it consists of a succession of dis-
connected and irrelevant pranks. ‘he reason of
the trouble is obvious. The system 1s bureaucratic,
and is therefore divorced from real statesmanship.
It is also divorced from public opinion.

“We see this with regret, as we are devoted to
the Crown of England and to the British
Parliament, especially now that the Home
Government is in Liberal hands. We desire that
2ritish control should continue, and even be
increased, because we are aware that the masses
of the population are still very far from being
true Liberals. We deplore this disorder, and see
with alarm the growth of movements which are
dangerous to the very existence of the British
connection. We would gladly do what we can246 THE LOST DOMINION

to support the British interest. But what is our
position? We are mistrusted by our ignorant
fellow-countrymen because we are friends of
England, and repulsed and insulted by the Indian
Government because we are Indians.

‘We are really the natural leaders of the Indian
people. We belong to castes and races which
are the object of universal respect. We have,
as far as any Indian in the present circumstances
can have such temporal power, a monopoly of it.
We have absorbed Kuropean culture, and at the
same time we have not given up our Orientalism.
Many of us, indeed, are respected by the most
orthodox. We should surely form the most
suitable connecting-link between the Government
and the people. We can convey the sentiments
of the ignorant and inarticulate masses to the
ears of the rulers, and we can explain in terms
intelligible to the people the reasons for the
measures of the administration. But to enable
us to do this with effect we must be given an
oficial position. So long as we are not admitted
to the administration, we shall not have in the
country that weight which we must possess. So
long as we are excluded from office Government
will continue deaf to our remonstrances. For
many years we have now been humbly supplicating
for a very few mild measures of reform. Our

failure to obtain these has made us ridiculous in
the eyes of our fellow-countrymen as being mereee eee

DECAY 247

spiritless sycophants. ‘To the Government we
appear merely shameless and importunate mendi-
cants. If things continue as they are, too many
of us may be tempted to throw the weight of
our influence and ability on to the side of the
revolution.

“We do not ask for much. A few posts, a little
patronage, an official position which will enable us
constitutionally to press our view upon (Govern-
ment. The whole political situation will then
change like magic. Government will be humanised.
It wishes to be beneficent; that we acknowledge,
but with our help it will be really so. It will

ae |
4

know what the exact grievances are, and will
be able to apply the remedy—not the remedy
worked out in the recesses of the secretariat, a
remedy which is often worse than the disease,
but a remedy suitable to the actual condition of
the patient. Our erring compatriots, who are
rapidly being driven into rebellion by misgovern-
ment and oppression—which are no less misgovern-
ment and oppression because they are practised
by earnest and conscientious men with the best
of motives,—seeing their grievances removed and
their countrymen in whom they have confidence
in power, will cease from factious opposition; and
again display that fidelity to Government, partic-
ularly to the Liberal Government and the person
of the King, which is really natural to the

Oriental.ae
—

 

 

248 THE LOST DOMINION

‘““A Government so constituted, so controlled, and
so supported will be in a far stronger position
to suppress overt disorder than the present weak
tyranny. Opposition will die away. What remains
will be merely the residuum of race-hatred in a few
cankered and malignant breasts. These fanatics
can be rightly suppressed by the temporal sword.
Such suppression would be eagerly welcomed in
India, where the best people are tired of disorder:
and the arm of the Government of India would
be much strengthened by the knowledge th at its
measures were approved of in England. So long
as it is a bureaucratic despotism it will be mis-
trusted there. Once admit the popular element,
and its measure will now be that of a people
which, not perhaps wholly free, has been made
a partaker in and responsible therefore for the
administration. Such measures are not likely to
be criticised with over- great strictness, even by
the most radical of politicians. Trust us.”

Such arguments seemed sound enough, and were
certain to have much weight with a statesman
accustomed for years to the play of a free con-
stitution, who knew well how factions can be
bridled and their energies turned to facilitating
the triumphal march of Government, and who
had for years hardly concealed his dislike of the
Indian system—a dislike which was only increased
by a recognition of its efficiency.

Thus the first set of reforms were devised and—— a

DECAY 249

carried into effect with all the determination to
be expected from that vigorous, narrow, and
resolute intellect.

The concessions to the Congress were consider-
able. Indians were appointed to the executive
councils of the Government of India and of
the presidencies. Bengal was turned into the
province of a Governor, an English statesman
was appointed Governor, and a council created
there. It was contemplated that the presidency
system should be extended gradually to the
other Lieutenant-Governorships. The province of
Eastern Bengal was abolished, and its territories
distributed between Bengal and Assam. At the
same time territories were removed from Bengal
and constituted into a new province of Behar.

The legislature still remained a mere legislative
council, the members of which had no absolute
right of initiating lesislation, and which had small
control directly over the acts of the executive or
over finance. But the legislative councils were
largely increased, and a strong minority of the
members was appointed by election. The franchise
was restricted, and the author of the reforms was
compelled, much against his will, to recognise the
principle of communal representation. This prin-
ciple he regarded as noxious, but it was clearly
not safe further to exasperate Mussulman opinion.
The members were given increased powers of inter-

pellation and interference. Political criminals were250 THE LOST DOMINION

excluded. The official members were in a minority,
but it was secured by the appointment of un-
official nominated members that Government should
always be able to secure a majority.

It was determined to cut down the European
agency to a minimum. It was not, however, con-
sidered desirable to do this at once, and it was
recognised that there was an irreducible minimum
below which the Kuropean staff could not be
reduced. The whole subject was referred to a
Commission, the operations of which revealed and
encouraged a vast amount of racial ill-feeling.
In the meantime the claims of Indians to high
office were sympathetically considered.

There was thus no attempt to set up a national
Government in India. The Government of India
was to continue to be the agent of the Home
Government, in fact more so than ever. It would
not, however, be a purely Kuropean body. It was
expected that such a mixed body would be a more
suitable instrument for European domination than
the old Government. It was expected to com-
mand considerable popular support both by its
composition and by the distribution of patronage
as by its greater knowledge of and sympathy
with local difficulties.

The India Office also underwent some modifica-
tion. Two Indians were added to the Council of
the Secretary of State, representatives of each of
the great communities of India. This measure dideee

DECAY 251 |
|
not add very much to the power of the moderate i

party, for the Council of the Secretary of State
possessed few functions, and the actual Secretary
was the last person likely to pay much regard to

his Council. They, however, introduced “an aroma

I ET TT
ae a hi eat te she ik sag

of the Hooghh and Abdurrahman Street” into the

musty precincts of the India Offce—an aroma

 

which some found delightful,—and they no doubt
furnished the Secretary with valuable unofficial
advisers.

It is unnecessary to criticise this constitution
at length. It was greeted with howls of joy, both
by the moderate party and by the extremists, and
was a subject of panegyric of the venal orators
of the Press and the platform. It was, however,
born with the facies Hippocratica, and possessed
no elements of vitality.

To the present writer this seems to have been
a blessing. As I understand the system introduced,

it would, if it had endured, have laid India under

:
a most grievous yoke. In order that it should
endure it was necessary and sufficient that there
should have been hearty co-operation between the
Government and the political Indians. Had this
taken place the Government would indeed have
been unshakable. It would have been in eftect,
if not in name, the domination of the literate
Brahmins over India. They were in possession of Hi)
the Bar, the Press, and the schools. They already
filled the subordinate executive posts. TheirSe

nes en

 

 

 

_

Ss

~~

i Sans gt PET POE oe

252 THE LOST DOMINION

relations and friends directed the consciences of the
Hindus. They were now to occupy the principal
superior executive posts, and would soon command
a majority in the directorate. They had control
of the legislature, which would indeed be their
creature. ‘They were to occupy the courts. This
formidable Government, which would really be a
bureaucracy, and an Indian bureaucracy, would be
supported by a powerful army of Indian and
European mercenaries, and rebellion against it
would be rebellion against the King.

An Oriental despotism is a grievous thing. It
is tolerable because it is not efficient, and because
therefore liberty, though theoretically forbidden,
actually flourishes. European despotism is also
a orievous thing

9 g, and the more grievous because
it is efficient. But that despotism functions in
the political sphere only; it never controlled the
private lives of the subjects, and has now ceased
to interfere with their opinions. Moreover, in
Europe the free functioning of the despotism is
controlled by many checks, which are not the less
powerful because they are not imposed by the
constitution. But an Oriental despotism imbued
with the authoritative ideas of the East, possessing
the administrative machinery of France, and
instructed in the political arts which derive
from the Italy of the renaissance, would, if it
could have endured, have been indeed a terrible
portent.ee ea a a a a Et se = ee, —

DECAY 253

From this doom India was saved by the natural \
defects of the machine, by the folly of the political )

Indians, and by the march of events. \
The machine was really surprisingly defective—
surprisingly because its originator was particularly |

well-versed in the history of the French Revolution,

 

and the new constitution bore a considerable re-
semblance to that of France under the Directory.
In that constitution also there was no link between
the executive and the legislature, and in that
constitution also the supreme directorate was a
committee of men who held very strongly opposing
ideas on most vital questions. In France a solu-
tion was found in continual coups détat, by
purging the representative body, and by deporta-
tion of dissenting directors. Thus the Government
was enabled to carry on for a while until “the
same Directory, after having intimidated all Europe,
and destroyed at its pleasure several governments,
knowing neither how to make peace nor war nor
how to establish itself, was overturned by a breath.”
India could look forward to no Fructidor, to no
Prairial, and could only await a Brumaire.

All practical politicians are acreed that an
executive must be strong. To secure this it 1s
desirable that the executive should be vested in
one man. If it is necessary that there should be
a board, that board should be small in numbers,
dominated by one commanding personality, and

composed of members who agree in essentials,254 THE LOST DOMINION

“You cannot wage war with a Sanhedrin.” The
ingenuity of the constitution-maker is devoted
nowadays solely to the device of precautions which
may prevent this powerful executive from using
its powers for selfish, illegal, and personal ends,
In India particularly, with its authoritarian tradi-
tions, a strong executive was essential. Nor was
the authority of the executive strengthened by
the practice of “setting up the Viceroy against
the Governor-General,” nor indeed by the quality
of the persons selected for that office.

As for the relations between the legislature and
the executive, I shall not discuss that now at
length, reserving this topic for later. It is merely
to be noted here that experience shows that
harmony between an irresponsible legislature and
an irremovable executive is rare, and certainly did
not in the case before us exist,

The extended employment of Indians in high
ofice merely irritated those who were not fortunate
to obtain lucrative and dignified posts. The
Government for every such appointment made
“ten enemies and one ungrate.” The Indians
appointed were certainly many of them men of
high attainments, great ability, and excellent
character, and loyal as far as possible. But it is
dithcult for any man to free himself from the
influences of caste, religion, family connections,
early education, and political association. Govern-
ment was served loyally, but without zeal or con-DECAY 209

viction. High office was not yet regarded as the 3
reward of factious or criminal opposition, but it )
could not be denied that the whole scheme was Wii
a concession to an illegal agitation. |

The moderate party having thus received the

Sr
price were asked to deliver the goods. This they
were unable to do. ‘The real moderate party was

small in numbers, and possessed of no weight in

the country. Supported by the extremists as long
as they were hostile to Government, its leaders
were abandoned by them as soon as it appeared
that they were inclined to support the Mlechha.
The extremists had, by their appeal to religion,
a certain following in the country at large, though
their operations were regarded with a vague dislike
and mistrust, even by the orthodox. But the
moderate programme was wholly unintelligible to
the ordinary Indian, and if he had been able to
understand it, he would have exceedingly misliked
it. The moderates were many of them timid men,
frightened of losing what little influence they

possessed, frightened of assassination, and by no

 

means inclined to run risk of losing life—or, what 1s
perhaps dearer to the Indian, abru—by advocating
policies distasteful to the extremists and their
bands of hooligans. Far, therefore, from support-
ing the Government, they continued, now that
they had an official position, the same course of
captious and negative criticism, evidencing a

vague and temperamental hostility which they256 THE LOST DOMINION

had followed in their unofficial congresses and
conventions. The Government, therefore, finding
after vain efforts that it was impossible to con-
ciliate this party either by concessions or by
distribution of largess, or by flattery and lobby-
ing; and seeing clearly that its policy must lead,
not to the strengthening of the executive, but to
the annihilation of the power of the Government :
continued after some hesitation and with some-
what faltering footsteps on its predestined march.

For the second part of the programme remained
unaffected by the failure of the first. In fact, it
had become more necessary than ever. Assassina-
tion had now ceased, but a very dangerous agitation
was still progressing, and strenuous attempts were
being made to tamper with the loyalty of the
troops. he extremists, after a short period of
exultation at the fall of the despotism, were
now convinced that the reforms were a mere
sham, and that they were as far as ever from
the realisation of their policy. They were in no
way conciliated by the rewards and _ privileges
lavished on their moderate brethren, whom they
regarded as sycophants and traitors to the cause
of religion.

Very far-reaching repressive legislation, therefore,
was introduced. The moderates generally opposed
it with bitter violence, or, if they supported it,
attacked the Government whose misgovernment
had rendered such legislation necessary. The lawsTroe ek

DECAY 257

were, however, forced through the legislative bodies
by the help of the nominated majority. This
legislation gave Government ample powers. It con-
trolled the Press; it prevented the open advocacy of
assassination and rebellion; it restricted the right
of public me etings and the calling of conventions;
it set up special tribunals which would be impartial
and dignified, and by no means slaves of the exec-
utive, but whose proceedings would be summary.
Repression is justifiable when, and only when, it
is necessary. If the emergency does not exist
repression is inadmissible. When it does exist,
and repression is decided on, repression should be
carried out coldly, calmly, and ruth lessly till the
emergency has passed, Repression fitfully applied
is a Wanton and capricious ty1 ranny.

The policy of ‘ ‘spanking the baby at one end
while feeding it at the other” was not likely to
produce a soothing effect. Still less wag it likely
to be effective when the castigation was admin-
istered casually and capriciously. The Government
of India, having armed itself and the provincial
governments with these repressive laws, was re-
luctant to use them. It was provided that the
laws should not come into force unless applied to
a particular area by executive decree, and the
Government of India was very unwilling to issue
such a decree. Even when the law was brought
into force, action by the responsible officials was
not permitted without the special sanction of the

R258 THE LOST DOMINION

Government, and that sanction was granted and
refused on no ascertainable principles.

The truth is that the Government was very
enfeebled. There was dissidence in the directorate.
The councillors were not men who had been
selected for their independence. The Viceroy had
little respect for their opinion. There were always
advocates for a policy of drift, and this policy
might well seem to be the most expedient. ‘Tne
people are suffering from delusions which will
pass. The ebullitions of ill-feeling are merely
temporary. Let us not excite hostility. Let us
particularly give no handle for agitation in the
country or opposition in the legislative councils.
We owe it to the people of Great Britain and
the responsible statesmen to attempt, at any rate,
to pretend that the new constitution is a success.”
It is always the case in such circumstances that
a policy of inaction is pursued. “Things will
last my time. Let me have the next few years
in peace. If I am severe, I shall be hated by
the people and not thanked by my employers.
If I am lenient, I shall receive as much adulation
as is good for me, and shall earn the reputation
of a ‘sympathetic’ and tactful ruler. And after
all who knows whether leniency is not, the best
policy? I have the authority of my council to
support me, and if anything goes wrong blame
cannot be imputed to me.”

