BOOKS.
KAYE'S ADMINISTRATION OF THE EAST INDIA
C OM PA N Y.* WHATEVER difficulty the poet may find in fulfilling the canon of servetur ad imum quails ab incepto," it is continually carried out in classes and in nations. As is the origin so is the course and the end. Philosophy or religion may change individuals' but masses act upon the primordial laws of their being from first to last. The principles of antagonism and exclusiveness, that produced the emulation and patriotism of the old Romans, quickly degene- rated into factious licence and an oligarchical corruption, which after destroying the Republic pervaded and finally dissolved the Empire. The successive civil wars and revolutions of France are distinguished by similar features. To contemporary eyes the East India Company stands in a much lower category than the nations we have mentioned, though it will loom larger than at present in the eyes of posterity ; but the vices of its trading origin have stuck to it throughout. Territorially ambitious it has never been, still less grim and bloody; though indifferent enough to human life, if death came in the way of business—as a rise in the rice crop. In a certain easy philanthropy, such as figures at May meetings and calls for nothing but what people can read- ily spare, the Company has never been deficient. The able men who have served it as despatch-writers have often given to the utterances of the Directors the appearance of a philosophic liberal- ism. But the Company has ever been prone to that kind of job- bing which smacks of commercial corruption ; they have ever wanted the high spirit which is supposed to characterize the gen- tleman, and that feeling of keeping up the outward appearance of justice which accompanies the man who is occupied in large af- fairs. They persecuted Clive, from the moment the founder of their empire rebuked them, by declaring that they could not write becomingly either as "masters to servants or gentlemen to gen- tlemen,' till they assisted to hunt him to death. They publicly affronted Wellesley, and so far as in them lay they injured him by depreciating his government and depriving him of its rewards; they provoked Wellington to indorse the conclusion of Clive ; they treated Ellenborough with unexampled "decision," and on two occasions they drove Napier from their service. But they sup- ported Hastings through thick and thin—with, no doubt, the pro- bable if not the actual excuse that he had preserved their empire. They clung to the lesser brood of adventurers, distinguished for nothing but shameless audacity and unscrupulous corruption—the Benfields and. Rumbolds, who oppressed India for a whole genera- tion, and served the comic writers for as long a time ; and they did it with that quiet pertinacity which distinguishes a nest of parish jobbers, too obscure to fear exposure and too deadened to feel shame. Sheridan's picture—" wielding a truncheon with one hand and picking a pocket with the other "—was exaggerated at least as regarded the baton ; the Company had nothing of the field-marshal about them—that only belonged to particular officers. In fact, and it is their failing, they never could rise to the level of their fortune, but carried into the possession of an empire the spirit of "the firm" or the city "ward," and as rulers of the empire of Au- rwigzebe looked chiefly at the "dividend."
It may be said that the evils which characterized the Company's Anglo-Indian management from 1755 to 1782-93 exist no longer. For this change we have to thank Parliament and public opin- ion, roused by Burke and his followers. In certain points of view the absolute powers of the Board of Control and the Governor- General have possibly worked ill, but they have raised the higher branches of the Indian service. Yet even if the Company had continued unchanged, the proteges of the Directors, or their crea- tors the stockholders would no more have displayed the open ra- pacity of the last century than they would appear in powder, pig- tails, and knee-breeches. Modes have changed; the spirit never- theless may remain the same.
This, we suspect, is the case with the East India Directors and their constituents, subject of course to the control of circum- stances. As a body, the holders of East India stock belong to the monied or rather the moneymaking class ; which is perhaps the least worthy class of British society. They are highly respectable in the sense of the ancient Pharisee or the modern admirers of whatever tyrant can manage to get uppermost. They have a great liking for peace, or rather a great dislike to a war which comes "home to their business." They yield to no one in a love for vir- tue which costs them nothing, and are indifferent to vice which yields a profit, especially if the vice is out of sight. The voters for East India Directors have the least responsibility attaching to them of any class of men who exercise this kind of power. The want of conscience in corporate bodies has long been proverbial : yet corporate authorities are few in number, and their members marked men in their own circle ' • they wear gowns-' they bear titles ; they have opponents to remind them they are mortaL The members of a profession have their cloth to feel for ; even the constituents of a town have local habitation and a name. But the holders of East India stock are social atoms, collected to ballot, and segregated again without identification or responsibility. Yet it is to be suspected that the instinct of a clear if not an enlightened self- interest enables them to work together for their own profit quite as effectually as the closest corporation of old.
To adduce historical examples of their characteristics, it would
• The Administration of the East India Company : a History of Indian Progress. By John William Kaye, Author of " The History of the War in Afghanistan." Published by Bentley.
be necessary to run over their history; but every reader must re- member how constantly they have clung to patronage and the spirit of clique. Governors and courts-martial have dismissed officers, and the Company has reinstated them, when the King of Great Britain for less offences placed his own sons under the ban of per- petual exclusion. Almost every great and lofty-minded servant they have ever had has had to complain of them. That they have displayed considerable liberality in connexion with literature is true ; but the credit, if not belonging to individual directors, is due to the Court rather than to the constituency. The abolition of "suttee," on which much has been said, rather illustrates their character : the barbarous self-devotion of the rite was one with which the stockholders could have no sympathy. Equal promo- tion to offices, without reference to race, creed, or colour, forced on the Company by Parliament, was quite another thing : that touched their pockets, and was not practical,—as the Directors wrote to the authorities when commenting on the clause.
