16 JANUARY 1886, Page 10

THE NEW "ASIATIC QUARTERLY." T HERE is one side of the

British connection with Asia which, whenever it is brought into notice, excites in the experienced observer a sort of tranquil despair, the kind of feeling with which we regard any evil that ought to be remedied, yet for which no remedy can be so much as hoped for. Great Britain is not only the greatest civilised Power in Asia, but in many important ways is the greatest Power there of any kind. The Russian Government rules over an enormous slice of the continent, a territory, indeed, which in mere size is as a con- nected possession quite matchless, but which is so unproductive that it has never paid its way within four millions a year, which contains, it is believed, less than eight millions of people, and which derives its importance in the world's eyes less from anything belonging to itself than from the fact that it approaches the really mighty Empire of India, and actually touches the still mightier Empire of China. If India and China did not exist, Russia in Asia would be forgotten like the interior of Brazil. England not only rules directly two hundred and fifty millions of Asiatics in India, but she presses with increasing weight on that little-understood division of Asia which we call for no palpable reason "Indo-China ;" she is gradually acquiring an ascendancy in the councils of Pekin, which may end in a permanent alliance, and affect half the human race for ages ; she divides only with the German the great com- merce of Asia, and that not on equal terms ; she furnishes everywhere, except in Turkey, all capital required for all enter- prises; and she possesses or settles in all the ports of commercial or military importance. East of Suez, the only European language useful to the trader is the English, and there are not a thousand tons of coal procurable without a bargain with their English owners. So great are her activity, her prestige, and her com- merce, that there seems to the traveller in Southern Asia nothing anywhere that has life but England ; while her future, so far as human intelligence may discover, is even more assured. Far to the South, as yet hardly noticed, the reversionary lord of South Asia, still a child, is rising day by day towards his energetic youth, and already looks instinctively to the North as the scene of his ultimate career. When his time of conquest comes, as hitherto it has come to every people which has grown strong, it is in Asia that the Aus- tralian will seek subjects ; and the Australian is an English- man modified only by circumstances and climate. This won- derful position, far greater in reality than we can hope to convey to our readers, depends upon the action of the British democracy ; and to inform that democracy, to acquaint it at all thoroughly with the facts with which it has to deal, is all but hopeless. Indeed, if we are to speak the full truth, it is hopeless. The circumstances of Asia are so different from those of Europe, the people are so far removed in creeds, in habits, in morals, in ideas as to the objects of life, in relations to each other, and in those antique hereditary predispositions which we foolishly sum up in the word "colour," that comprehension, difficult to the culti- vated, is to the uncultivated simply impossible. No one in the world—we appeal to every experienced Anglo-Asiatic, whatever his line of thought—is so hopelessly ignorant of Asia as the uneducated European who earns his living there ; and the know- ledge he cannot acquire upon the spot cannot be given to the masses at home. The single hope is to inform the influential few, and the difficulty even of that task is scarcely to be believed. The only instrument is writing, and those who write, partly by their own fault—for Anglo-Asiatics are, of all authors and orators, the most tedious, missing, as they always do, the points of interest to their audiences—fail to attract the attention of any but a few, till even the broadest facts, the mere bones of the political being, remain unknown. There is a writer in the Echo, for example, who is resisting the conquest of Burmah with an independence of thought which, though we disagree with him, we heartily respect. He applies abstract principles forcibly enough, but he is continually fettered by an ignorance which makes him irritating even to those who do not resent his main proposition, —that the conquest of Burmah is very like a big dacoity. One of his arguments, the breach of promise to the Indian Princes, shows him unaware of, or indifferent to, the fact that Burmah, though it suits us to govern it from India, is no more an Indian State than Denmark is a German one ; that there is no relation, and never has been any, between the Indo-Chinese and the Indian peoples ; that the Burmese belong to another world than India, of other creed, other habits, other language, other modes of thought ; that no Indian Prince ever so much as thought of the Alompra dynasty as an Indian dynasty, or felt himself affected even remotely by its fate, any more than the King of Bavaria would think himself threatened by a German overthrow of Hol- land or Denmark. When facts of that kind are missed, what hope is there that questions of legislation, of finance, of native military organisation, of beneficial reforms or dangerous reforms, should be even approximately understood They are not understood. Even the influential and the cultivated do not care about Asiatic facts, and rely either on "the Government" to do right, perhaps the best reliance, or on the few experts whom they personally know, and who are rarely agreed. The proposition may be denied ; but if it were not so, how could it happen that there is but one journal in England with a regular Asiatic correspondence—not very well done, though usually accurate as to official facts—that there is not one large paper specially devoted to Asiatic discussions ; and that an enterprise like the new Asiatic Quarterly just started, under the editorship of Mr. D. Bonlger, should be con- sidered a somewhat risky, though interesting experiment?