The results were as might be expected. EnoughDECAY 259

was done to irritate and not enough to crush.
The unfortunate agitator who was punished felt
a sense of injustice, as he knew that many far
worse agitations had passed unpunished. He was
also sure of being extolled as a martyr by the
clamours of the clique of seditionists, The other
agitators who were not punished thought that
Government was afraid of them, and were of
course encouraged in their agitation. This belief
spread among the masses, and people began
to think that the Government would soon
fall. There is no country where the rising sun
is worshipped with more enthusiasm than in India,
and no country where the public is more inclined
to trample on the fallen. A Government impotent
to punish its enemies and impotent to reward
its friends is not an object of veneration any-
where, and in India the Government showed
signs of losing all authority.

There would now assuredly have been a revo-
lution had it not been for the war.

India was in no good case to wage war. No
country with a thoroughly enfeebled executive
can be. The army had been sadly mishandled.
The masterful Commander-in-Chief who had put
down the civil government under his feet was
gone. He had concentrated the military admin-
istration in the Commander-in-Chief, and the
civil government could now take its revenge,
The army had now one instead of two votes in260 THE LOST DOMINION

the directorate, and the person who made that
one vote more decisive than a thousand was not
there. On the contrary, in consequence of the
conflict, particular care had been taken to select
Commanders-in-Chief who had many virtues, no
doubt, but whose principal virtue was subservience
to the civil government. Consequently the army
had suffered and was discontented. Moreover,
the reform policy was expensive, and imposition
of fresh taxation was clearly inadvisable. The
city of Delhi (that remarkable monument) con-
sumed the pay of fifty battalions. Hconomies
were necessary, and the readiest road of economy
is to cut down, not the personnel of the forces,
for that would attract attention, but the stores.
India was therefore without the means of equipping
the most modest force for the shortest expedition.
The Member for Finance was, even when the war
broke out, extremely reluctant to supply defici-
encies. The consequence was that, when the
Viceroy and his associates were reluctantly forced
to carry on a campaign, the blunders were such
as to imperil the whole Empire, and they had to
be relieved of a task for which they were obviously
incompetent. The blame fell on the Secretary of
State, who was wholly innocent, and on the
Government of India, whose sins were merely
those of omission.

In spite of the reluctance of the Government,DECAY 261

India, though it now ceased to be responsible for
any warlike operations, was dragged into the
war. Indian troops served in all theatres, as did
Indian Labour Corps. India proved a useful source
of supply for some necessary munitions. She made
(somewhat ungraciously) a donation of a hundred
million sterling towards the costs, and many
private individuals made voluntary contributions
to war work.

The European community did not display a
fevered interest in the war, which seemed remote
enough. ‘They were used to soldiers and to war.
Indeed, every European was in some sense a mob-
ilised soldier. It did not, therefore, display the
rather objectionable hysteria which was manifested
by some classes in England. It could take little
interest in events which were either studiously con-
cealed from it, or reached it only through the
medium of mendacious communiques or tendencious
telegrams. It was, therefore, suspected of disloyalty,
as though it were an easy thing to carry on the dull
duties of necessary routine when the whole world
was open to the adventurous; to preserve a cheerful
serenity when disaster followed disaster; to oppose
a passive calm to the continual eager and malig-
nant scrutiny of those who hoped to read in
your face early tidings of the fall of the Empire;
to express, nay, to feel, no doubt of ultimate
victory though the very gods seemed to fight262 THE LOST DOMINION

against England, and while her destinies seemed
irrevocably committed to the guidance of duo-
decimo Catilinas and Borgias.

The Indians did after their kind. The political
Indian never ceased from his agitation—an agitation
which was the more insolent as the chances grew
worse for England. The moderates professed
loyalty, but played the extremist game. The duty
of the official was clearly to minimise or excuse this
tendency, indulgence in which in a democratic state
would have led the ardent patriot to the barrack-
wall and the firing-squad, and which even in
England would hardly have been tolerated. Great
was the horror when a tactless official declared
the open truth in full Assembly. The Muham-
madans were much affected by the war against
Turkey, and many of them now plunged into an
agitation similar to, but far more dangerous than,
that of the Hindus.

If hostile money is circulated among some
members of these classes it is a matter of no
surprise. Indian political bodies have never been
very frank about the origin of their funds. They
regard audit as an unnecessary formality, and
from the very early days of the Congress there
had been much speculation as to the source
whence its revenues were derived. The official
organisations of the various anti-governmental fac-
tions no doubt abstained from the accursed thing,
aud the considerable sums that were spent on theDECAY 263

propaganda of race-hatred and sedition were no
doubt derived from pure sources; but it is not
to be supposed that all individual members were
so chaste. The Indian princes rallied round the
Government. Some of them served personally
on the staff, and all of them lavished the blood
and treasure of their subjects.

To the mercantile and manufacturing classes the
war was a godsend. Manufacturer and contractor
made gigantic profits, a small portion of which,
with a little gentle pressure, he was induced to
invest in the various highly remunerative war
loans. His brethren abroad were not always so
fortunate. Many of them engaged in war-treason,
and not a few were shot by unsympathetic colonial
or foreign administrations for their misdirected
efforts.

The Indian army expanded enormously. The
Indian peasant of the fighting castes has no
objection to military service, and flocked to the
standards which promised him excitement and
high pay. The net of the military organisation
was flung very wide, and brought up some very
strange material. It was discovered that some of
the castes which had been supposed to be worthless
were really capable of being turned into valuable
soldiers, and here pressure, hardly to be dis-
tinguished from compulsion, was freely applied.
The forces of India were swollen on paper by the
inclusion in the active lists of units of no military=
bce eee
Pat hE sadn cnr

 

 

264 THE LOST DOMINION

value whatever. The results were what might

have been expected. Some regiments were inferior
to none, and bore a noble part in the hardest
Many
regiments did very well under proper leading in
suitable areas.

fighting under the most terrible conditions,

Many were valuable enough for
police work or on the lines of communication.
Some were a mere menace to any army of which
they formed one of the components, and others
brief, there was
nothing very remarkable about the efforts of India
in the war.

were hopelessly disloyal. In

Everybody had always known that
the Indian peasant in certain regions made an
excellent soldier if he was properly treated and
led by European officers in whom he had confidence.
The soldiers and their relatives, and the castes
from which they were drawn, had certainly earned
the gratitude of the Empire, and might perhaps
have looked for some special reward. How they
were rewarded will presently appear.

It is to be remembered that vast provinces and
to the
Imperial standards, nor a penny other than that
extracted by the tax-gatherer; but the abuse of
the loose expression “India” attributed to the
Bengali and Guzerathi, the Marwari and the
Brahmin, the merits of the Punjabi Mussulman,

)

numerous castes furnished not a man

the Rajput, and the Parsi. Nay more, to “ India’

was attributed the cheerful and gay valour of the
Gurkha and the erratic energy of the Pathan.ern

DECAY 265

It is not in accordance with the scheme of this
work to attempt any appreciation of the statesman
who was responsible for the next step in advance.
He was, no doubt, actuated by the purest and
most selfless of motives. Nor is it proper to
criticise the methods whereby the reforms were
commended to the people of England. They were
sanctioned, no doubt advisedly, in accordance with
a wise discretion after full and free inquiry. No
false atmosphere favourable to the reforms was
created in India by toleration of disorder, or in
England by tendencious communiques or the
perversion of the Press. There was a general
feeling that “India” was very loyal and yet very
discontented. To reward loyalty is proper enough,
and how could loyalty be better rewarded. than
by the removal of the erievances which had
caused the discontent? The war was waged “to

ae,

make the world safe for democracy” and in the
sacred name of “ self-determination.” Obviously,
therefore, all grievances would be removed by
an extension of democratic government in India.
This would enable it really to use ‘self-
determination,” and as all democracies are wise,
and as wisdom pointed clearly towards a frank
acceptance of the hegemony of England, the same
measure which rewarded India would also
strengthen the bonds which united her to the
Empire.

give any detailed account

Nor do I propose toSg
ch
i

BO - :
Dis Serene

 

266 THE LOST DOMINION

of the new constitution. The framing of con-
stitutions is an amusing occupation. In this
occupation many very intelligent people engaged
for some months. But as no paper constitution
ever worked in the manner its framers con-
templated; and as a constitution to be effective
must develop naturally from institutions already
existing, a paper constitution can, at best, do no
more than form a starting-point for evolutionary
processes. What, therefore, the framers of the
constitution intended is interesting from an
archeological point of view, but _ historically
unimportant. What the constitution is, is un-
important. The vital question is, How is the
country governed under it? It is to this that I

propose to direct my attention.eet eee eee edit ational

267

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DEATH AGONY.

Ir ever there was a time when India needed wise
government it was now. For six years the
political Indian had been watching the nations
of Europe tearing each other to pieces. Christianity
had not availed to prevent the Christian common-
wealth from plunging into the most desperate of
civil wars. It merely furnished the legions of
hell with watchword and war-cry. All the
promises of Western civilization were lies. ‘The
master of the legions was still the master of the
world, and civilization only armed him with more
formidable spiritual and material weapons than
those wielded by Hulagu and Napoleon. The

victors had during the struggle been profuse in

noble phrases, but after the victory these were
reduced to two words, vae victes! It is not to
be wondered at that the Indian, long since
sceptical of the value of Western civilization, was
now convinced of its real nullity. By what
authority, then, did the men of the West presume268 THE LOST DOMINION

to lord it in Hastern lands? By the sword? But
the sword was falling from their hands.

The war was obviously merely a truce. In the
peace settlements there were no elements of
permanence. The nations of Europe were divided
by many bitter hatreds, but in one sentiment
they were united — hatred of England. And
what armour had England against this hatred?
India, not being a nation, could know nothing of
national spirit. She could not tell that in
England that spirit burned with a flame which,
murky indeed and intermittent, was no legs
consuming than the pure unwavering radiance of
France. England had indeed made a great effort
in the war, but her force, ill-organised and often
ill-applied, had effected less than it should.
Indian troops had figured in many theatres, but
Indian memories dwelt particularly on the trench
warfare of the dismal Flanders campaign of ’15,
on the brilliant disaster of Gallipoli, and on the
scandals of Irak. War propaganda had led them
to believe that it was by Indian arms and Indian
treasure that the Empire had been preserved.
Those who arrogated to themselves the right
to speak for India might surely make their own
terms ?

In Europe it was the great day of the Helot
and Gibeonite. The Lord had indeed put down the
mighty from his seat, and had exalted the humble
and meek. Never again, the victors had decreed,Se eee ge eedeieemeeatae ieee nen eeeaiinecenaeeeeeel

THE DEATH AGONY 269

should any great Power arise in Europe capable
of standing up against the predominance of France.
All Eastern Europe was Balkanised. This “ gerry-
mandering in excelsis” was carried out in the
names of liberty and the new god “self-
determination.” Were not those who spoke in
the name of India also entitled to lberty and
to self-determination ?

Europe, and particularly England, was war-
weary. So much ardent youth squandered, so
much human effort flung away — to prove and
effect nothing. From the Vistula to the Atlantic,
from the North Cape to Matapan, were nothing
but furious and impotent hatreds, ruin, madness,
and despair. To the Hast reared itself the dreadful
spectre of Bolshevism. The distracted nations of
Europe cowered before it. The warring Christian
Powers had invoked strange allies. The Berber
horse and the Senegalese were on the Rhine.
Might not the Letts and Chinese of Lenin soon
be on the Elbe ?

Against a Europe so shattered, so demoralised,
the East began to marshal itself. Colour against
colour, religion against religion, the man in the
turban against the man with the hat, the veiled
woman against the suffragette, the races were
falling into line. Was India alone of all the Hast
to be deaf to the assembly ¢

In any circumstances, then, India must have
been shaken by the war. But there were special' i | |
mh 270 THE LOST DOMINION
i \
| i reasons why she was agitated. There had been
ie ae years of great scarcity, and prices of necessities
: Pi | had soared. There had been frantic commercial

speculation, and to many the day of the armistice
t was a day of despair and bankruptcy. A new
a 4d pestilence had swept off, in a few weeks, more
| | victims than fell among all the warring nations
throughout the whole war. There had been an
| Afghan War. The invasion had been easily repelled
| by the Imperial forces, but the enfeebled Indian
Government was in no case to punish the ageressor
or to demand guarantees for the future. It was
glad, after long negotiations and humble supph-
cation, to extract from the defeated Government

the grant of a shameful treaty.

It was intended that this invasion should
synchronise with a rising in India, but, as usual,
the rising broke out prematurely in two provinces.

Qn one province the war had pressed heavily.
On the other it had rested not at all. In both
the rising was put down by the local officers
with severity. The rioters in the Panjab were
shot in great numbers; the leaders of the rebellion
were pardoned and rewarded. The local officers
‘4 were censured or neglected.

 

There had been much uneasiness among the
Muhammadans on account of the war with Turkey.
Into the dark and dismal abysses of our negoti-
ations with the Arabs, our promises to France,
our promises to the Mussulmans, our promises toTHE DEATH AGONY 271

Greece, I have no wish to plunge; but Mussul-
man opinion did not approve of the settlement
with Turkey. The Moslems regarded the prince-
lings of the Hejjaz and Irak as renegades sold to
the infidel. They did not see how the establish-
ment of a Greek Empire in Turkish lands was in
accordance with the principles of self-determination,
and they considered themselves deceived, deluded,
and betrayed. The Khilafatist agitation became
more intense and more openly seditious. It was
not regarded with disfavour by some great ones
both in India and in England, for over the
ruins of Turkey was being waged a foul and
obscure struggle; and in the game of financial and
diplomatic intrigue “ Indian public opinion” might
prove a valuable card.

Among the Hindus the worship of the ‘‘ Mother”
was giving place to the worship of Gandhi.
Gandhi was a Guzerathi, a Bunnia, and a barrister.
He had originally come into prominence in South
Africa, where he had headed the resistance of the
Indian settlers to the measure enforced by the
various Governments of that country on those
Indian settlers in pursuance of their policy of a
White Africa. In South Africa armed resistance,
or even the menace of such, would have been
ludicrous, for the settlers were few in numbers and
unwarlike. He had therefore taught the doctrines
of passive resistance, and this policy had had a
certain amount of success, A compromise had272 THE LOST DOMINION

been reached, and existing rights were recognised.
The arms of the spirit, thought Gandhi, are more
potent than the arms of the flesh, He was
strengthened in this idea by his readings in Tolstoi
and his followers and intellectual congeners.

He himself was a saintly man. He was chaste,
temperate, and pious. There was in him no trace
of worldly ambition and no love for lucre. The
Indian extremist politician is apt to oscillate
between insolence and fawning according to his
appreciation of the character of his opponent.
Gandhi was always dignified and urbane. He had,
I think, banished wholly from his soul the evil
passions of fear and hatred. One flaw there was
in him, but that was enough. He was vain. He
must have popular applause.

The system he worked out was this. Modern
Western civilization is a delusion of Satan. Have
nothing to do with it. The appliances of civil-
ization are, therefore, of satanic origin, and so
are its economic developments. Discard them.
Cotton mills, for example, are an invention of the
evil one, and their products are polluted: use hand-
woven cloth. Railways are also of diabolic origin
(a doctrine which as regards the Indian railways
is not wholly absurd): walk on foot.

