TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT.
IN many respects the discussion we the second reading of the India Bill No. 3, on Thursday night, served to define clearly the actual position taken up by the Legislature upon this question. The two speeches of the night, Lord Stanley's exposition of the bill and Mr. Bright's general dissertation upon the ideal future of India, show clearly enough that the Howe and the country are entering upon a purely speculative course, not legislating for practical and specific ends. Whether the subject matter of the experiment, being as it is so vast and varied a region as India, is one which will bear empirical treatment of the kind proposed, and at the hands of our official and Parliamentary class, is matter of grave doubt and reflection. But the aimlessness, and the ab- sence of specific direction and insight, characterizing all parties, and persons alike, admit of no question. Strictly speaking, the proposed Secretary of State and Council are not so much a ma- chinery for governing India in the last resort, as for discovering experimentally how much of the vague aspiration after Indian improvement, which has been so abundantly expressed during the debates, and out of Parliament, is capable of being realized in action. The foundation of the argument for destroying the Company has been surely not the mere fact of its being a political anomaly, (a ridiculous ground for putting an institution to death,) but really that the Company had not realized in India something of that type of industrial and social progress, which is the idol of English affections at this moment of our history. The Parlia- mentary and public masters of the new Secretary of State and Council will, if active in the exercise of their supreme control, require of their servants definite results in Indian progress, financial, religions, economical, and social, and results that shall bear some affinity to our western standards. We are deeply im- pressed with the uncertainty that hangs over the development of the future of India and England alike ; and do not forget that the ultimate results of action bear almost always little relation to their originating motive. What will come to India from the new English department -which is to control its destinies, is "greatly dark " ; but "the moving why they do it," the lurking purpose in mens' breasts, is in this case perfectly plain. England takes up the great task of regenerating and directing into the track of western developments the huge archaic mass of the Indian population.
Lord Stanley's statement of his Bill shows, in addition to all the other evidence, how experimental is the stage of Indian affairs on which we have entered. After that exposition the House was still unenlightened SW to the actual functions which will be dis- charged by Secretary and Council. General ideas, and phrases of a so ding kind, have throughout this Indian legislation been tuted for specific statements of intention, and the deliberate Lajustraent of means to ends. The "Queen's name," " responsi- bility " "simplicity," have been the key-notes Of this weird Parlisimentary music. But we are by no means certain that safety or utility will result from so vague a course, in reference to so thoroughly practical a question as the future guidance of the Indian Empire. Everything is to be open to inquiry. Lord Stanley promises a commission to consider, here in England, as we understand, the whole subject of military reorganization, and the Governor-General is to appoint another in India for the in- vestigation of the whole financial state. These measures, coupled with the radical revolution proposed in the English branch of ad- ministration at this moment, are calculated, it seems to us, to pro- duce the maximum of feverish and excited anticipation in the Hindoo's mind. According to the theory on which we are act- ing, we are forging at home an executive and legislative weapon =ear Secretary and Council, of unsurpassed force and keenness, and about to reorganize the councils in the Presidencies in the same sense, while we open the whole field of Indian action to Inquiry; and propose to build up a series of measures, military, financial, and administrative, which have for their scope no- thing less than radical reform and reconstruction in all these de- partments of the Empire. And all this is done at a time when English parties are in a state of complete dissolution, and when the accident of any hour may operate a complete change in all the distribution of Parliamentary influences and powers. All this is to be carried out by a Ministry, which is cautiously bit by bit Piecing together a majority in Parliament, and whose existence is perilously balanced between Toryism and Democratic progress of the ultra type. We will not venture to say what issues may spring from so strange and fantastic a combination of agencies and purposes. But it is not possible for us to close our eyes to the fact that all the ordinary characteristics of English action are being utterly reversed in reference to this Indian question. We are pledging ourselves to the maximum of performance, ap- parently with the minimum of means and insight. Truly there is a Divine purpose by which the foolish are sometimes allowed to confound the wise ; but it is scarcely applicable to those who de- liberately take up what seems to sober men to be foolishness. We cannot but contrast this liberal drawing upon the future, this cool calculation of indefinite opportunities for experimenting upon the organization of our services and administrations in In- ch., and upon the legislative future of the country, with the feel- izgs that are working in the minds of the Jacobs and Lawrences, It is no secret that the greatest among the military statesmen of India believe that the pure and simple necessity of self-defence is the one great paramount and exclusive need of the present time in India. The enormous Sikh levies are viewed by them with extreme doubt and distrust. And the north-western fron- tier, which is at present overawed by the single great name of Jacob, is not in a condition, according to the greatest authorities on the subject, to bear the shock of any attack. It is still thought that a Russian regiment and a few Russian staff-officers might work us irretrievable mischief. Everything that lies be- tween the last point reached by Russia in the Central Asiatic districts, and our frontier, is in a state but doubtfully to be relied on. Indeed, those who are best entitled to be heard on the sub- ject consider those districts as a mine of explosive materials, against which the empire is inadequately protected. This im- portant question of defence of the empire has been sedulously post- poned to the consideration of the great idealisms which have floated about in men's minds for the last twelve months. Every- thing may turn out well eventually no doubt. But certainly that is not the kind of course which usually commands success. We should have had far greater confidence in the future of India if, instead of entering upon this " dim and perilous" way of revolution and experiment, a Jacob or a Lawrence had been appointed to a temporary dictatorship, for the simple purpose of putting out the fire, and reconstructing the native military systems. This would have been a course adapted to the needs of the time. This would have had a better promise than the vast schemes, of which the present legislation is avowedly the provisional initiative.