We hope heartily it will succeed, though we are doubtful, fearing the days of new quarterlies are over, for it can perform some valuable functions. We do not see how it is to influence current opinion much. Events move too fast, the tele- graph is too ubiquitous, the concentration of power in Par- liament is too complete, for a Quarterly to affect public decisions much, more especially as, by what strikes us as an error of judgment that should, if possible, be corrected, it will usually issue but one number while Parliament is sitting. It will be nearly impossible to secure exhaustive articles upon burning questions, a task, indeed, which almost overweights the Quarterlies which deal principally with European affairs. Three months is now, even in Asia, a long space of time in politics,—Burmah, for example, having been threatened, invaded, conquered, and annexed in less than

that period. But there is a work of informing which may be fully done—which is done, for example, in this issue, as regards the relations of China with Burmah—which may prove of the highest value, and may even, if the editor and his staff do not shrink from painful labour, attract an unexpectedly large audience. The subject of the day in Asia should be written of exhaustively from the point of view that most of the audience know nothing, and that the remainder are glad to have such knowledge as they possess made accurate and new. The writer who, in an article on France, gives in a note her area and population, is presumably a prig, and certainly an officious man ; but the writer on Tonquin who does not give those facts, mistakes the first conditions of the demand made upon him by English readers. He must, as to his special topic, supersede the necessity for books of reference. Then there is a work of explana- tion, which can be done persistently till the readers come to understand a long-continued policy, a permanent difficulty, or a person entrusted with great powers. There is an example of the kind in this number. Of the few Englishmen who attended to the subject of the restitution of the Gwalior Fort to Scindiah, a majority thought simply that "Lord Dafferin would know," but a section considered the act necessarily unwise, as increasing the power of a native chief, and a few believed that the Viceroy was seeking popularity. Sir Lepel Griffin opens the Asiatic Quarterly, however, with a lucid account of the whole transaction, upon which our solitary criticism will be that it is much too short, and the affair is at once seen in its true light. We doubt if any Member of Parliament who has read that most interesting essay will ask a question about the Gwalior Fort, or doubt for a moment that its restitution was the act of a clear-sighted politician, who understood that in retaining it we were creating hatred without any adequate compensation, and, indeed, as compared with the new arrangement, without any compensation at all. The power of issuing such a paper as that is most valuable, for it enables Englishmen to understand not only the special matter—which, though interesting, was not of first-class importance—but the senti- ments of at least one native Prince, and the ideas upon which the present Viceroy is governing. The more the Indian authori- ties encourage such papers, the better, even when they are critical in spirit ; and there is no need of too much criticism. The dread of want.of independence need not worry Mr. Boulger, for in Asia the first object of political literature must be and ought to be to explain what those who give final orders— officials, or Princes, or peoples—are really at. That known, all is usually known ; and even when all is not, so much is, that the materials for judgment are usually on view. We should, for example, say that the paper by " Shway Zoe" on "The Chinese Brave" was, on the whole, far too favourable to the French in Tonquin, the writer under-estimating the force their Generals wasted, and not making his details upon that point sufficient ; but no one can read it without feeling that, allowing for a certain perceptible amount of " European " prejudice, he has dis- tinctly gained in knowledge of the strength and the weakness of the Chinese Army,—a subject just now of the last importance.