Mankind is naturally good. There is no need

of coercive appliances. Leave him to himself and
he will soon attain perfection. It is civilization
that at once makes and punishes crime. It isTHE DEATH AGONY 273

false religion that at once makes and punishes sin.
The rule of physical force in the administrative
world is based on a delusion. Physical force can
do nothing, soul force is all. The British Govern-
ment is peculiarly the vicegerent of Satan. It is
owing to the false ideas propagated by the agents
of this Government that we see mills springing
up all over the country and the ever - spreading
network of railways. Under it the handicraftsman,
and particularly the handloom worker, is perishing
out, and even the bullock is regarded rather as a
supplementary means of locomotion than as a
serious rival to the railway. But it is particularly
the use of force that indicates the satanic origin
of all governments, and particularly of the
British Government. As Austin points out, all
governments rest ultimately on force. The whole
apparatus of armies, police, courts, and magistrates
is satanic. This is particularly the case with
the British Government, which is not a national
government, but is founded on violent usurpation.

But the Government, and particularly the British
Government, should not be violently opposed. The
use of physical force is illegal. To use it to oppose
or to turn out the Government would be casting out
Satan by Beelzebub, and any organisation that
came into existence in such circumstances would
itself be satanic.

Against Satan the human soul must oppose
itself. Cultivate a pure heart and quiet mind.

S

be nee erie —_

aa, -
dian

ee

 

eet

oP Thege)

 

274 THE LOST DOMINION

Cast away all ideas of violence. Refuse to obey
Plead in no
Do not break, merely disobey the laws.

the Government. Pay no taxes.
courts.
The pure parent will not send his child to schools
infected with Satanism. The warrior in this
spiritual conflict will not dress himself or his

He will

wear the khaddar, the product of the handloom.

family in the product of satanic looms.

Before this exhibition of soul force the Govern-
At first, no doubt, it will
If you do not pay your

ment will be helpless.
try to persecute you.
taxes, it will confiscate and sell your property.
Let it.
soul warriors.

It may apply its repressive laws to the
Let it.
Let it send you to jail.

Do not plead to its juris-
diction. In a short time
the weapons of the spirit will triumph. Govern-
ment will be ashamed of persecuting unresisting
people. It will break off its connection with
Satan, and become a merely voluntary association
depending for its existence and the performance
of its duties on the voluntary assent of the people.
Should it be obdurate and persist in its evil courses,
No govern-
ment can continue to function if all its subjects

be constant, and the victory is yours.

and agents refuse to obey it or to carry out its
commands.

It must lapse out of mere impotence.
They
trace back to Rousseau, and through him to a
Though Christ

repudiated them and Paul discountenanced them,

‘here wa hing new in these doctrines.

long line of anarchic speculators.THE DEATH AGONY 275

they are there, in germ at least, in Christianity.
They will always appeal to the citizens of a highly
civilized community. They call man back to the
forests from the cities. In all men there still
survives the anthropoid. He regrets his tail and
longs for his arboreal home. Indeed, the history
of civilization is the history of the gradual sup-
pression of the anthropoid, and it is because the
anthropoid survives in the best and noblest of us
that civilization has never wholly succeeded.

But the anthropoid is a brute, and it is useless
to talk to him of soul force. While, therefore,
he listens with pleased and pointed ears to the
teacher who tells him that civilization (which
exists only for the purpose of restraining him)
is Wholly evil, that part of the doctrine which
tells him that the use of force is improper falls
on the deaf. ‘There is probably less of the anthro-
poid in the Indian than in the European, but he
exists, particularly in the lower strata of the
population, which, in accordance with the caste
system, represents backward stocks which never
whole-heartedly accepted civilization.

dverywhere, therefore, where these doctrines
have spread events have followed the same course.
There has been a revolt against civilization. This
the government or the superior classes attempt
to crush. If they succeed, well and good. If they
fail, there is a rising of the pariahs, The old
sovernment falls, and for a time there is a blissful

qlai tg Net

ee

276 THE LOST DOMINION

interregnum in which the anthropoid indulges his
primal passions. But the forest is far off, and
it is not the season of nuts. The anthropoid can
build up nothing ex hypothes:. The superior men
resume control, and the anthropoid is forced back
into his slum.

The result, then, of the teaching of Gandhi was
merely a series of anarchic riots. Gandhi himself
was horrified at the results, and for a moment
thought of ceasing his propaganda and devoting
himself to the culture of his own soul. He could
not, however, bear to deprive himself of popular
applause, and soon emerged from his cell to carry
on his agitation far and wide. ‘The satanic railways
enabled him or his disciples to reach the farthest
parts of India with ease and despatch, and the pros-
perity created by the satanic government and the
satanic mills provided him with ample funds.

For a time the Gandhi party and the Khilafatist
party combined. This by no means strengthened
either party, but for a moment the two principal
movements hostile to England presented a united
front. The sole bond was the common hatred of
England as an infidel Government, which was now
a persecuting infidel Government, and there was
no likelihood of the alliance remaining permanent.
The superficial amalgamation, however, gave an
excuse to those who were seeking to justify them-
selves in their own eyes for asserting that India

was now a united nation, and was as such entitledSee ee ra

THE DEATH AGONY 277

to all the privileges of liberty, self-determination,
and the other inalienable rights of nationalities.
The result of all this was a strange displacement
of sedition. The two fortalices of sedition had
been the Deccan and Bengal. Both had been
quiet during the war. Both Bengal and Bombay
had during the war been under able and vigorous
(sovernors, who had firmly suppressed war treason.
Neither the Deccan nor Bengal showed any enthu-
siasm for Gandhiism. The shrewd politic Deccani
Brahmin, the one race in India which combines
political and military ability, had little taste for
sentimental anarchy. They knew how usurping
foreigners were to be dealt with—not by prayer
or fasting, but by the waghnuk. Moreover, the
idea of a Bunnia Mahatma was grotesque. They
laughed at Gandhi, flattered him, and used him.

In Bengal these anarchic doctrines were not so
likely to be so unacceptable. But the Bengali
was 1n mortal terror of the Mussulman. He had
just put down beneath his feet his own Mussul-
man, and he saw the dangers of the alliance
between an anarchic religion which might upset
the Government and a fighting religion which might
replace it. Moreover, Gandhiism had developed in
some provinces into an agrarian agitation, and
many of the politicians of Bengal were zemindars,.

The admirers of Gandhi are fond of comparing
their master to Christ. Gandhi was not unwilling
to testify by suffering to the firmness with which278 THE LOST DOMINION

he held the doctrines he taught. He prob-
ably imagined that some mild persecution would
confirm his personal ascendancy. In this he was
in error, as the very example to which his followers
referred showed, and of which a more conclusive
proof was the fate of Sabbathhai.

On the day on which a Messiah 1s arrested
by the temporal Government and sentenced to
temporal punishment, on that day the temporal
power of the Messiah vanishes, though his spiritual
influence may continue. The people will not
really believe that a supernatural creature will

submit to scourging and the cross at the hands

of a satanic government. If he does not call
down the thirty legions, it is because he cannot.

And it was time that something was done to
disillusion the people. India, with the exception
of the Deccan and Bengal, was thoroughly con-
vinced of the divinity of the Mahatma. The
peasants knew nothing of soul force, but they
had been told that the payment of taxes was
illegal, and they looked forward to the sudden
manifestation of a redeeming god in the person
of Gandhi. This deity would reign on earth.
The foreign Government would abdicate. Should
it resist, it could not stand against the legions
of Heaven. The millenium would then come, and
no one need pay taxes to the Government, rent
to the landlord, or debts to the bunnia.

In the present instance, however, Pilate orTHE DEATH AGONY 279

the Sanhedrin refused to act. Partly this was due
to a failure to appreciate the dangerous nature
of the agitation. Partly there was a fear that
the courts might find some loophole of escape
for the accused. Partly there was the physical
fear of assassination. Like the Ismailis of old,
the followers of Gandhi might number among
their ranks some one who possessed a burhan katz’.
Assassination would be repudiated by Gandhi, and
was not in accordance with his doctrines. If
some high ofhcer was assassinated, the Master
would probably grieve sincerely, and might even
fast for six days, but that would not heal a hole
in the thorax. Partly it was the old fault of

a weak Government. ‘*‘ Do nothing, and we can-

not be blamed. Give the agitation time to wear
itself out. Do not encourage it by persecution.”
Partly, also, there was the fear that Gandhiism
might have strong support in influential quarters
at home. Gandhiism has much in common with
Bolshevism, and Moscow was the Mecea of Labour.
There were many powerful parties tinged with
subversive doctrines. Jews had great influence
both in England and India, and the Jew, though
not a subversive, is not a great admirer of the
civilization of the mystical Babylon. The Secre-
tary of State was proud to call Gandhi his friend.
Indeed, for many months a very injudicious policy
had been adopted of fawning on and appealing to
Gandhi to repress the disorders which naturally| | {

en

ae
sta

 

ee

 

280 THE LOST DOMINION

followed from his teaching. This he was gener-
ally ready to attempt, but the position in which
he was thus placed merely increased his opinion
of his own importance, and magnified that im-
portance in the eyes of his followers.

An insurrection now broke out in Malabar.
Malabar was in old days the first part of India
to which the adventurous merchant sailing before
the monsoon arrived. The people of Malabar
practised polyandry—that is to say, the women did
not marry, but contracted alliances more or less
permanent with such persons as they thought
proper. Among the visitors to Malabar were the
Arabs. These formed unions with the local women,
and a mixed breed sprang up. Islam was thus
firmly established in Malabar long before Mahmud
of Ghazni came through the passes of Afghanistan.
The religion spread largely among the depressed
classes, who in the system of Malabar were treated
by the superior castes as hardly human. The re-
ligion still spreads. The Mopilla is ignorant, but
extremely attached to his ‘‘pearl-like faith”; and
the Ghazi, unknown elsewhere in India proper,
was common enough in Malabar. He is also
extremely oppressed by the Hindu landlord, usurer,
and official The Government had never done
much to protect him. Hindu influence has always

been very strong in Madras. Government had
attempted to turn him into a soldier, but the
experiment had been abandoned with undue pre-THE DEATH AGONY 281

cipitancy. He was thus poor and oppressed, and
oppressed by infidels. He had occasionally risen
in arms, seeking a paradise which was denied on
earth. Many a time had large bodies of troops
been compelled to operate against small bands of
desperate fanatics. Ten Mopillas or so would
break out and kill the enemies of the faith. Then
they would take post in some strong building,
and sell their lives dearly, neither giving nor
asking quarter. The troops respected these brave
men, and shot them down lke mad dogs.
Madras was at this time ruled by the most
amiable of Governors. He obtained the love and

centleman

©

loyalty which only a high-bred English ¢
can win in India. But his defect was that of
Pegasus of old. So great had been the triumphs
of his tact and diplomacy, that he thought these
weapons would always and everywhere sufiice.
With impunity the emissaries of Gandhiism
preached through Malabar the diabolic nature of
the Government. With impunity the leaders of
the Khilafat party expatiated on the persecution
of Islam and the profanation of the holy places.
Local fanatics drew the conclusion, and there wae
a universal rising. Outlying Europeans were
killed. But the wrath of the Khilafat kingdom
fell mainly on the Hindu oppressors, and there
was a general massacre and forced conversion of
persons, who may have been useless and oppressive
but were at any rate British subjects, and entitledHy
|

 

 

282 THE LOST DOMINION

to protection. The Government was forced to
pour troops into Malabar. The Mopillas had no
arms, but the country was difficult and unhealthy,
and the rebellion lingered on for months till the
whole country was laid waste and famine compelled
surrender. The Mopillas were such an isolated
community that these events produced no serious
impression on India in general, and the outbreak
remained isolated; but it added much to the horror
felt for the Government which could neither pre-
vent its subjects from being misled nor protect
them from massacre, but could only kill.

In the Panjab no actual insurrection took place
again. But the country has really lapsed into
anarchy. Closely allied to Gandhiism was the
Akali movement. The Sikhs had for a long time
been a mere religious sect which attempted to
combine ‘Hinduism and Islam. They attracted
persecution from the Muhammadans, and rose in
arms. ‘lhe fighting Sikhs, who had devoted them-
selves to death in the service of the Guru, were
Akals. When Ranjit Singh introduced regular
battalions, and when the khalsa went down at
the crowning victory of Sobraon, the Akalis had
no functions left. Recently there had been a
spread of disloyalty among Sikhs, and various
members of that community began to take the
Akali vows and assume the Akali dress; and
wandered about the country, nominally for the
purpose of collecting alms and visiting the holyTHE DEATH AGONY 283

shrines, but actually seeking occasions of disorder.
Many of the Sikh shrines were in the possession
of Mohunts, who belonged to the early form of
Sikhism. These shrines were rich, and the
Mohunts were many of them worldly men. The
Akalis tried forcibly to eject these Mohunts from
what was their freehold for life. The Mohunts
applied to Government, but got no assistance.
his,”

and we cannot interfere.” In the same way, if a

said Government, ‘‘is a religious question,

gang of Sinn Feiners were to seize on Westminster
alienated from Catholic hands, no doubt the
Government would not interfere on _ similar

Abbey and the chapter property as improperly

srounds. The Mohunts now hired Pathan mer-
cenaries and resisted spoliation. ‘The results were
that a terrible massacre of Akalis took place. ‘The
Government now did intervene, and arrested, tried,
and condemned the guilty Mohunt. People were
now helpless before the Akalis. “If we do not
resist them, we are robbed. If we do resist, we
are hanged. What functions does this Government
fulfil 2”

All over the country there were minor risings
and tumults, which in less enlightened days would
have been considered serious enough, but now
attracted a mere passing notice. In fact allusion
to them was considered bad form and the mark
of a reactionary. The local rioters or rebels were
shot down, the subordinate engineers of rebellionSA a
yw “. rT
alpides

a
Piast acnenspniiititee a:

 

 

284

THE LOST DOMINION

were tried and convicted, but soon released and
rewarded; the main agitators were left to enjoy
“ What,” said the
people, “is the use of a Government which cannot

the most perfect impunity.

protect its friends or punish its enemies ” ?

A movement began to corrupt the army. The
Sikhs had gone far on an evil path. To the

Mussulman soldier was depicted the sinfulness of
supporting a Government which had laid waste
the holy places and was the sworn enemy of the
Turks. Both these classes, as also the Hindu, were
drawn from the peasants, and the Khilafat move-
and the
agrarian agitation which formed part of the Gandhi

ment among the Moslem peasantry,

propaganda, has bitten deep into the village life.
With

principal lieutenants

this movement Gandhi himself and _ his
formally associated them-
selves, and indeed the sacred duty of mutiny was
a necessary part of the teachings of the Master,

as 1t is of course on the fidelity of the troops

that the power of the satanic government
ultimately rests. The army was disorganised

after the war, and many of the regiments were
cantoned in the revolting fastnesses of Waziristan.
In the meantime the soldier on furlough, and his
relations when he was on duty, were exposed to
insult The soldier
applied for protection to his officers, but no assist-

continual and molestation.

ance was afforded.
Eventually pressure almost amounting to com-THE DEATH AGONY 285

pulsion was put on Simla, and the leaders of the
Khilafat party were arrested. Simla was reluctant
to prosecute Gandhi, and was therefore compelled
to bring against these leaders charges of offences
which Gandhi had not prama facie committed.
This ruled out sedition and treason, and the
prisoners were indicted for minor charges, and
received a short term of imprisonment. ‘The trial
had one advantage, because the aggressively
Moslem tone taken up by the prisoners alarmed
the Hindus, who were already perturbed by events
in Malabar; and even the political Indian thought
this dwelling on the theocracy inadvisable, and
likely to alarm public opinion in England. From
this trial, then, begins the parting between Khilafat-
ism and Gandhiism. Indeed, Khilafatism has been
rendered rather ridiculous by recent events in
Turkey, and is therefore at present of little use
as an ally.

Gandhi was also eventually brought to trial, and
sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, or rather
of detention. By this time he had lost much of
his influence, the movement having passed beyond
him, and his fate caused little excitement.