There can be no doubt of this after Lord Stanley's declaration of Thursday night, that he regarded the present bill as a com-
mencement of legislation, and the programme unfolded by Mr. Bright, immediately after, in a masterly speech, which it is impos- sible not to admire, and equally impossible not to think unstates- manlike, from the very magnitude of its views. The House of Commons is not an arena for the mere expression of eloquent high-souled aspiration after good. We sympathize with these expressions more deeply than we care to say now. But even more important for the world's needs than the enthusiasm of philan- thropy, is a certain sobriety and self-control even in these ardent desires for the good of our fellow-creatures. We appre- ciate the indignation with which the story of our Indian. taxation, the aggressiveness of our past Indian history, and the chronic derangement of Indian finance, is recounted by the brilliant ex-Corn-law agitator. But our doubt is, whether the impression produced on men's minds by arraying all these evils in so largely imposing a manner is not rather that of an ac- quiescence in things too vast in their derangement for cure or reform. All forms of setting the world, or so important a fraction of it as India, to rights once for all, are of very doubtful value or practicability in our eyes. Sound statesmanship, differing therein from those spiritual departments of human activity, whose sub- jects may be dealt with more comprehensively and radically, loves especially to limit its field of action, and, to that end in some measure even its field of view. Was there no conscioas- ness in Mr. Bright's mind as he delivered his fine oration on the ideal future of India, of a ludicrous contrast between these sub- limities, and the little bit of work left undone at home which is being visited upon our statesmen in sickness, and distracting the faculties of those who still remain well, by the haunting shadow of disease ? Really we think that in the order of events, of logic, and locality, the purification of the Thames belongs to the Execu- tive and Legislature of England, before the radical reconstruc- tion of the Indian empire. Is it not enough to make us the laughing-stock of the whole world to see how our specula- tive Indian legislation is giving place, in the real anxie- ties of senators, to the intolerable misery of Thames stench ?
There is a time for all things under the sun. And surely a man might well have said last February- to the House of Commons,
"You are taking up a subject which will lest the whole session, but, long before that session is over, you will have half your facul- ties absorbed in terrified anxiety about the open sewer that runs under your windows." He would have been met by the laughter of the House, but he would have said a simple and wise thing,. throwing more light perhaps upon the practical duties of the- House, even with reference to India, than half the speeches that have been uttered upon the question. For, indeed, we may say of Parliaments, what we say of men, that if they shrink from the performance of the plain, first, unmistakeable duties that lie close to their hand, it is but little likely that they will prove adequate to the realization of vast schemes, or the manifestation of exalted virtues.
The second reading of Bill No. 3 was understood on all sides to be nothing more in reality than the affirmance, in a more solemn shape than had been yet done, of the principle of the aboli- tion of the Company, and the assumption of the Government by the Crown. Committee is to have unlimited power over the details of clauses, and both principle and details have to be worked through the House of Lords, who, according to existing appear- ances, cannot well be in possession of the Bill for some days to come. What course that House may take upon the subject, under the malignant influence of the consensus of parties which has paralyzed the action of the wise minority upon the ques-
tion, is uncertain. But nobody can doubt that, if rt simply register the Bill of the Commons by a formal assent, and virtually surren- der its deliberative rights, it will inflict upon itself a far heavier blow than it could possibly do by any form of direct surrender on the Jewish question. Under the insidious guidance, to which the Tory party is committed, it will thus have been led to place the great Conservative body of the State in a humiliating position, which will go far to diminish its prestige, and its weight in the party of resistance, the healthy state of which is one of the great- est guarantees of sound progress in a state. We are deeply con- vinced that the exhibition of anarchy and half despairing sceptic- ism, which the House of Commons has exhibited on this subject, willlead to political results in the immediate future of the country. It is impossible not to see that that House has become seriously discredited by its developments of this session. We wait with considerable anxiety to see whether the House of Lords, that great Conservative body, whose valuable function in the State is to stop action when it is precipitate or premature, will prove to be imbued with the prevalent fatalism, that has hurried on the Commons to an unguessed future of Indian administration. Per- haps in the whole history of the world there never was a finer opportunity for true Conservative action given to a senate. The Lords have the olportunity afforded them this session of exhibit- ing themselves in two different aspects, on the Indian question and the Jewish question, by which they may variously prove their value in the legislative machinery of the state. In the one case by wisely yielding, in the other by wisely resisting or modi- fying the excess of a legislation, which has been carried on from the first in want of faith, they may take up a strong ground of moral authority, for which the country will be grateful. It is quite certain that if they hurry the India Bill through their House without ample deliberation, without affording to all who object to its principle or details ample time for enforcing their views, they will assume a fearful responsibility. Every mischief or calamity that arises under the new India regime will be closely connected in men's minds with the fact that the House of Lords, which is supposed to exist as a conservative and prudential in- fluence in the state, recklessly inaugurated that regime to give a triumph to a Tory Ministry. It is dangerous for the Peers to play with such an edge tool as revolution, though it be revolution decorously accomplished under the forms of legislation, and merely upon the dusky insignificant millions, for whom England proposes to be hereafter a Providence on earth.
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