The usual defence of anomalies has not been wanting to the Company. The system of patronage is said to have worked well: and in the absence of all information it no doubt seemed to do so. The higher order of officers, in reality nominated by the Imperial Government, may have been men of varied character and ability, but they have all been men of spirit, and above the imputation of sordid jobbery, though Lord Auckland was perhaps not exempt from an amiable influence and favouritism. The presence of the Commander-in-chief and the Queen's Army, though it might be oc- casionally mischievous in an administrative sense from the want of local knowledge, somewhat raised and purified the Anglo-Indian atmosphere. But this was mostly felt at the Presidencies and among the higher branches of the service. Of the inferior servants and of the remoter stations we knew nothing beyond their pane- gyrics of themselves, till the time of Ellenborough and Napier — whose investigations, by the by, procured their dismissal; and till the renewal of the Company's charter, coupled with rapid inter- communication, and probably the unbearable nature of the evil it- self, directed attention to the subject. The result, -so far as inquiry has gone, is what might be it priori predicted. A body of men drawn from one class of society, and that a class in which profit rather than duty, much less public spirit, is the animating principle—appointed by a corrupt under- standing—imperfectly trained to their duties—launched at a very early age among a people of lax morality, without the restraint of public opinion—and with hardly any society in a metropolitan sense—could scarcely be otherwise than what late revelations show them to be : low in their pleasures and pursuits suspected of a direct pecuniary corruption in a manner exploded at home ; im- perfectly fitted for their duties, or imperfectly discharging such duties as they might readily acquire ; and exhibiting glimpses of a licentious morality which rather resembles the practice of other ages or foreign countries than the nineteenth century in England. The question of Indian patronage is one of the most important and difficult questions of the day. It is impossible for the Minis- try to have more power over the government of India than they have at present, or to be better covered from responsibility. Any
i change n the mode of ruling will probably be an improvement, at least as regards publicity and responsibility. The patronage is still the difficulty it was felt in the time of Fox and North. To raise the character of candidates by raising the examination-quali- fication is an obvious mode. The transference of some portion of the patronage to Government would be an advantage. There would be more responsibility in its disposal, and another if not a better class of society would be introduced into India. To give such patronage as they were allowed to retain, collectively to the Directors, instead of portioning it out among individual mem- bers as if it were a property belonging to them, might, if they pleased, remove their present strong personal pressure, as well as enable them to provide for the sons of men who had a public claim upon the Company but no private interest. Beyond this, col- lective nomination does not seem likely to operate ; and whe- ther it had even this operation, would solely depend upon the Directors. Any alteration in the constituency has this difficulty— it must be arbitrary, not natural. The stockholders seem to be the only persons who have a natural claim to vote for the Direotors, since they alone formed. the Company. The difference, no doubt, is very great between the original trading body, even when Clive had given them Bengal, and the present nominal administrators of the whole of India from beyond the Indus to the Indian Ocean; but it is difficult to impart their qualification to other classes or bodies, unless it were to Parliament : for the active members of the services are in India ; the retired members, if not actually stockholders, are of the same class. And the question arises, whether for the advantage which springs from good intentions in adminis- trative details, and from introducing occasionally into the Todian service a class of the community which might otherwise not get access to it, it is worth while to maintain Company, Directors, and the fiction of double government, with its incessant delays on everz question except those large matters which are altogether removed from it. Rationally, we suspect that it is not; and as the whole power is lodged with the Government at present, the responsibility both of power and of patronage should be placed in the hands of the Queen's Ministers.
The subject of Mr. Kaye's book would naturally seem to have some relation to this question, for "the administration of the East India Company" is very closely connected with the body that creates the Directors, the officers they appoint, and the manner in which they administer the affairs of India. The reader, however,
will find little assistance on the patronage question in this volume. The topic is rather avoided, and when touched upon only serves as a ground of panegyric and a reason for opposing any change. The book is a general account of government in India under the native rulers and the Company, in which it is not difficult to strike a balance in favour of the Court of Directors as regards the security of life and property ; a sketch of the history of the Company as marked by their successive charters, which is by no means new to those who take any interest in the subject; an account of " thug- gee " and its suppression, which has been before the public some years in books and periodicals, and a view of the public works and reclamation of savages, of which scattered notices already exist, and of which the most important, the Mairwara district, is known by Colonel Dixon's volume. Besides these things, there is a -very useful exposition of the revenue system and financial con- dition of India; clear, and full enough for the character of the vo- lume. There is also an account of native education in India, not very new or philosophical ; and a review of the story of the at- tempts made at converting the natives to Christianity. In a literary point of view the book is distinguished by a work- manlike cleverness in writing, somewhat disfigured by too obvious a rhetoric. The treatment seems to have been planned on a wrong principle. It is proper to infuse life into everything of which the originals have lived—as society, justice, and commerce. More mathematical subjects—as systems of revenue and the state of the finances—can hardly be endowed with life, though they may with interest ; and this is best attained by perfect clearness and a prac- tical application. Smart digression imparts little either of life or in- terest to a subject, whether it be living or abstract. There is too much of digression in the Administration of the East India ann- pany, which diverts rather than attracts. Still worse, it has an air of partisanship, as if the writer were an advocate of the Com- pany.
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