BOOKS.
SIR C. WOOD'S ADMINISTRATION OF INDIA.* THE Anglo-Indians will open this volume with the hope of finding in it some contributions to secret history, and will be sadly dis- appointed. Sir Charles Wood might have published it while still Secretary for India without any obvious breach of official etiquette, and the masses of private correspondence to which Mr. Algernon West has had access have apparently taught him very little. So far as we know, the volume contains but one original contribution to history, and even of that we are a little doubtful, as the same statement may well have escaped us amidst the scores of memo- randa published on Indian Contract Law. Still the book is a valuable one. Much is omitted which will one day, we hope, be made public, as, for example, the share of the Royal Family in the "amalgamation ;" the true reasons for abolishing Lord Dalhousie's Legislative Council, the semgest legislating body ever created in India; and the internal history of Sir Charles Wood's administra- tion of Indian Railways, a point upon which Mr. West tells us nothing ; but whatever is given is absolutely authentic, is clearly written, and is stripped to the very utmost of unnecessary detail, stripped indeed to a somewhat wearisome bareness, and the whole will, we imagine, considerably increase the reputation of Sir Charles Wood. It makes three points at all events clear—that the things he had to do were very great things indeed, that whether right or wrong he always had a distinct plan for doing them, and that his plans almost invariably, he himself would probably say invariably, proved successful. He had, for example, during his seven years reign as Great Mogul, from 1859 to 1866, to carry out at least four considerable enterprises—to remedy a permanent deficit, or, we should say, a deficit which promised to be per- manent, of eleven millions, equal to more than one-quarter of the entire Indian Revenue ; to organize a new Home Government ; to substitute an Imperial for a local army ; and to reorganize the internal machinery of the local administration. To have done these things at all shows power, and to have done them creditably very great power, and " creditably " is a word which, as regards most of them, is too feeble to express the actual result. For example, Sir Charles Wood really did choke that enormous deficit, did make the insolvent Empire solvent. Of course the immediate credit is due to Mr. James Wilson, and that very remarkable person Colonel Balfour, whom Sir Charles Wood never properly rewarded ; but the Secretary of State directly or indirectly chose both, and gave to each support and impetus. He had very little help either. East Indians are not financiers, and Sir Charles Wood was probably the only person in the entire Department who saw clearly that the Mutinies had given England a financial opportunity, that the ideas of the Company about taxation were timid and unsound, and that it would be better to give up India than to endure a permanent deficit, which sooner or later Great Britain must supply. The reductions, detested as they were by Army and Bureaucracy alike, were very bold ; the imposition of an income-tax, detested by the natives, was bolder still ; and the increase in the salt duties, hated by English philanthropists, was perhaps for a Parliamentary Minister the boldest of all. Sir Charles Wood faced all the conse- quent clamour, like a shrewd bold man of business as he was, carried all his points, and killed the deficit. We do not think he made a single financial blunder, for the ineffi- cient working of the income-tax was no more his fault than was its repeal. He disallowed the latter, and the former was the result of the fixed hostility of all classes, including the bureaucracy, through whom alone he could act. Moreover, he performed this great task without oppressing the mass of the people, who felt none of his new taxes except the increase in salt, and did not mind that, and without exciting any serious popular discontent, the rich, who really suffered under the income-tax, having been conciliated by their confidence in his protection against the settlers. Mr. West might have expanded this portion of his narrative with advantage, for the work was at least as great as that which made the reputation of Sir Robert Peel, and was accomplished, too, by a man who, like Sir Robert, had a positive horror of taxation for its own sake. It must in 1864 have tasked a strong and sober mind to resist the temptation of taxing the people to pay off the Mutiny debt, perhaps the heaviest of all English external respon- sibilities, but Sir Charles Wood resolutely prohibited further imposts, shied, so to speak, at the most tempting of all, the tax on tobacco, which, if it does not produce a general massacre, will pay for the next great struggle.
" Sir C. Wood's Administration of India. By Algernon West. London : Smith and Elder.
Then came the Home Government. Mr. West says Sir Charles Wood reorganized the India House after the extinction of the Company, which is true, and reorganized it admirably, which is very questionable. We cannot make out from Mr. West's state- ment that he did anything very wonderful, beyond restoring the Secretary's initiative :—
" Sir Charles Wood at once discerned this very serious defect in the mode of business, and took immediate steps to remedy it by assuming to himself the initiatory power, and placing the office, as had been intended, on the usual footing of that of a Secretary of Slate, his Council taking their proper position as his advisers. He divided the Council into six committees, of five members each, every member being on two committees, the chairman being selected by the Secretary of State. The drafts of the despatches were prepared, as before, by the secretary of the department, and when seen by one of the under-secretaries, were submitted to the Secretary of State, who, after making such alterations as he thought fit, referred them to one of the committees. The draft, as considered and amended, if necessary, by the committee, was returned to the Secretary of State, and by him sent to. Council in such shape as he might determine for final consideration and decision."