Those optimists are, however, in a manifest
error that think that all is well. Khilafatism
and Gandhiism may not be so formidable as they
were, but they represent living principles, and
those principles subsist and are indeed active as
ever. Agitators have learned the lesson that286 THE LOST DOMINION

they may agitate with perfect impunity, and
indeed with fair hopes of honour and reward.
They expect toleration from Government and
support in the legislature. It is their dupes who
suffer. Ifsome prominent rebel is unlucky enough
to get into jail, Government is almost apologetic,
and he and his friends may soon expect that by
“a noble gesture” he will soon be released and
enabled to carry on his vocation with energies
refreshed by a temporary rest-cure.

Clemency is an excellent thing, but weakness
is not so admirable. It is an insult to a court
immediately to release a rebel duly tried and
convicted by that court. The preservation of order
is not a matter between the Government and the
rebel only. The loyal and peaceful subject has
his rights also. The laws prohibit sedition and
rebellion, and the executive government who
refuses to prosecute criminals, or prosecutes and
then pardons them, is exercising a dangerous
dispensing power, and is abusing the prerogatives
vested in it by law. And such a government will
soon find that its agents become disheartened.
‘“Why should we trouble to search for and arrest
these criminals? They will only be released in
a month or two, and we shall have earned their
dishke. It is not to the Government that we can
look for support against their enmity.” Thus
when Government is eventually forced to act with

vigour it finds its arm paralysed.THE DEATH AGONY 287

All these transactions passed unnoticed in Eng-
land. The English people had given the Govern-
ment full powers to settle the affairs of India, and
did not desire to embarrass it by criticism. A power-
ful interest was enlisted on the side of the reforms,
and this interest had almost complete control of
the English Press. The few papers which were
not so tied were regarded with suspicion as ultra-
Tory, and were ridiculed as the organs of the
“Die-hard.” In India part of the Press was
clamorous in its praise of the existing system, and
the remainder had still traditions of loyalty to
the Government, which was still in a way supposed
to be representative of England. All might have
gone well had not the people in power called on
the Prince of Wales to visit India.

The visit of this young Prince was the excuse
for a series of political strikes and riots. He
himself was the delight of the human race, so
that these insults were not levelled at himself
personally. They were therefore directed against
the Crown of England. But his house reigns but
does not govern. ‘Therefore these events were
not protests against any acts of the administration.
But his house does stand for England. ‘The insults
were directed, therefore, against England. ‘The
movement was too widespread to be the mere
breaking loose of the passions of hooligans. And
if it were, what sort of Government is this which

cannot keep order in a city for a day or two288 THE LOST DOMINION

when the Heir-Apparent is there? It is, therefore,
the action of members of a widespread and well-
organised conspiracy which is deeply hostile to
England. This hostility cannot be due to any

acts of the Indian Government, because that
Government is now really the Indian Government,
and no longer the mere agent of England. England,
therefore, is not responsible for anything amiss in
India. The remedy now lies in the hands of the
Indians themselves. The ill-feeling, therefore, is
purely racial. On what sort of lies have you been
feeding us all this time? If you knew that this
display of ill-manners was probable, why did you
expose the representative of the royal house to
it? If you did not, you must be singularly ill-
informed.” From this visit, then, dates the begin-
ning in England of an uneasy feeling that all was
not well in India, Circumstances also led to the
removal of the unofficial censorship, and the news
which came from India tended to increase that
uneasiness,

And this uneasiness was well justified, because
in spite of vociferous assertions to the contrary the
reforms were not working, or at least not working
in the way presumably contemplated by their
originators.

In the
executive was confronted by an irresponsible leg-

At Delhi

provinces a feeble and irremovable

islature over which it had no control.

a feeble and irremovable executive was confrontedTHE DEATH AGONY 289

by a legislature over one House of which it had
no control. In both cases the Governor was armed
with latent dictatorial powers. This was not the
intention of the framers of the constitution. It
had been intended that certain subjects in the
provinces should be administered by a responsible
ministry, while certain other subjects were dealt
with by the irremovable executive. This prepos-
terous scheme, which was affectedly called dyarchy,
was still-born. No minister thought of resigning
because he could not command a majority in the
House. And this was well, as there would have
been no means of replacing him. If he resigned,
it was on personal and factious grounds, and his
successor was appointed, not from the leader of
the opposition, for there was none, or rather there
was nothing else, but according to the whim of
the Government. Even the framers of the con-
stitution did not suppose that the Government
would be able to keep, say, the financial admin-
istration and education in entirely separate and
water-tight compartments. The executive Govern-
ment was therefore required to work in harmony
with the ministers. The natural result of all this
was that the Government became one body, and
the ministers were little better than executive
councillors. Their dignity, pay, and estimation
was, however, less than that of the real councillors,
and they were chosen from active politicians; in
some cases they were selected from men who had
T290 THE LOST DOMINION

gone very far in opposition to the Government.
One man was made a minister who had been
unfortunate enough to have been condemned for
waging war against the king or for other alleged
treasonable conduct. The executive councils were
created where they did not exist, and were (even
without counting in the ministers) enlarged. There
was nothing in the constitution as to the race of
the councillors; but it was postulated that appoint-
ments would be made on racial grounds, and that
European blood would be regarded as a disquali-
fication. The monopoly of the Civil Service had,
of course, quite vanished, and even Indian members
of that service were not regarded as possible
candidates. It was intended also that, as far as
possible, all the provinces should be put under
the control of Governors who were also ‘“ English
statesmen.” The Home Government were fortunate
enough to find for one important province a
Governor who was at once an Indian and an
English statesman, At Simla there were no
ministers, but the council was increased, and there
also Indians who were members of the ‘“ moderate”
opposition were appointed.

An executive of this kind—namely, a board
comprised of a large number of men who are
by birth, training, and antecedents antagonistic,

and who are not even held together by the common
bond of a mutual desire to repulse an opposition
which desires to turn them out and take theirTHE DEATH AGONY 29]

places—is always a weak and ineffective executive ;
more so even when such a board is presided over
by a person totally ignorant of the country he is
to administer. The Stronger the personality of
the members, the more upright, honest, and loyal
they are, the greater the chance of disagreement,
It is for this reason that England hates coalitions.
I do not intend to expatiate on this topic; it is
axiomatic in polities,

It is also axiomatic in politics that where there
is an irremovable executive and an irresponsible
legislature, the executive cannot function freely,
except _ certain peculiar circumstances, The
imperium is one and _ indivisil ole, and equal and
independent powers cannot exist in the same state,
The functions of government may be roughly
divided into the exercise of executive, legislative,
and judicial powers, and these may no doubt be
vested in separate organs; but these organs must
necessarily be subordinate to the ruler.

Shallow eighteenth- century writers, considering
merely the apparent constitution of England,
imagined that they had discovered the secret of
good government in the radical Separation of
these functions, and constitutions framed on that
erroneous doctrine have cursed humanity for four
generations. Any such radical separation is either
noxious or impossible.

It is true, say, that judges ought to be impartial.
They should not hold their posts at the whim ofee

 

tg ~SOS P e

 

292 THE LOST DOMINION

the executive. They are to judge according to
the laws without regard to the temporary require-
ments of state policy. But it is the legislature
that passes the laws. It is the executive that
appoints the judges. It is from the electors who
appoint the legislature, and thereby the executive,
that juries are drawn. The legislature and execu-
tive can in grave cases remove the judges. In
grave cases the executive can refuse to carry
out decrees or sentences. It is impossible, there-
fore, that the judiciary should ever form a corpora-
tion permanently hostile to the executive and
legislature. If it were possible for it so to do,
it would probably bring the state to ruin; for
the judicial power, if exercised without any con-
trol, can paralyse the Government. Still more
deleterious is any real separation of legislative
and executive functions. The executive can do
nothing without legal sanction and without money,
and it is in the hands of the legislature to give
the Government the powers which that Govern-
ment thinks necessary, and to raise and assign
funds, On the other hand, the executive is to
carry out the laws passed by the legislature,
though it may think them noxious. England is
well acquainted with the advantages of this form
of government. She suffered trom it for about
a hundred years. Under it one king went to
the scaffold and another to St Germains. There
were three civil wars. The corpses of the brave,
the loyal, and the patriotic polluted everyTHE DEATH AGONY 293

market-place and every cross-road. The slums
of Amsterdam and of Paris were filled with
men who might have been the glory of the
kingdom. England, at one time and soon to
be again the arbiter of the destinies of Europe,
ranked in the scale of nations below Portugal and
Venice. It was this system which made Ireland
what it is. It was this system which lost the
American colonies. It was the abandonment of
this system which preserved Canada. It is now
an axlom of British politics that there must be
the closest union between the executive and the
legislature.

In pre-Stuart days this union was preserved by
the reluctance of the legislature to come to a
struggle with the Crown. The Tudors were not
dependent on pecuniary grants for the conduct
of the Government in normal times; their royal
revenues suthced. They knew the country per-
fectly, and did not undertake any policy lkely
to lead to expense without well knowing that
the country would approve of it. Having this
support in the country, and the king’s name
still being a tower of strength, they were enabled
to master their legislatures; and never hesitated
to use coercive process towards individual mem-
bers who set themselves against the royal, which
was also the national, will. At a later period
corruption was tried with remarkable success. At
a still later period a combination of corruption
and indirect nomination made the legislaturesOe a LONI

ee ee gg ere

ta A en

 

294 THE LOST DOMINION

But since 1832 none of these
means have been possible.

The executive Government of England is there-
fore a committee of the legislature.

docile enou oh.

If the legis-
lature seriously disapproves of the actions of any
one of the members of the managing committee,
it turns the whole body out of office and proceeds
to indicate the persons who it thinks should be
appointed in its place. Thus: there can never be
long a lack of harmony between the legislature
and the executive. This system has its disad-
vantages, both theoretical and practical; but the
existence of a feeble executive is not generally
one of them. The executive, while it is in power,
is perhaps too strong and uncontrolled.

The Indian legislatures did not perhaps pur-
posely embarrass the’ Government. Probably they
wished to make the reforms a success. A certain
amount of wise legislation was carried through;
a certain amount of wise advice was given; but
the radical vices of the system did not fail to
show themselves, and the deadlock, always certain,
The Houses

could not abstain from captious and destructive

became more and more imminent.

criticism, from interference with individual adminis-

trative acts, from the introduction and passing
of deleterious and ad captandum resolutions, and
from an attempt by means of such resolutions
and by the power of the purse to transfer the
executive power to themselves.ee

THE DEATH AGONY 295

The Government, confronted by this attitude
and anxious to avoid a deadlock, showed a very
conciliatory spirit. The House did not like re-
pression. The Government repealed all the re-
pressive laws on which it would ultimately have
to rely for its very existence, threw open the
jails, and censured too active officers. The House
showed a taste for protection. Government raised
funds by a tariff which hit hard the European
and the peasant. The House disliked militarism.
Government cut down its establishments, entered
into a shameful treaty with Afghanistan, and
abandoned its frontier policy. The House showed
a dislike of the European agency. The Govern-
ment lost no opportunity of praising and rebuthng
the services. It started on a process of Indian-
isation of the army, which was not greeted with
much enthusiasm by the said army. And it
showed evident signs of a desire to stop the
recruitment of the services from England. It
gestions for the con-

J

considered with sympathy sug
fiscation of the rights of the Sikh Mohunts, and
for the “regulation” of other religious establish-
ments. It largely reduced its own religious estab-
lishments. It cut down to the bone certain heads
of expenditure, and lavished money on other
departments, the application of funds being regu-
lated, not by the utility, but by the popularity
of the department.

One very remarkable instance may here be— a

 

~~

 

 

296 THE LOST DOMINION

given of the new and conciliatory attitude of
Government. We heard much of a change in
the “angle of vision,” but such a change, if it
causes the percipient to imagine that what is
really a snake is a rope, is dangerous.

Certain persons, Indians and Europeans, were
suspected of being guilty of conspiracy to defraud
Government in respect of munitions. An elaborate
inquiry was held, and it was decided to prosecute.
The principal European accused was in England,
but proceedings were taken to obtain his extra-
dition, and meanwhile a case was launched against
the Indians. At the first hearing the Crown
counsel rose and said that he was instructed to
withdraw the case under orders of the Govern-
ment of India. He added that this was not to
be taken as an admission that there was no
prima facie case, or that the prosecution was
unjustifiable. Here, then, was a strange position.
Hither the Indians accused were suilty, in which
case enormous offenders were to escape scot-free,
or they were innocent, but their reputation was
blasted. Meantime proceedings were to continue
against the European accused. This case excited
comment. It then appeared that one of the
members of council had thought that the prose-
as

 

cution was unadvisable for political reasons

it might lead to financial troubles, and conse-
quent discontent in a certain important city,—
and had therefore, after informal consultation
with two of his friends, quashed it.Se

THE DEATH AGONY 297

The Government of India hastened to repudiate
its action, and the member was forced to resign.
Nothing was heard of the friends who had tendered
him unofficial advice. But this by no means
was a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. In
the first case the theory of corporate responsi-
bility is strong in the case of the Indian Govern-
ment, and up to that time there had been no
shirking of it. An official act of one member
was the official act of all. This constitutional
innovation threw open ‘a serious door” to all
sorts of unpleasant political developments. How
can the responsibility of the whole board be
enforced if it is not responsible for the acts of
each of its members? And if the board is not
so responsible, how can it check the activities
of its individual members ?

Further, what must have been the atmosphere
of Simla when an experienced and able officer,
who had been living in and absorbing that
atmosphere all his official life, could make such
an error? In those high places it was clear
strange idols were adored with rituals unfamiliar
to the common herd, and on their altars were
being laid very strange offerings,

This, though a striking, was by no means an
isolated case; and such cases, coupled with the
obvious reluctance of Government to prosecute the
leaders of sedition, while the jails and graveyards
were full of the bodies of their dupes, led the

public to suppose that any person, so long as he

——— Heian

a eeoS
ee

 

 

298 THE LOST DOMINION

was powerful and had influence with any of the
persons now in power, could commit offences with
impunity. Also, there seemed no guarantee for the
Thus people were led to

But it was on justice that

honour of the innocent.
mistrust British justice.
the Empire rested. Empire may last if the admin-
istration is weak. It cannot endure if justice 1s
denied.

And for the agents of the Government a dismal
horizon was opened. ‘They are responsible for
law and order. The courts are already somewhat
hostile to them. Now the executive Government
appears also to have decided on a policy of
sympathy to crime. ‘How long will admuinistra-
tion be possible, and what guarantee is there even
for our lives and honours?” And in no long
time there was evident proof of the reality of this
An eminent officer was accused of foul
corruption. He wished to prosecute his slanderers.
He did so without obtaining the permission of his
departmental head, being under the impression

His departmental

danger.

that no sanction was required.
head attempted to burk the prosecution, and that
failing, resigned.

This may have been all very right and proper,
but the point is that these measures were not the

measures of Government. Some of these things

they would not have done willingly, and others
they would haye done in a different way. The
policy was the policy of the legislatures, not of‘oes te! | Peeeeaa. bebht| j
TTT a

 

THE DEATH AGONY 299

the Government; but the Government was respon-
sible and the legislatures were not. It would
have been better, therefore, had the Government
been responsible: to the legislatures. And the
Government felt this, because it accepted a resolu-
tion calling for an immediate revision of the con-
stitution (which had now been working for one
whole year) with the object of giving the legislatures
more direct control.

