TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GOVERNMENT AND INDIAN FINANCE.
AIR. STANHOPE'S speech of Thursday, on Indian Finance, was very adroit, and except in one foolish dig at Mr. Fawcett for writing alarmist essays, was very conciliatory • but we scarcely think its burden entitled to the praise which Mr. Gladstone seemed, at the first blush, half-disposed to accord.
The Under-Secretary announced, no doubt, that the Govern- ment recognised the dangerous position of Indian finance, and would reduce expenditure by two millions in public works, and one million in certain civil charges which, to Anglo- Indian minds at least, are most indistinctly described,—the exchange of European for Native agency being always a slow pro- cess,—but he expressly stated that the loss by exchange could not be averted, and " must be manfully faced ;" that no reductions whatever could be promised in the British Army in India, the real source of expense ; and that he must take power to borrow £5,000,000 here, in addition to the £4,500,000 just borrowed on the other side. In other words, Mr. Stan- hope confessed that the reductions were hopelessly inade- quate • and that, if borrowing were stopped, India could not pay the interest on her debt,—for that is the real meaning of his statement, if the military and civil expenditure admit of no reduction. They are the first charges on every State—the Debt countingonly second—and if they must be kept up on their exist- ing scale, there is not money remaining sufficient for the interest to which the national faith is pledged. That is the substance of the official statement, naturally as pleasant as possible, and that is the permanent danger of the Government of India, or rather of the Government of this country, for though we should not admit that if we lost India England would be bound to pay Indian debts, England certainly is bound to pay them as long as the country remains under the absolute control of a depart- ment of the State. Whether the deficit is caused by famines or loss on exchanges, or wars, does not, from this point of view, matter much. The point to be remembered is, that whatever the cause, the reductions are insufficient to make the Indian Empire solvent. Famines will recur, and so will wars, while civil expenditure is sure to increase with civilisation ; so that till India can stop borrowing, and pay her way from year to year, she is—the admitted inability to impose new taxes being remembered—neither solvent nor safe.
We hope to have more to say on this subject, when we notice the completed debate, but to-day our object is to point out the inconsistency between the expressed hopes of the India Office and the avowed policy of the Imperial Government. The Office hopes for a financial equilibrium, which cannot be attained with- out reductions of military expenditure, and at the same time the Imperial Government enter into engagements by which that expenditure will be inevitably increased. The slow negotiations with Yakoob Khan are still proceeding, and that unlucky Prince is still kicking hard—for that is the meaning of the accusations already levelled against him at Lahore ; but it is officially announced that " bases " of an agreement have been found, and unofficially known that these bases include the cession of the " scientific frontier," the establishment of a Resident in Cabul itself, and the transfer of the control of the foreign policy of Afghanistan to the British Government. Afghanistan, in fact, becomes one of the protected and guaranteed States of British India. Now, what will that cost ? We do not hesitate to say that within the next ten years it will cost us an average of £3,000,000 a year, or £30,000,000 in all. In the first place, we have the garrisons of the Passes as far as Pisheen, the Peiwar, and Lundi Kotel to maintain in such strength that they shall not be attacked ; to guard their communications—in two of the three cases over 200 miles of the wildest and most dangerous country ;—to pay the enormous cost of transport to points more distant from our railways than Ulundi is from Natal, and in a worse region • to bridle all Hill tribes which show any disposition to attack ; and to keep up the reserves which these duties will render it necessary to collect. This work must be done for ever, even if we do not attempt the control of all the Hill tribes, and we speak on far better authority than our own when we say that it cannot be done for less than a carefully restricted outlay of £1,500,000 a year. There will be no revenue to receive on the other side, for the rocks and valleys annexed will scarcely pay their civil ad- ministrators, and no large reductions possible, except by in- curring the great expense of building long State Railways, which any Afreedee with a crowbar can interrupt, through non-commercial and thinly populated mountains, five hundred miles from a port. This expense, moreover, is that of the "scientific frontier" only, and is wholly independent of the enormous extension which Government has given to that programme by accepting the cruel responsibility for tho Ameer of Afghanistan's foreign policy. This means. that we are to control the complicated relations of the half- barbarous Mussulman Court of Cabul with Russia, with Persia,, with the Khanates, and with the Chinese ; that we are' to guarantee it against these foes ; that we are to assist it against all foreign intriguers who may stir up rebel- lion ; that we are to collect information for it ; that we are to assist in strengthening Herat and the northern Passes of Afghanistan against all enemies; and that we are to guarantee and protect the Barukhzye dynasty in its possession of a plateau the size of Germany, filled with warlike clans, and rougher than the Isle of Skye. That last obligation may not be expressed in words, but it follows of neces- sity. No ingenuity will enable us to maintain a foreign policy for Afghanistan, if the dynasty is to be upset whenever any of the four clans in the capital chooses. to be tired of it; or Teheran tells the Kuzzilbashes to. assault the Palace, or the Turcomans send messages of defi- ance, or the Ghilzais declare that their imprescriptible right to kill anybody they choose is being interfered with. Yakoob Khan is our vassal, and we must protect our vassal if we rule his policy. It is true we do all these things on another vast plateau, the half-unknown country, half as large as France, which dominates South India, and` is known in maps as "The Nizam's Dominion," but that is surrounded by our territories, is accessible from a dozen sides, and even then, if a Hyder Ali appeared to claim its throne, would be the most dangerous State within the Imperial limits. To accomplish our task in Afghanistan successfully, we must have ten thousand Europeans always ready ; whenever Russia wishes to distract us, she can by a hint to the Khans, or to the Turcoman tribes, or to the Mussulman fanatics of Afghanistan itself, compel us to double the number. We must always be ready for a Central Asian war. Wet have, in fact, accepted the Protectorate of a new Empire outside India, bounded by Russia, Persia, Central Asia, and China, and should find the Protectorate of Mexico less- embarrassing. If we set down our outlay under this head— outlay to be incurred in fits and starts whenever there is- trouble in Eastern Europe—at an average of £1,500,000a year, we under-rate the truth. We have, in fact, taken up two new obligations, each of which will absorb a sum equal to the- whole of our Famine taxation, and together as much as Mr. Stanhope even promises to save.
We do not wish to-day to complicate the argument by any evi- dence that this expense is useless, and even frivolous. Let, us for a moment accept the wildest theories of the wildest. Jingo, and agree that the new Protectorate is a magni- ficent addition to the glories of a reign to be hereafter known in English history as the " Victorian Era." And still we ask the British people whether for such a prize they are content, to pay such a price,—to see all improvement stopped in India,. to accede to constant demands on the British Treasury, to find the costliest military system in the world incessantly breaking down. Why—God help us all for a nation of fools !—here is an African savage at war with us, and the Government is com- pelled to send 25,000 men, half its available Army, to South Africa; and at the moment we send them, we accept the external rule of a country three times as big as our own, buried away in the depths of the mountain backbone of Asia, and we do not add five thousand men to her Majesty's Army It is positive madness. It is as if Aurelian, to avoid war with Parthia, had accepted the duty of governing and garrisoning the Arabian peninsula. And to do it we are to reject such a prize as Egypt, to feel ourselves powerless in Constantinople, to break our half-formed Army to pieces by over-work in Asia and Africa, and to meet a cycle of almost unparalleled depression by an expenditure which this year, calculating-in all postponed bills, can scarcely be less than a hundred millions. We know well it is vain to argue until some catastrophe startles the country into common sense, or until the more moderate Members of the Cabinet shrink from their present course, but if this is not "govern- ment by blind-man's buff," government by adienture in- stead of policy, government by hot-heads instead of statesmen, what is the teaching of history worth ?
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