Our own impression is very decided that the old mode devised by Lord Stanley, or rather inherited by him from the Board of Control, was very much j alter and more practical. The Council then treated every question not urgent as it arrived, and sent up their pro- ceedings to the Secretary of State, as the Directors formerly did to the Board of Control, who read them or did not read them, as he might please, and issued his final orders, with which the Council could not interfere. Having all responsibility, he had thus all ultimate power. The two schemes, however, represent two different policies, and the new one, though it deprives the Government of force, rapidity, and any benefit to be derived from a Minister of original genius, at least prevents gross mistakes. We only wish Mr. West had added to this chapter an account of the mode in which the Secretary of State overrides the Council when absolutely necessary. They have a legislative authority in matters of finance, yet as a matter of fact he constantly sanctions or orders consider- able financial acts by telegraph, the telegrams, moreover, being very promptly prepared. It is admitted also, if we understand Mr. West, that the new plan has the drawback of providing no place for the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, that is, no means of education for future Great Moguls. He is reduced to a mere Member of Council, with no special functions at all, yet on him falls the task of defending the Department in one House or the other.
On Sir Charles Wood's administration of the Army Mr. West is singularly reticent and unsatisfactory. He says, what no doubt is true, that the amalgamation was mainly produced by the White Mutiny, but he does not state why he considers this a sufficient reason for so vast a change, why, that is, the mutiny of Com- pany's troops rendered the mutiny of Queen's troops probable, merely affirming that the reorganization was matter of Imperial rather than local concern. Nor does he explain why the Com- pany's officers thus thrown out of enploy were not at once offered half-pay, merely observing that "this had not hitherto been the practice of the Indian Government," which is no argument at all, least of all one in the mouth of so original a Minister as Sir Charles Wood is represented to be. The truth is, we imagine, that Sir Charles was overruled ; but then he should say so, Mid not claim credit for a vast innovation which he did not approve, and which, to all appearance, has not succeeded, which as a local measure has made the Indian Army the most discontented service in the world, and as an Imperial measure threatens to break up the Queen's Army by rendering recruiting impossible. Sir Charles Wood may make a perfect defence for his treatment of the old officers, but he has still to explain why he, as an experienced statesman, did not perceive that ten years in fifteen of tropical
duty would ultimately render soldiering the most unpopular of trades.
On the fourth great question, which of all others involved most closely Sir Charles's reputation in India, his Private Secretary's defence seems to us complete. It is, too, curiously good as a lite- rary feat. Nobody who has not been wearied for years with the controversy can comprehend the difficulty, rising almost to impos- sibility, of stating the subject of the dispute on the Contract Law in a succinct form. Mr. West—or is it his chief ?—has faced the difficulty boldly, and we do not remember in a considerable ex- perience of official documents ever to have seen so admirable a model of statement as the chapter headed, "Indigo and Contract Law and Rent" It needs but one paragraph, giving the Planters' apology for their system, to be absolutely perfect, and it contains the single contribution to history we have discovered in the volume. So far as we know, the whole of the extraordinary in- formation contained in this paragraph will be new to Indian readers, at least if it is not, we cannot comprehend the continu- ance of the discussion. How any human being can believe that a system of cultivation which produced such a result, among such a people, was substantially just, is explicable only on the theory that the worthiest men—and at least half of the planters of Bengal may be so described—cannot be trusted to judge any system sanc- tioned at once by interest and tradition :—
" In the autumn of 1860 things were indeed critical. assure you,' said Lord Canning, 'that for about a week it caused me more anxiety than I have had since the days of Delhi,' and Lord Canning was not a male who was easily made anxious. Sir John Peter Grant., the Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, had just returned from an excursion to the works on the Dacca Railway. During his journey, which was entirely unexpected, up the river Jamoonah, numerous crowds of ryots appeared at various places, whose whole prayer was that they should not cultivate indigo. On his return, two days afterwards, from Serajgange, by the rivers. Koerner and Kalligunga, which run south of the Ganges, both banks of the river for a whole day's voyage (70 or 80 miles) were lined by thou- sands of people, the men running by the steamer, the women sitting by the water's edge, the inhabitants of each village taking up the running. in succession, and crying to him for justice, but all respectful and. orderly. The organization and capacity,' said the Lieutenant-Gover- nor, for combined and simultaneous action in the cause, which this remarkable demonstration over so large an extent of country proved, ara subjects worthy of much consideration." From that day,' wrote Lord. Canning, I felt that a shot fired in anger or fear by one foolish planter- might put every factory in Lower Bengal in flames."
We must add that so far was Sir Charles Wood from cottier pre- judices, that he leaned decidedly to the aide of the talookdars of Oude, and almost ordered Sir John Lawrence to retrace his steps in that province, telling him that "he was confident he would see the propriety of taking especial care, without sacrificing the just rights of others, to maintain the talookdars of Oude in that posi- tion of consideration and dignity which Lord Canning's Govern- ment contemplated conferring upon them." Upon the whole, the effect of Mr. West's work will, we think, be to deepen and justify the public impression that Sir Charles Wood was a singularly clear- headed minister, who never did himself justice in Parliament, who. never made a blunder in matters of business, who had an extra- ordinary capacity for detail, but who was deficient alike in sym- pathy and imagination,—in the sympathy which enables great ministers to feel the evils they are asked to redress, in the imagina- tion which calls up before them the future as well as the past of provinces, races, and organizations which they never saw.
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