I'he Government was still nominally the repre-
sentative and agent of England. It was actually
as much a creature of the Indian legislature as if
it had been composed of Indian ministers selected
from the Houses, and giving advice to the Viceroy
or Governor on the Dominion model.

The Government went very far in the path of
conciliation, but one thing it was not yet prepared
to do openly. It was reluctant to break its word
passed to a set of persons who might resent such
breach of faith. It had promised the Indian
princes to protect them against blackmail by the
vernacular Press; but it was in such haste to expose
its own policy and the reputation of its own officers
to ‘‘enlightened criticism” that it had neglected,
when freeing the Press from repressive statutes,
to make an exception in case of wanton attacks
on the princes. The legislature refused to pass
the necessary Act to punish such offences, and the
Viceroy was obliged to use his latent dictatorial
powers. Then the Houses, wishful to eradicate300 THE LOST DOMINION

the British services, had seen with regret and
dismay a proposal to appoint a Commission to
investigate the actual condition of the services.
It refused the necessary funds, and the Viceroy
was compelled again to use these extraordinary
powers. Finally, the deficit still persisting, and
the appetite of the House for protection being
still unabated, it refused to grant funds except
in the form of increased tariffs. When it was
demonstrated that this measure would merely
check imports without increasing revenue, it
suggested further economies, particularly in army
expenditure, or a policy of tampering with the
currency or other financial jugglery. Government
proposed an increase of the tax on salt—a dis-
agreeable tax, no doubt, but one not oppressive
to the people, productive, and easily levied. The
House rejected this Bill, and Government was
faced with a deficit. Government explored all
other possible sources of revenue, and made
certain suggestions, but the House proved un-
accommodating.

Fortified with the favourable opinion of the
Council of State (the Second Chamber), the Viceroy
now certified the Bill, and it became law, ‘This

excited much ill-feeling in the House, and the
legality of the action of the Viceroy was challenged,
some persons being fatuous enough to maintain
that the power of certification did not extend to
money bills. If it did not, the power would beTHE DEATH AGONY 301

useless, as it is by the power of the purse that
legislature controls the executive. Attempts at
agitation were made, but the country was perfectly
indifferent: and the well-wishers of Government
were not displeased at seeing that there actually
was a point beyond which conciliation could not go.
But those who saw in this action of the Viceroy
the doom of the reforms, were not far wrong.
Government cannot be carried on by the occasional
intervention of a deus ex machina, especially an
apologetic and explanatory deus ex machina; and
it was clear that the attempts to carry on the
Government by conciliation and by a policy of
perpetual concession had failed. A deadlock was
therefore imminent, and could only be averted by
a change in the constitution. That change could
only be in the direction of making the executive
responsible to the legislature on the Dominion
principle. It would then not be enough for a
tribune of the people to thunder against the salt
tax or the army which made that tax necessary.
He would know that if the House accepted his
views, he would have to carry on the Government
either without an army or without funds to pay
for it.

For the lack of harmony between the executive
and the legislature was functional, and could not
be avoided. If any one could have avoided it,
it was the present Viceroy. Some Viceroys of
the prancing proconsul type would have come

a

'
;
Hi i
i]
4 ;302 THE LOST DOMINION

into conflict with their legislatures at once. The
House might earlier have engaged in conflict with
a weak and squeezable Viceroy. Lord Reading
was neither. Wise, prudent, equitable, temperate,
and equally removed from vanity or lack of self-
confidence, he for three years had carried on the
administration under unheard-of difficulties; and if
he failed in the long-run, if, in fact, he could not
build up a strong English party where the materials
for which did not exist, he is not to be blamed.
It is difficult to make bricks without straw. It
is impossible to make them without clay.

Panditji had thus succeeded. He had brought
matters to such a condition that the only solution
was the grant of Dominion Government. That
meant that the executive Government of India
would now be selected from the literate castes,
who formed the bulk of the Houses. There was
no possible opposition except from factious members
of his own party, and though the administration
would be carried on in the name of the Crown of
England, the Knglish Government would have no
rights of interference. The English had thus lost
the dominion of India.

It remains now to gather up a few loose threads,
and in particular to see how this new state of
things was likely to be accepted in the country.
Almost any constitution will work well if those
responsible are anxious to make it function, Pro-
bably of all constitutions that of the RomanTHE DEATH AGONY 303

Republic in ancient days and that of the American
Republic in the present age are most obnoxious
to criticism. Yet inefficiency cannot be predicated
of either, because the citizens of those republics
were determined to make the constitution march,
and it did march. In India, outside official circles,
the constitution had no friends. It was a con-
stitution which, given certain conditions, might
have been effective enough, and which might have
developed organically into something worth having,
but these conditions did not exist.

The form of the constitution was not that
approved of officially by the Government of India,
nor that originally devised by the ingenious
architect. There had been a great orgy of
constitution-making, and some very remarkable
productions had resulted—a sort of pathological
museum of abortive empires which would have
oladdened the heart of Sieyés. But nothing like
the scheme actually settled on is there to be
found. However, Simla was soon converted to
the new evangel, and adopted it with the zeal of
converts. To this day, to express any doubt of
the success of the reforms is little better than
treason: “They must work; therefore they do
work.” Certain of the English papers, particularly
those which were not altogether free from official
or other influence, joined in the official doxology.
But with the exception of these two classes, the
reforms met with small approval.oo
a pe a at

 

THE LOST DOMINION

304

Perhaps the opinion of the chiefs is irrelevant,
as they are not directly affected by the reforms.
They were loyal to the Crown, and were sorry to
see the English abdicate. ‘Still, if they are

bent on doing so, that is their own affair. Who
knows? Perhaps the old days are returning?
The man with the army and the man _ with

money—may there not be an opening for him?
Why should not one of us be Viceroy or Vicar-
General of the Empire? It is not for ever that
the Bunnia and Brahmin, or the nominee of the
and Brahmin, will Peacock
Meanwhile, admirable is the sympathy
Now for the

states.”

Bunnia sit on the

Throne.
and beneficence of the Wazir-i-Hind.
first time we are masters in our own
Such were the varying thoughts of some of the
chiefs. Many of them carried their admiration
into practice, and set up in their own states
institutions fashioned on the new model. There
was there perfect harmony between the executive
and the legislature.

India is a land of nobles.
idle, sensual, and improvident enough, but with
aristocracy they

Many of them are

the vices of an unemployed
possess many of the virtues of a landholding

nobility. Ilhterate, and contemptuous of literacy

as an art only suitable for Brahmins, Kayasths,
and Bunnias, they looked to the army for their
career, and it was from this race that came the
best of the cavalry and the best of the IndianTHE DEATH AGONY 305

officers. They regarded the literate classes as
their hereditary enemies. The British Govern-
ment, after shaking off the influence of Turgot,
had always been their friend, and had done its
best to save them from the results of their own
improvidence, Consequently they were, as a
class, loyal to the Government. This class sot
on extremely well with the English civil and
military officers, and had no respect for one of
their own countrymen, however high his official
position was, unless he was, which was very
rarely the case, one of themselves.

This nobility regarded the abdication of the
British with incredulous horror, In most pro-
vinces they were in a hopeless minority, and they
saw themselves given over, bound hand and foot,
to their ancient and despised enemies. The
argument, “‘You are Indians, your valour and
loyalty in the war is therefore to be imputed to
India. The Bunnias and Brahmins are also
Indians. Therefore, a reward given to them is
a reward given to India. Therefore, the intro-
duction of this constitution is a reward given to
you, proved too subtle for these somewhat
childlike minds,

The whole of India is divided into villages.
There are hundreds of thousands of them. A
cluster of mud huts, a temple or two, some old
trees, a well; an open space in the centre is the
nucleus. ound about lie the arable, pasture, and

U306 THE LOST DOMINION

waste of the village. Here lives and dies the
peasant. The real Indian nation is here, that
hardy patient folk whose labour pays the taxes,
and whose blood has built up the Empire and
kept the gates.

He has his defects, for he is a man, and a
peasant, and ignorant. But he is on the whole
honest, and temperate, and pious. He is a good
son, and a kind father, and an affectionate husband.
No poor rate is needed. ‘he poor, the old, the
infirm, the mendicant are all welcome to share
his pittance. Loyal he is to those who know how
to command his loyalty. Dignified, too, and
courteous in his way to such as merit such
treatment. Possessed also of a rather acrid
rustic humour. The reforms that this class would
have liked would have been the sweeping away
of the elaborate mechanism of Government, and
the installation in each small subdivision of an
experienced English officer vested with all
functions of Government. It is this class that
had profited most under the old régime, under
which cultivation had spread over the whole
Empire; except in such areas as, having been
totally ruinated by predatory war, had relapsed
to the malarious jungle, where none may live
save the man and beast of the forest. ‘The
peasant was perhaps not vocally grateful, for he
was a peasant and inarticulate, but to him

the sirkar was a great and beneficent, thoughTET

THE DEATH AGONY 307

somewhat incomprehensible, creature. In that
organisation, and in its European agents, he had
a childlike faith, which was rarely disappointed.
This class, which was the most meritorious of all
the classes of India, was to get nothing by the
reforms, hardly even a vote. Indeed, the pious
hope of the authors of the reforms was that he
would now be misgoverned and oppressed. He
would thus be inclined to take an interest in
politics, and might end up as a good democrat.
Lhe Indian peasant has often been oppressed, but
he has never become a good democrat. He prefers
to redress his grievance by a _ process more
summary than ours.

The peasant did not understand these beneficent
intentions, and I do not suppose would have
been very pleased if he had. He knew and cared
nothing about the reforms. He did not look
much further than the district officer, and the
district officer was still an Englishman.

He did find, however, agitators going about the
country inciting him to violence. Sometimes he
listened. They told him that the Government
had fallen, and that now was the time to pay
off old scores. Sometimes, then, the quiet orderly
law-abiding cultivator was turned into a unit of
a shrieking fanatical mob bent on murder and
arson. Then he was shot down or hanged.
Sometimes he was the victim of these outrages
because he had paid his taxes, or because his308 THE LOST DOMINION

brother was a soldier. The sirkar seemed unable
to protect him. A great horror sprung up in the
minds of the people. The sirkar is not dead.
It is alive and as omnipotent as ever, but it
is mad.

Below these were the low castes. Many millions
of them. The old régime had not been able to do
much for them. Hinduism had been too strong.
But it had done something. It had given them
equal rights before the law, though it was not
always able to enforce those rights. It had tried
to give them education. It had found a small
place for them in the administration. It had
restrained the worst excesses of Hinduism against
them. It had, to a certain extent, propagated
its own humanitarian ideas among the masses.
It had provided them with wells and rest-houses,
from which they were excluded by the Hindu
system. It had fed them in famines and given
them medicines in sickness. They knew nothing
of politics, and if they had grasped the meaning
of the reforms, they would not have been over-
delighted at the knowledge that their champions
had abdicated, and that they were to go back
body and soul under the old grievous sovereignty
and command,

As for the political Indian, the moderate at first
joined in the chorus of praise of the reforms, but
he soon found them inadequate. His true policy
was loyally to co-operate with the Government,THE DEATH AGONY 309

demonstrate that he was capable of working the
machine, and then he might reasonably enough
be given control. He was, however, impatient, and
pushed matters to the deadlock. He now joined
in the clamour that the reforms were a hollow
sham, and that nothing short of immediate Do-
minion Government would “ meet the aspirations of
the Indian people.” As for the crypto-extremist,
playing the game of the enemies of the constitution
under the guise of a loyal but disappointed friend,
he of course was only too anxious to see the whole
system crash.

The extremists, who now included in their ranks
the far greater part of the political Indians, had
displayed an unexampled fatuity, completely prov-
ing the “ Die-hard” position that, whatever abilities
this class may have, real political ability is not
one. ‘‘ The reforms are the invention of Satan,”
they said. ‘‘We will not participate in the
accursed thing. We will be neither electors nor
elected.” They, therefore, abstained from standing,
and contented themselves with intimidating candi-
dates and electors. ‘The moderates, therefore, had
the field to themselves, and, with the exception
of crypto-extremists, the extremists were not
represented either in the imperial or the provincial
assemblies. Had they stood for election they
would have swept the board in eight out of ten
open constituencies, and would have commanded
a majority in all legislatures. They might then310

THE LOST DOMINION

have taken up an obstructive attitude, throwing
out all Government measures and refusing all
supplies. Had they done this, then, probably in
any case, but certainly under the then existing
régime, Dominion self-government would at once
have been granted; and they could then with
perfect freedom have carried out the extremist
programme. Or, and this would perhaps have
been wiser, they might, by bargaining with Govern-
ment, have extracted from it such concessions
that they might have forced it itself to carry out,
in substance if not in name, the greater part of
the said programme. Their folly threw away this
chance, and they are now trying to retrace their
steps; but they are by no means so well-organised
as they were three years ago, and the Hindu-
Moslem split may lead to difficulties in their way.
Still, in so sympathetic an atmosphere as that of
the legislative assemblies (for the moderate, whether
a real moderate or a crypto-extremist, is not in
the least likely to display much anxiety to support
the Government) a well-organised minority can
do great things. What it does, however, will not
be on the lines of “‘ making the reforms a success.”
The mercantile community had passed through
a series of storms. There had been four years of
gigantic war profits, followed by a fearful collapse.
Then there had been the sudden rise and equally

sudden fall of exchange. During the war many

of the wholesale merchants had entered into directTHE DEATH AGONY 311

relations with the British manufacturer, who thus
saved the profit of the European importing firms,
and gave very large credit facilities. The whole-
sale merchant now found it impossible to fulfil
his contracts, and thousands of Indian firms who
a year or two before had been opulent were
now trembling on the verge of bankruptcy. ‘These
men were bitterly resentful of what they thought
was the foolish and dishonest policy of Govern-
ment in respect of the exchange, and were not
undesirous of new things. They were thus not
disinclined to the programme of the extremists.
For the reforms they cared nothing. Some of the
small class interested in cotton-mills were sup-
porters of the reforms, as they would have been
of any system which, by imposing protection, held
out fair promise that the industry in which they
held shares would continue to pay dividends at
200 per cent. The vast bulk of the community
was, however, perfectly indifferent to politics.
The British Government suited them: it kept
order, improved communications, enforced contracts
somewhat ruthlessly. Its elaborate series of courts
was an oppression no doubt, but 1t was an oppression
which suited the merchant. In that arena the
conflict between him and an illiterate peasant or
a spendthrift noble was rarely im doubt. ‘The
reforms in no way menaced this machine. On
the contrary, the men of the new régime were
lawyers, the friend and accomplice of the Bunnia.312 THE LOST DOMINION

One feature of the new scheme was, however, not
so agreeable, There was much disorder. In the
small market-towns, whether it is the national
army which is attacking the officials of a satanic
Government; or the warriors of the Khalifa who
are making a demonstration of soul force; or
Satyagrahis who are enforcing a general strike;
one of the most popular items on the programme
is the looting of the bazaar, and the consequent
robbing of the Bunnia and, if possible, the de-
struction of his accounts. The mercantile classes
were therefore somewhat divided in opinion.
They took little interest in politics and none in
democracy. If they favoured the new scheme, it
was with the reservation that they would cease
so to do if it cut down their profits. Provided
that their profits were kept up and order main-
tained, they would rally round any government
in possession.

The artisans took no interest in politics, and
stood to make very little from the reforms, which
they did not understand. They had profited much
by the British régime, and had little sympathy
with the literate classes, whom they respected and
mistrusted. Certain features of the extremist

agitation appealed to them; but they, like the
mercantile community, would support any govern-
ment which could keep the peace and increase
prosperity.

Taking India as a whole, I should say thatTHE DEATH AGONY 313

about 349,000,000 of the population were indif-
ferent or hostile to the revolution, and indeed were
quite ignorant as to what was happening. Of
the remaining million about 800,000 were more
or less in open sympathy with the extremists, and
therefore regarded the reforms as the work of
Satan. Of the remaining 200,000 (the so-called
moderate party), about 150,000 were crypto-ex-
tremists, whether they knew it or not, and about
40,000 of the balance were openly proclaiming
that the reforms were inadequate and that further
constitutional changes were immediately necessary.
This leaves about 10,000 persons (half of them
women) who were actually in favour of the reforms
as they stood, including, of course, the promise to
progress. Now, a body of 10,000 in a population
of 350,000,000 is not very considerable. It might,
however, carry out its policy. Revolutions are
generally the work of minorities, and very small
minorities. JI doubt if the really genuine Whigs
at the time of the British revolution were more
than a small part of the British electorate, and of
course the electorate was a very small part of the
population. The revolutionary party in America
in 1776 was not composed of a majority of the
colonists. In France the Jacobins were a small
and insignificant clique. But all these parties
came to power, and were able to carry out their
policy because they received support in the country.
The mass of the people, though perhaps not very314 THE LOST DOMINION

clearly understanding the policy of the party, and
not altogether approving of what they did under-
stand, nevertheless recognised that these men had
the root of the matter in them.

The Indian reformist was apparently in a com-
manding position. He, or his ally the crypto-
extremist, abounded at the Bar, and had control
of the more respectable part of the Press. He
could speak English well, and was versed in all
the latest political ideas. He therefore could pose
before the British people as the proper spokesman
of India. ‘The Government of India was apparently
ignorant that there were any other Indians. But
what he lacked, and lacking that he lacked all,
was any real and genuine support in the country.
The mass of the people, if they felt anything one
way or the other, felt he was a hybrid, and that
his policy was anti-national. ‘‘If the direct rule
of the British must go, we will not choose as our
leaders men whose only claim to leadership is
that they are half-British in customs, ideas, and
policy. Let us revert to national ideals and
national leaders.” It was this consciousness on
the part of the moderates—namely, that they were
lacking in real support in the country, that, in
fact, they ‘‘could not deliver the goods” under
the contract with the British—which made them
inclined to maintain that the British had not kept
their part of the contract; and to seek support

by coquetting with extremist movements whichTHE DEATH AGONY 315

they knew to be dangerous, and with which they
had no real sympathy. It was not with such
help or such defenders that the city could repulse
the attacks of the hosts of darkness. It was more
probable that one day the garrison would en masse
swear allegiance to the enemy, hang out the rebel-
lious standards on the wall, and fling open the
gates to the victorious besies

on

gers

Meantime, what of the agents rah Great Britain ?
They had loyally accepted the reforms. Many of
them had uneasy suspicions, and some felt that
even tacit approval was in a way a betrayal of
their trust, for it was to them only that the
unpolitical Indian could look for protection and
the preservation of his interests. But there was
really no means by which without insubordination
or disloyalty to the directorate they could openly
express their views. Matters of general policy
were not their business. The statesmen responsible
for the reforms were lavish in praise of the services.
It was pretty openly hinted that loyal support of
the new scheme would meet its due reward. It
was recognised that the reform scheme would lead
to a large increase of the Indian element in the
administration, both in the directorate and the
agency; but there were numerous assurances that
this change would be gradual, and that all vested
interests would therefore be unaffected, and all
responsible parties admitted that it was on the
help and co-operation of the services that the——
~~ ee -

 

 

316 THE LOST DOMINION

success of the reforms must depend. It was laid
down as an axiom that there must always be a
large British element in the administration. Most
of the members of the services actually believed
these representations. This was perhaps convincing
proof that they were not very fitted for new con-
ditions ; for it showed a sad lack of knowledge of
the nature of that crafty animal the politician, and,
what is more surprising, of human nature, and
particularly of Indian human nature.

It soon became obvious that there was no place
for Europeans in the agency under the constitution
as it stood.

Indeed, their existence was obviously incom-
patible with the theory on which the whole scheme
rested. A Kuropean directory and a European
agency ; a Kuropean directory and an Indian agency ;
an Indian directory and an Indian agency ; all these
are logical enough; but an Indian directory and
a European agency was obviously preposterous.
If the Indians are capable of providing the direc-
torate, they must surely be capable of providing
the agents. If they are incapable of properly
performing these minor and less important adminis-
trative functions, how can they be capable of per-
forming the more important and more complicated

directorial functions? The party now in power
was conscious of this. Moreover, it is not in
accordance with human nature to admit inferiority.
It was hardly likely, therefore, that Indians wouldee

THE DEATH AGONY 317

admit that there was any necessity for the employ-
ment of Europeans. Further, it is not usual for
any class of men to see with pleasure emoluments
and power, which might be vested in men of their
own class or in close relations, in the hands of
foreigners. That the Europeans, being ‘“kinless
loons,” were likely to be impartial was no particular
recommendation. ‘That they were not corrupt was
admitted, but there are qualities which are more
valuable than financial purity (which is an austere
and arid virtue). There was a lack of sympathy
(which in the language of the Indian politician
means an absence of weakness) and a consequent
lack of flexibility. Moreover, the crypto-extremist
looked on the European official much as the Syrian
Moslem looked on the Templars or Hospitallers,
‘“We should make short work of the Baldwins and
Amalrics and the Pullani in general if we could
only get rid of these Frankish devils.” The
European official was no doubt employed in India,
and under the orders of the Indian Government ;
but at the time when he entered into his contract
with the Crown of England the Indian Govern-
ment was the delegate and agent of the Crown,
and he regarded himself, not as a mere functionary
of an Oriental Government, but as the representa-
tive of the foreign culture. Such a body of men
might prove a serious obstacle to the ulterior
designs of the party. Such a body were no very
fit agents for an administration which was alreadyer

 

 

 

THE LOST DOMINION

318

becoming tinged with Orientalism. Thus there
was not likely to be much good feeling in exalted
circles towards the Indian services. Moreover, it
was only about fourteen years since the Home
Government, and consequently the Indian Govern-
ment, had decided to ‘‘come down on the side of
the Congress.” Up to that time the Congress had
been in a state of hostility to the Government.
Collisions had occurred, and Government was occa-
sionally forced to use coercion of a mild type. It
was their agents who in the exercise of their
duty had applied this coercion. Many men now
in power, therefore, were men who had trembled
before some Kuropean magistrate or policeman, or
had begged (not in vain) for the pardon or pro-
tection of some European officer.

The Indian has a queer sense of fairness, and
he rarely had any personal grudge against an
individual officer
duty, had punished him or his friends justly and
humanely; but naturally he rather disliked the
system, and was therefore not likely to be very
enthusiastic about the men who worked it.

The Government, therefore, early discovered that
there was no surer way of conciliating public

who, in the exercise of his

opinion, of earning applause, as showing “ real
breadth of view and sound statesmanship,” and
acquiring momentary popularity than by damni-
fying and mortifying its European agents.
Wherever it was possible posts were conferredTHE DEATH AGONY 319

on any Indian available; where the law reserved
certain appointments for the members of the ser-
vices, Government ‘‘accepted in principle” resolu-
tions calling either for the abolition of the posts
or the modification of the law. It was the evident
intention of the legislatures to reduce the services
to bodies of mere functionaries, and badly paid
and ill-treated functionaries at that. It was quite
clear that with the progress of the reforms, and
the consequent complete domination of the legis-
lature over the executive, there would be no place
for the European. Finally, the Government issued
a circular which showed clearly enough that they
intended to put an end to recruitment of Kuropeans
for the Indian services. There was hardly any
need for such a circular, as it was getting very
difficult to obtain recruits in England. The Indian
services had once been attractive enough, and there
had always been a great number of competitors
at the examinations held to fill up the annual
vacancies. But now there were more vacancies
than candidates. The Secretary of State was
obliged to have recourse to the power of nomina-
tion conferred on him as a war measure. ‘There
was at present no lack of demobilised officers who
would accept any post rather than starve.

No officer had any confidence in the directorate.
They believed that it would be only too willing
to sacrifice any officer to earn a little temporary
popularity. And even if the directorate did320 THE LOST DOMINION

support its officers, there was no certainty that it
would be able to protect them. The law, for
instance, directed you to arrest a thief. You
imagined a person to be a thief. You arrested

him. . He

found your action made a state question, and

had friends, and you immediately

resolutions passed in the legislature, in spite of
Government opposition, calling for your dismissal
or prosecution. Or you grievously suspected some
You took

legal process against him, and you found your

influential person of abetting assassins.

action reversed, and your victim petted and
flattered by persons who had much weight in the
Government. In such circumstances the wisest
thing to do is to draw your salary, fill up your
forms, and let things drift, doing nothing without
But this kind of

service is not attractive to able and conscientious

distinct orders in writing,

officers,

Moreover, it was not even lucrative, Except
in the Civil Service, Indian pay had never been
over-generous, and pensions were very inadequate.
And now even the Civil Service was feeling the
pinch. The condition of many officers was deplor-
able. Bankruptcy impended over all, especially
over those who had been criminal enough to

marry, and foolish enough to have children.

Certain increases of pay had been sanctioned to
compensate officers for the rise of the cost of
living between 1860 and 1913.

But as usual inTHE DEATH AGONY a2]

the case of Indian financial concessions, the benefit
was more apparent than real, and of course con-
ditions had changed since 1918. There had been
a great increase in prices since that year. All
departments clamoured for a living wage. To the
members of the purely Indian services great con-
cessions were made. For the Europeans nothing
was done. Allowances on the Whitley model the
Government could not grant, because such allow-
ances, in accordance with a “sympathetic” inter-
pretation of the statute and rules thereunder,
were votable by the legislature, and the legislature
had no intention of voting any such items. To
increase pay would have excited clamour. The
Government, therefore, said, “‘In the abstract, no
doubt, you are entitled to a living wage. We
are not, however, bound to give you more than
we agreed. We shall, therefore, hold you strictly
to the terms of your contract. If you do not like
it, that 1s your affair.”

The younger and more active members of the
services who were not encumbered with family
claims now thought they might, without imputa-
tion of disloyalty, leave the service of a Govern-
ment which apparently did not value their services,
and they applied to be allowed to retire on a pro-
portionate pension. Government at last permitted
this on somewhat shabby terms, but they made it
a condition to their even considering the request
that the officer should make a solemn declaration

x“ jon — eR Fa ti nena

a: itl

 

o22 THE LOST DOMINION

that he considered himself unfit for service under
the new conditions. Having got this admission,

Government would then consider whether his
request to be allowed to retire should be granted.
If they refused it, the position of an officer who
had admitted on paper that he was unfit for
employment would hardly be dignified or agree-
able.

These proceedings of the Government of India
at last revolted the sense of justice never very
long absent from the minds of Englishmen; and
the Home authorities, in spite of the bitter protests
of Indian politicians and the opposition of the
Government of India, decided to intervene, and
resolved on the appointment of a Commission to
go into the whole question.

I do not wish to prejudge the findings of the
Commission. But my belief is that the mainten-
ance of the European element in the services is
If India is to be free

and to have Dominion status, she must be entitled

impossible and undesirable.

to employ her own servants; and she has clearly
indicated that she has no wish for the continuance
To force such on her
would only be exasperating. She could not be
compelled to treat them properly or to support
them. If she finds it necessary to employ
Europeans at all (which is most improbable), let
direct contracts with her future
thus much more likeli-

of a Huropean agency.

her enter into
There is

employees.THE DEATH AGONY d20

hood of her keeping faith, and if faith is broken,
then the shame will not fall on the Crown of
England.

In no long time, therefore, I think that the
programme of Panditji will be fully carried out.
Both the alien directorate and the alien agency
will be things of the past, and all the instruments
of power will be firmly grasped in hands favourable
to him. I do not think myself that he will long
retain power. We have moved a long way from
the days of the Rishis, and the world is to the
master of the legions. But with the future
destinies of India England can have no concern.324

CHAPTER IX.
DISSOLUTION.

Wuar are the lessons of the past? Many, I think,

and trite. Mechanisms wear out. Organisms
carry in themselves the seeds of death. If there
be no faith the will falters, and if the will falter
the workman works in vain. Before the clarions
of the spirit fall the most mighty ramparts. The
British Dominion fell because it was opposed by
a strong faith and an unfaltering though evil will.
To this faith and will the British had nothing to
oppose save tepid preferences and material force.
They could not oppose will to will, faith to faith,
God to God.

But would it had gone down in some great day

Therefore their Dominion passed.

of disastrous battle rather than perished beneath
furtive hands in the darkness of the night and

the dungeon! Better the fate of the Casars of

the East than that of the Caesars of the West.
As for him who perishes in the light of day,

Mortuus

est et sepultus est et descendit ad inferos! The

concerning him there are no doubts.DISSOLUTION 320

King is dead, long live the King! But the
phantom of the prince slain secretly is unquiet
in the tomb. It returns and infects the temples
of the living with the contagion of the grave.
Mighty and malignant are the manes of the dead
Ceesars. Bring out the corpse of Julius into the
forum, and let all men see that it is really dead.
May over this dead Dominion also some Antonius
pronounce the final panegyric. Then, perhaps,
we may have done with lies. For in politics
fictions have their uses, no doubt, but are on the
whole noxious. It may be right to retain and
augment the imperium. It may be right to
abdicate it. It cannot be right while abdicating
the duties to retain the title and attempt to retain
the profits.

These views are unorthodox, and to those who
hold them is attributed the character of die-hard.
This is in modern England among a certain class
a term of opprobrium. ‘I lay no claim to the
title. I should make a very pusillanimous martyr.
To me the stake of Ridley, the block of Campion,
appear extremely unattractive. Honour, constancy,
loyalty, and valour I know are but names. I know
that no wise man would hesitate to commit a
baseness profitable to himself or his party. I
know how ungracious a thing is obduracy, and
how pliancy is the whole duty of man. Lucretia ?
A peevish chit. Cato of Utica? The gods them-

selves have given the whole of mankind to be4, agar ee

 

Se

 

:

s
ae
| ’
?

——-

et i cea ECE

— ani Se a ee

aiieenathiiadiee -

 

326 THE LOST DOMINION

slaves to Cesar. Joan, the good Lorraine? Your
age and sex makes you apt for love. The dungeon
is dark. There is the agony of the fire. Poor
bewildered Tippoo! What has led you to this
last blind and blood-stained breach? Here is
ignominious death. There are palaces and the
peculiar treasure of kings.

That venal publicists should not admire these
men and women is not a matter for surprise. But
that they should go on to add insult is hard to
be borne. But from the beginning it was known
taat prostitutes are also impudent.

But to this conflict I am not called. He who
never lays on His servants a burden more grievous
than they can bear led me early forth from the
dust, and the slaughter of men, and the clash of
arms, and set me in this place of green meadows
and quiet streams. Here the thunder of the
captains and the shouting comes not at all. Here
the crash of empires seems less than the song of
the thrush or the cheerful fireside call of the
cricket.

But what of the future? My object in writing
this treatise is merely to give an account of the
fall of the British Dominion in India, I am not
to recommend or dissuade from a policy. I do
not pretend to be a _ prophet, and _ political
prognostication is a singularly inept form of
prophecy, as any one who will scan the pages of
the Annual Register from its inception will findae : iiihiitl VURAL ATRRERETAAATaTiaatEe
i DRaRURAReaoaa HOE Ee
PSRSASECRSTRSLURALESEE

 

DISSOLUTION 327

it easy to admit. As long as it is regarded
merely as a parlour game, it has its value; but
I have neither time, money, nor spirits to engage
in idle amusement. Still, it may be rather of
interest to put down the opinions of representatives
of various schools of political thought.

To clear the ground it will, I think, be admitted
that the maintenance, or rather re-establishment,
of direct British control over the destinies of India
is now impossible. This vast Empire, with its
three hundred and fifty million inhabitants, must
now continue with ever-increasing momentum to
follow the course on which it has been launched.
Kings who abdicate may be wise or foolish, but
there can be no question as to the folly of a
king who, having abdicated, wishes to resume the
sceptre. For him there remains nothing but the
halter of Maximian or the dungeon of Victor.

The ultimate goal of all organisations 1s
annihilation; but the question is, what develop-
ments will India pass through in the next
century or so, and what will be the consequences
of such developments to the British Empire ?

John Collins, the official optimist, writes as
follows :—

“The grant of full responsible government can
now no longer be delayed. India will be free to
make her own destinies. Protected by the arms
and diplomacy of the Empire, she will haveee te

 

 

 

328 THE LOST DOMINION

nothing to fear from the foreign foe. An equal
partner in the Empire, and no longer a mere
possession, she also will develop that exuberant
loyalty which is the characteristic of the Dominions.
She will require no foreign troops, no foreign
officers, no foreign officials. That is not to say
that she will not be glad to employ certain
experts, but such experts will be her own
servants, and will not be forced on her by aliens,
The foreign culture, no longer thrust on _ her,
will be welcomed. Free institutions will bring
about a passion for democracy, and that love will
in turn confirm free institutions. Both together
must lead to social reform, and in a very few
generations the Indian (except that he is slightly
darker and wears different clothes) will be
indistinguishable from an Englishman.

“The benefits to the Empire will be incalculable.
India will be a vast storehouse of wealth on
which the Empire can draw. Its citizens, who
cannot long be denied those freedoms which are
the right of every Briton, will be welcomed
as Immigrants into the tropical and sub-tropical
parts of the Empire. Kenya, Northern Australia,
Natal, vast areas calling out for settlement and
exploitation, and at present useless to the white
man, will be populated by these new Britons.
With freedom must go a great increase in the pro-
duction of industry. There will be a readjustment

and rearrangement of Imperial industries. Hach! ' ‘i ’ ’ | i aaah ae ‘TT eee ee
a ant j eUaebaaa i eUthaae } Taha
BORRDSSERAAEAL PUTUT TLL EREAERRLETELARELEAEAPORREALTE ER REEREAG ERT EREREOEE

creeper el ~ J 5 | . aa!

DISSOLUTION 329

dominion will devote itself to the manufacture of
such raw products as are natural to its soil. Thus
we may expect the cotton-mills of Bombay to
supply the Empire and the East with all the
apparel it needs. It is unthinkable that a free
and enlightened India should put a_ prohibitive
export duty on cotton and jute, and a prohibitive
import duty on piece goods and gunnies. If
India were so ill-advised, the Imperial Govern-
ment would not act improperly if it remonstrated.
Should India be deaf to such remonstrances, it
would be left to its folly, and a few years
experience of the evils of protection would cause
it to adopt a less reactionary financial policy.

“Tt is unthinkable that India should repudiate
her sterling or contractual obligations ; and here
again, if she did, the Imperial Government might
well remonstrate, or, better still, leave it to time
and experience to teach a great and intelligent
nation that theft 1s poor economy.

‘That any Imperial inconveniences could arise
from the connection of the Empire and a free
India is improbable. India has no dangerous
foreign neighbours. Afghanistan, before a free
India, is negligible. The whole population would
rise as one man to protect hearth and home from
barbarous invaders. Russia is in decrepitude, and
it is thought that the progress of enlightenment
in the great powers of the earth will deter them
from wanton aggression. It is true that there330 THE LOST DOMINION

may be unpleasant incidents in connection with
isolated foreigners, for it is possible that Indian
legislation might bear hardly on certain com-
munities. But foreigners must observe the laws
and respect the prejudicies of the countries where
they happen to be, and in the exercise of her
legal rights India would, if necessary, be supported
by the whole force of the Empire. In serious
cases, no doubt, the League of Nations would
intervene to protect one of its members from
unjust pressure.”

Thus the official optimist, and it is to be hoped
that he is right. The amateur vaticinator can
compare the cases of Haiti, China, Persia, and
Turkey at one extreme, Venezuela and Nicaragua
as a medium, and Japan and the United States
at the farthest extreme. Or he may, if he prefer
it, use the deductive method.

Jan Disselboom, the eminent Afrikander, writes:—

“T do not know much about India and the
Indians, except that there is a certain number
of Indians in this dominion, and that we find
them a nuisance. Whether they are British

citizens or not, we have no intention of allowing
any more to enter our territories. But as regards
the Empire I have this to say. There is no
British Empire, or if there is it is an Empire of
opinion only. We are in no way subjects of
Great Britain. Great Britain is merely a partner
in the concern, and will soon cease to be theaeerAGeaa Teta’ PORE C RE LaRTES.
wae BURataL wea TTTETRREA Rea PTS Ee

23) i | 4 H Fa
ani idla aMignsRN aae eiiedaalaliee i

DISSOLUTION 301

predominant partner. The other partners in the
concern are the Great Dominions. Their bond of
union with each other and with Great Britain is
merely this quod idem sentiunt. It is the
common sentiment and general agreement on
vital points which is natural among men who are
all descended from the same closely allied stocks ;
whose ancestors were exposed to common in-
fluences: whose culture was the same; who had
memories of common struggles, common victories
and defeats: whose institutions in Church and
State had developed from the same common
origins by reason of the same laws of evolution.
[t is this—namely, Western civilization—which is
communs patria. The individual is domiciled
indeed in England or in Africa, or in Canada or
in the Southern lands, but he is for all that a
citizen of a wider and transcendental Empire which
has no local situation.

“Those parts of the Empire which are not
inhabited by races of which this is true were
never partners in the concern. They were the
private property of the predominant partner, and
their revenues and profits were applicable to
partnership purpose.

‘With us the bond of Empire was the consent
of free men. With them the bond was in the last
resort force. They were in theory and practice
subject to the Crown and Parliament of Great
Britain: our subjection is to the Crown alone.

“To attempt to introduce into this partner-

DEMEEV ER PU EP SESE R EP Pee,ee

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ee ae

canto . ~aalmeapeliag

 

CR RAIS Ne eagle ee

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dor THE LOST DOMINION

ship an alien, and thus to expose the whole
concern to risks and losses which it did not
contemplate, and which it is not inclined to bear,
can only lead to the speedy dissolution of the
partnership. You can have the white dominions,
or you can have the Dominion of India, but
you cannot have both.

“To put it shortly, do you think that South
Africa is going to war with France because some
Russian pilgrim has been clubbed to death in
Amritsar ?”

So Jan, and there will be many who will agree
with him. I think it not impossible that even
the British people might say, ‘India is now free.
We cannot therefore control her. She must ouide
her own destinies without interference from us.
That being so, we cannot reasonably be expected
to shed a drop of blood or spend a single guinea
in her defence.”

Professor Athanasius Giggleswick, the eminent
mugwump, writes as follows :—

‘The great and beneficent act of the emanci-
pation of India, known loosely as the Reforms,
seems to me the noblest act of statesmanship
effected since the abandonment of Britain by
Honorius. And it is in some ways more laudable
an act,-because Honorius was in a measure com-

pelled to withdraw the legions, whereas, in the
case of India, the British people made a volun-DISSOLUTION 309

tary act of abdication of a prized but maleficent
superiority. A juster parallel would be the eman-
cipation of the slaves.

“The Indian Empire as it existed before the
Reforms was the negation of God erected into
a system. In the first place, it was an engine by
which one race dominated another. ‘There are
facts that show that India was the happy hunting-
eround of the Jingo and the Financier, and that
the tariffs were manipulated in the interests of
British trade. There are facts also that show that
vast revenues, wrung from the suffering peasantry,
were wasted in providing sinecures for young
Enclishmen of the upper middle-class. But it is
unnecessary to quote facts. By the a prior
method it is easy to demonstrate that if one
race has complete control of another race, the
dominant race will convert the subject race into
Helots and Gibeonites. The British must there-
fore have exploited ruthlessly the subjects of the
Indian Empire.

“And, as may well be expected, the individual
Englishman in India rapidly degenerated from
the low standards which his class in Europe have
adopted. Here again we have facts. We have
the reports of the Reverend Septimius Howler,
whose promising little settlement was broken up
by the tyranny of some petty local official on a
false accusation of illicit distilling; we have the
trenchant articles of that great publicist Sitaram

laee:
i
eee ERC

 

~~ oe

— - ~ OS hy ee ~

 

334 THE LOST DOMINION

Dikshit; we have the personal observation of
Pagett, M.P., on his recent six weeks’ tour in
India. But here again facts are unnecessary.
It may be demonstrated easily and satisfactorily
by the @ priori method that the European, whether
official or unofficial, must have been arrogant,
cruel, rapacious, and lecherous. Individual man
has his passions and is inclined to gratify them
(I myself have occasionally cast an eye of con-
cupiscence on a housemaid). And what check can
there be to the Englishman in India? There is
no public opinion. The people are incapable of
resistance. ‘To appeal for redress from the actions
of an individual Englishman to the Government
or the Courts, is merely to appeal from Czesar to
Cesar. All the engines of power are in the hands
of Englishmen or of renegade Indians.

“The Government of India being autocratic
must have suppressed free speech and free printing.
The cold, hard despotism covers the country like
a sheet of ice. But this sheet occasionally cracks,
and it is then possible to see what an ocean of
misery lies beneath the bright and stainless surface.

‘But even had the Government of India been
all that it and its venal apologists pretended, the
hegemony of the English must still have lain as a
blight on the Indian lands. The Government set
formally before itself as the swmmum bonum of
all Government merely this, to increase material
prosperity. That it did so is denied. WitnessDISSOLUTION 300

the wars, famines, pestilences unknown to former
ages. Witness the ruralisation of a land once pre-
eminently the land of cities. Witness the wenlike
growth of parasitic centres ike Bombay, Karachi,
and Cawnpore. But even had the Government
carried out its much-vaunted programme; had
every man between the Himalayas and Cape
Comorin been really assured in normal times of
food, clothing, and shelter for himself and his
family—what then? Does man live by bread
alone? Is man to sacrifice, for the hopes of a
bit of dry bread, honour and patriotism, the sense
of nationality, the claims of religion? ‘The Indians,
I am informed, are a very spiritual race. Look at
Tagore. They are very religious. Look at their
three hundred and fifty million gods. They were
ereat artists—though perhaps their art does not
appeal to us, soaked as we are in the unideal
Greek tradition. The soul of the nation expressed
itself in magnificent buildings like the pagoda of
Shri Rangam, the caves of Ellora, the T'aj Mahal,
and Sikandar Bagh. They had great warriors
and statesmen when our ancestors were robbing
the nests of seagulls near the mouth of the Elbe,
India was the seat of mighty and civilized Empires
ere ever the Dorians sailed from Naupactus. All
this great, if alien, civilization went down on the
day of Plassey. The first day of servitude takes
from a man half his manliness. What of six
generations? What an agony it must have been336 THE LOST DOMINION

to so great a race to watch the slow wasting of
national ideals; to see its warriors turned into
spiritless husbandmen; its saints and sages die
off without successors; to find a substitute for
temple, mosque, and palace in railway-stations,
docks, and municipal markets; to wear the products
of the mills of Lancashire instead of those of the
looms of Dacca; to study alien codes written
in alien Janguages under the guidance of alien
teachers. Man cannot live by bread alone. Better
would it have been for the inhabitants of Aryavarta
had they perished utterly through domestic faction
than that they should have survived a crushed
and spiritless race, seeking and hoping merely for
the primary requisites of existence—the peck of

 

spelt, the portion of the slave—at the hands of
a cold and austere dominion of foreigners from
the far Outer Seas.

“Tt could not and cannot last, and the Reforms
are the first and a very important step towards
the ultimate goal.

“The three branches of the Upas Tree which
at present blasts with its shadow the nation of
India, and poisons the first tender shoots of all
national endeavours, are Huropean Government,
Kuropean culture, and Huropean finance. The

Reform Scheme will enable the Indian nation in
no short time first to lop, then to fell, and
then to eradicate this evil growth.

“Some think the struggle will be long andDISSOLUTION oT

arduous. There are always worshippers of things
as they are. Man is mistrustful of the teachings
of pure reason. He looks on all change, however
slight, however superficial, with mistrust. Still
more uneasy is he at the prospect of deep-reaching
and organic change. Again, the English are un-
reasonably proud of their Indian Empire. It
oratifies Bert Smith, the elector of Battersea, to
feel that he possesses in his vote the ten-millionth
part of a power which keeps three hundred and
fifty million fellow-men in subjection. Then there
is the party of material interests. There is the
militarist gang at Whitehall; there are the bond-
holders; there is Lancashire and Birmingham and
Dundee; there are the thousands of pensioners
who, not content with robbing the country while
in active service, are now, even in their old age,
battening like elderly vampires on the prostrate
and almost exanimate body of the victim. These
classes, which are numerous and powerful, might,
if they had been organised, easily have crushed
the Reform Scheme before it was passed into law;
and wise was the statesman who moved towards
his end, lke Siegfried towards the chamber of
Chriemhilda, wrapped in a cloak of darkness.
But those classes are now impotent, and the
destiny of India hes in her own hands. Her
total and final emancipation is nearer at hand
than men think. In a very few years the rule
of the British in India will be as much a thing
x339 THE LOST DOMINION

of the past as the Continental Dominion of the
Plantagenets.

“There may be small difficulties at first, but
it is to these very difficulties that I look to furnish
an incentive to India to press forward on the road
which leads to emancipation. The constitution as
at present devised affords numerous opportunities
of friction and deadlock. These difficulties can
only be surmounted by one party giving way.
If it is the Government (which represents the
Alien Domination) which gives way, this means
abdication by that Alien Domination. If, on the
other hand, the Government uses its extraordinary
powers to carry on the administration, it is obvious
that the Reforms are inadequate, and that in order
to secure peace and contentment in India it is
necessary to extend them. Indian patriots have
only to band together and ruthlessly to refuse
all legislation that the bureaucracy demands, and
to veto all supplies, to force the Government into
surrender either voluntary or imposed from home.
It was expected that the political Indians would
co-operate with the British, but what co-operation
is there possible between two races of such different
ideals? J think better of the Indian politician
than to suppose that for a little adulation, a few
high posts, a little dirty patronage, he will conspire
to maintain the loathed dominion of foreigners.

“Both inductively and deductively it may be

shown that, even under the most favourable circum-LEE ESLeeehal

DISSOLUTION 309

stances, there is always friction and the chance
of a deadlock between an irremovable executive
and an irresponsible legislature. Far more difficult
is the position of the executive when the legis-
lature intends and plots to bring about deadlock
after deadlock.

“Tt is to be expected, therefore, that in a much
shorter time than that ostensibly contemplated by
the drafters of the Reform Scheme, the policy of
the political Indian will be put into effect either
by the tacit permission of the Government or,
better, by a Government constituted under a new
and more liberal Reform Scheme, rendered neces-
sary by the discovery that the present scheme 1s
that is to say, by the grant of full

 

unworkable
responsible Government, or of Swaraj, as I prefer
to call it.

“The first thing will be to get rid of the alien,
The foreign bureaucracy must go, and their places
be taken by a permanent band of ardent young
salaried patriots. Already India is losing its
attractiveness to the youth of Britain, These
arrogant young people are not satisfied to be put
under the control of men who are, as they assert,
persons of inferior race. They humorously enough
declare that their fortunes, lives, and honour are
not safe in such hands. Yet they never considered
that the fortunes, lives, and honours of the same
race were in any way imperilled under their own
régime. Is the Indian more likely to be unjust

(REPT U Ee eae aera, i] Ee AE eG! PEP PTH g teat essere eer tas eed_

te

 

 

340 THE LOST DOMINION

to the Briton than the Briton to the Indian?
Obviously not. There is no such a thing as race,
and I personally would as soon black the boots
of a negro from the Gambia as those of a
Scotch Duke.

to whomever rendered.

Honourable service is honourable
Therefore, the number of
recruits for the services is already much dimin-
ished, and many of the new applicants are men
of desperate fortunes, the wastage of the great
war. But the reluctance or willingness of the
youth of Great Britain is really immaterial. India
intends to be mistress in her own house, and will
not employ servants of alien nationality and doubt-
ful loyalty.

‘Still more important is the Indianisation of
the Indian army. Surely the mere collocation of
the words shows the reasonableness of the idea.
It may be the case that there are not many men
of the fighting castes who have sutiicient education
to be appointed officers. But there are many
young men of the literate castes only too anxious
to serve their country in the barrack-room and
If the result of the sub-

stitution of such officers for the present staff is

on the parade-ground.

 

to make the army less efiicient—which by no
means is capable of demonstration, for there is no
such thing as hereditary aptitude—so much the
better. The Government of India will thus be

compelled to be pacific. Its revenues will no

longer be lavished on Jingo expeditions beyond| Fr " ‘ ; we seaet r . fe 7 i iit
SVR GRTUTRT ETAT eae WENTUTT Rae PEP TP STU PIS Ee TAR e eee eeepere nae: ae ; eeeae: rete ’

DISSOLUTION 341

the frontier. As regards foreign invasion, a con-
tented country with a strong national army
cantoned along the line of the Indus or Sutlej,
or, better, the Jumna, can have no fear of mere
raiders, Against calculated aggression by a civil-
ized race India will be protected at first by her
membership of the Empire, but ultimately by
the spread of the democratic idea among the
peoples of the earth and the growing abhorrence
of militarism among all the great powers.

‘With the foreign officials must go also the
foreign culture. India must look back to the
beautiful calm days of the Vedas, and forget what
she has learned from Athens or Rome or London.
The democratic idea is implicit in the humane
intelligence, and may be deduced from the Shastras
as much as from Aristotle. I have never read
either, but I know this to be the case. Be just
to your fellow-man. That is the Law and the
Gospels. From that follows all culture. The rest
is vanity, the rest is crime. With the culture
must go also the foreign language.

“But I hear you say —‘But what about
the educated Indian?’ (Using education in the
arrogant sense of English-knowing.) ‘The reforms
were introduced chiefly in order to placate him,
and were intended to give him the power which
he craved for, and which we thought he ought
to possess. You are fond of the inductive
method. I will give you a few instances. Where. +
——— re .
ee ee UR Rabie nepal iieiow a sisi

oe

ee

a “

es

342 THE LOST DOMINION

are the Hellenised Jews of the days of the
Macedonians? What befell the Hellenism of
Parthia? What the Herodians and Libertines ?
Where is the Hast-Roman culture? Culture which
has no roots in the national existence — culture
which is and remains alien, being never adopted
by the masses and being never absorbed and
transformed by the national vital processes,—such
a culture is rejected as soon as the external
influence which forced it on the nation is removed.
Such a culture is like the gardens of Adonis. It
comes to bright bloom, and produces fruits of
a kind. The next day it withers and is cast
into the sea. Numerous as are the Indians who
have some slight smattering of European culture,
they are few relatively to the masses of the
population. Do you remember the story of Oge
and the grains of pepper and the grains of rice?
Just as the gens-de-couleur succumbed to the
negro, just as Voltaire gave way to Voodoo, so
we may expect in India a rapid reversion to the
indigenous type of culture, and the sudden and
total elimination of those who obstinately cling
to the poisonous doctrines of foreigners. The
educated Indian will have done his part. Just
as Haidar and Ranjit Singh attempted to banish
the foreigner from the shores of India with the
help of arms and tactics taken from those very
foreigners, so the enlightened Indians have,
by the use of political arts learned from theRENUEPTUSESTYULLL SELL LLLLSU ERI EAS UA REWEEUD EEDA TELLUS LUPUS ERED PRP RE LUD EDU REDO EOOP OS COOPER RPE SEES ROR

eee ii : ) ELESSRES EES i
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DISSOLUTION 343

foreigner, succeeded in manceuvring those same

foreigners out of their dominion. And just as
the God-given Government (had it succeeded in
its attempts) would with a sigh of relief have
abandoned the ordered battalion and the flintlock,
and returned to the risala and the lance; so with
a sigh of relief will India fling away text-book
and manual, code and digest, Wordsworth and
Mill, Shakespeare and Burke, and return to the
simple and noble culture of the days of its
creatness. Already the process has begun. None
can mistake the meaning of the demand tor
sectional and national universities, the encourage-

©

ment of Ayurvedic medicine, the continual attacks
on the use of English as the official language
of administration and education, the rise of
the vernaculars, and the—I fear — grotesque
attempt to make Hindi the lingua franca of the
country.

“My own books will of course always be
studied in India. They contain the truth, and
mankind is always anxious to listen to the truth.

“Ags for the incubus of the British financial
system, a Vigorous nation arising from the
drugged sleep of servility will have no difhculty
in throwing it off. The whole gang of parasitic
pensioners must be stripped of their ill-gotten
privileges. The nation recovering its indepen-
dence will not acknowledge as due any payments
for so-called services rendered not to it but toca
4
1

344 THE LOST DOMINION

its tyrants. It is not necessary to resort to
wholesale confiscation, a measure which is ab-
It will be
found sufficient by a due adjustment of taxation,
especially in the form of enhanced taxation of
incomes of absentees, to recover for the country

horrent to the pure-souled democrat.

that part of its revenues which are improperly
and collusively alienated.

“The same process would naturally apply to
that part of the public debt which is held in
England.

national Indian purpose.

This debt was not contracted for any
It represents either the
infamous claims of the East India Company or
the capital spent on lawless wars waged in the
interest of the Jingo autocracy; or even for the
purpose of extending and confirming the reign of
servitude in India herself, or at best the cost of
providing India with railways and docks intended
merely to facilitate the carrying *off of the national
wealth or the depression of national manufactures.
The true democrat, while careful to uphold the
sacred rights of legitimate property, will for that
very reason never admit the legitimacy of claims
based on fraud and violence. Nor will he regard
efflux of time as perfecting a title which is in itself
null, Populo nullum tempus occurrit.

“Thus a great part of the tribute now paid to
England by the Indian peoples will automatically
cease. No longer will the miserable peasant of
the Punjab see himself forced to set aside half of= eee "Ue 4 wil SUPPER ‘ SERTTSET ESTEE 7.
NUVUTUERVTTLLILU EGULLET EP PU EO ee a PRPRPSUSARI GRU seeopaeey rae

DISSOLUTION 345

his exiguous harvest of rice in order to gratify
the greed of some obscure resident of Cheltenham
or Hampstead.

“But politicial freedom is of little avail unless
there be economic freedom. ‘The statesmen of
India are well aware of this, and they by no
means intend to allow the country to become the
economic vassal of the foreigner. By a proper
manipulation of the tariffs, manufactured goods
can be excluded from the country, and raw
materials kept within it. No longer will the
husbandman of Bengal toil in pestilential marshes
in order to provide the Dundee jute-worker with
a wage fund. No longer will the vitiated taste
of the townsman be allowed to prevail. A free
people will be clothed, not in the product of the
looms of Manchester, but in that of the handloom
—in the simple and beautiful Khaddar which
connotes such noble ideals.

“Tt cannot escape the observer that the same
evil might recur in a subtler form. India might
in vain exclude the products of foreign factories,
and retain in her own limits her own valuable
raw products, if at the same time she permitted
the flow of foreign capital into her own territories.
The foreigner would now draw from the blood and
sweat of the Indian artisan working in factories—
situated in India, no doubt, but the property of
foreign shareholders—those profits which in the
form of dividends or debenture interest would be

in '
hiia

a tig pe — — Pe eee

ae i

ar

~

 

 

346

THE LOST DOMINION

Thus

he would again reimpose the foreign tribute to

remitted to the homes of such shareholders.

pay which so much of the wealth of the country
has been wrung from it. But there are several
remedies which may be applied. Such remittal
of profits may be prohibited by the legislature,
or the profits may be exposed to penal taxation.
It is that in with

democratic ideals the operations of joint-stock

thought even accordance
companies, the majority of the shareholders in

But

I would preter to rely on the patriotism of the

which are foreigners, might be prohibited.

people, which would prevent, by a salutary display
of violence, the extension of these foreign methods
of exploitation to a country which has already
That the

local administration or local courts should inter-

suffered from the rapacity of the West.

fere to protect the foreign robber from the wild
justice of the indignant people is unthinkable.
it that the
Government would interfere to protect the private

Kqually unthinkable is Imperial
speculator.

‘Let us raise our eyes from the dust of the
present conflict and fix them on the bright vision
of a renascent India. A vision, moreover, which
is not of remote things, not of the distant realisa-
tion of the dream of the poet or prophet, but a
vision which will descend to the Earth, and take

form and flesh, if not to-day nor to-morrow, yet

in the very near future.”ORT eeee

DISSOLUTION 347

Thus Athanasius, and he has hit off, I think,
very happily what may be called the programme
of the moderate extremist, if that 1s not a con-
tradiction in terms,

But, as I say, political vaticination 1s a mere
parlour game. ‘The statesman, and particularly
the British statesman, does not care to cross
bridges before he comes to them. And in this
he is perhaps wise, for in politics some factor 1s
always overlooked, and that factor may prove the
most important of all. Thus does Fate banter us.
3ut in that case the official optimist would be
well-advised himself to abstain from any forecast
of the future. Let him say frankly, ‘The actual
situation was impossible. According to our lights
we did the best we could. ‘The issue is with
God.”

Without, however, assuming the robe of camel's
hair, the curious citizen might be excused if he
asked just a few questions.

In the first place, is there any guarantee that
India will long remain under one Government,
provided, that 1s, that the coercive power of the
Empire is removed ?

No other power ever succeeded in combining
the races of the sub-continent into one political
unit for more than a moment. No ruler before
Victoria could, without immediate challenge, have
turned loose the white horse. Against geography
the statesman will fight in vain, but there is nothing

wa) itil Ty) ww) SEREELIIL cea eee i va) r f ritail Piet? | ]
UU UURE USTED UTD PERSP PRS Ree RTPA NE PESrRPPeb eee Pereer rons einierene ene POSATULTTaRGRaoeaanaeeeeie - TT WVithily348 THE LOST DOMINION

in the geographical history of India to make this
unity a necessity. The sub-continent has always
suffered from this very thing—namely, that there is
and can be no common centre, no nodal point.

The sub-continent is naturally divisible into four
great areas. I omit minor enclaves. These are
the basin of the Indus, the basin of the Ganges,
the central plateau, and the far South, and these
geographical divisions correspond roughly to
divisions of race, religion, and language. Add
to this that each of these divisions was recently
(as history goes) under separate governments, and
it would appear, a priori, that natural centrifugal
tendencies might triumph; and that the artificial
political entity known as India, in the absence
of a strong, external, compulsive force, might
cease to exist.

In the next place, what will:be the duties of
the Empire as regards the maintenance of internal
order? The Empire does not usually take this
burden on itself in the case of the Dominions.
From the other white Dominions the Imperial
troops were early withdrawn, and the maintenance
of a British garrison in South Africa up to the
beginning of the war was attended with great
inconvenience.  Panditji might welcome the

presence of British troops, and might even be
wuling to contribute to their pay and other
expenses, but the position would, I think, soon
become impossible.PUTPTO ERT UU LLL ATP LD ded PDP RU DMPO ER TD EAUED DERI UPR ESOS APP eabee: SWOT a

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SS a ne

DISSOLUTION 349

The Indian Government would, therefore, be
compelled to make its own arrangements for
maintaining internal order, and for suppressing
frontier raids and meeting the first brunt of an
invasion from the North. It could not, therefore,
rely on a national militia. It must necessarily
keep up an army. What is to be the relation of
this army to other imperial forces ‘

Again, what is to be the composition and
quality of this army, and how 1s it to be con-
trolled? How is it likely to get on with the
civil government? The eagles do not anywhere
accept with much enthusiasm the rule of the
parrots, and in India there must ever be reasons
why the army would mistrust the rule of the
literate Indian.

In a country where intrigue, and the appeal
from order to order, and the playing off of power
against power, has for long been regarded as the
oreat secret of statesmanship it would seem difficult
to keep the army out of politics. An army which
is not kept out of politics is at first the tool,
but soon the master, of the contending factions.
Democracies have short memories, but few have
forgotten the abyss which suddenly yawned before
us in the early months of 1914. A strong well-
disciplined effective army 1s formidable to its
masters, unless the soldier is first and foremost
a citizen. A weak and tumultuous army is formid-

able in another but no less dangerous way. The

HA) Pa HEE A b PETTERS F350 THE LOST DOMINION

circumstances which led to the interference of
Britain in Egyptian affairs are well known.

Cognate with this question is the question of
minorities. It has been recognised that minorities
are, in India, entitled to special protection. How
is that protection to be afforded to them in the
new India? It clearly cannot be. But it is from
these very minorities that the bulk of the army
is recruited, and from which necessarily the bulk
of the corps of officers must be constituted. Will
the soldier in such circumstances always remember
that he is a citizen first and a soldier afterwards ?

Again, and not very remote from this topic is
the question of the Native Chiefs. They are of
very varying castes, races, and religions. Some
of them are negligible enough owing to defects
of character, others are negligible owing to the
smallness of their dominions. But there are many
who are both men of character and of large
resources. What will the relations of these chiefs
be to the Indian Government? Will they long
be content to be vassals?

It is not to the name and shadow of Empire
or the metaphor of the Crown that India can
look for long for the preservation of internal peace.
It is on the character of the rulers, the strength
they possess, and on the assent of the subjects
that here, as elsewhere, a dominion to be stable

must rest as on pillars.
These and other problems will require solution.DISSOLUTION dol

So far I see no recognition even of the fact that
these problems exist.

It is to the future that we must look for such
solution, and it is by the events of the future
that the British Empire must be judged. If that
event turn out well for India and for England, then
we shall be called wise, but if otherwise, cowards.

Perhaps the gods are athirst. Perhaps to us,
our sons, or our grandsons is reserved a great and
curious spectacle. Those who are dead care nothing
for human joys and sorrows, and to the memory
of the great dead history will pay her meed of
praise. To us who have lived to see that all
our labour has come to nought this is given as
a consolation, that it is the God which assigns
the task and the reward of the task. We labour
blindly, not knowing the event. That knowledge
the God has kept to himself, and none can fathom
his purposes. If we have worked well and faith-
fully, then it is well with us.

The God it is who gives and takes away kingdoms.
For us, the wise and the foolish, the coward and
the valiant, the slave and the free man, for empires
and anarchies, there is all one end, the grave and
ultimate oblivion. But praise be to Him, the Living,
the Eternal, who never dies.

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HT HUT eedPrinted in Great Britain by

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