THE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE TREASURY AND INDIA.
THE agitation against the Government on account of its decision, that when India lends troops for the reconquest of the Soudan she ought to pay their usual expenses, which has affected both parties and reduced the normal majority of the party in power by one-half, is thoroughly creditable both to the House of Commons and to the British people. It shows that they are sensitively alive to their responsibility for the great subject Empire, that they will not endure even an appearance of oppressing Indians for voters' gain, and that in their judgment in all doubtful transactions between the countries the interest of the subordinate Power should be preferred to that of the ruling one, lest perchance the former should be even accidentally ill- treated. That is a good spirit, and one which we welcome as evidence that in ruling their vast possessions the democracy of to-day at least intends to base its authority upon the principles upcn which it acts within its own direct dominion. It disclaims absolutely any right to pillage derived from conquest, or colour, or superiority of civilisation. Nevertheless, though we welcome heartily that evidence of good feeling, we cannot but think that in this instance it is misplaced. It is absurd, in the first place, though it is very natural considering English instincts in all money matters except grants to the throne, to taunt the Government with want of generosity. It is not its business to be generous with taxpayers' money, but to be just. If it owes, as we heartily acknowledge it does owe, an obligation to the taxpayers of India, it owes at least an equal obligation to the taxpayers of Great Britain, for whom it is directly trustee. It is almost equally absurd to say that India is always in the matter of contributions unfairly treated. It is not. There is, we believe, one excessively difficult and complex matter of account between the Empires—the maintenance of the depots of regiments serving in India—in which the Indian Treasury is un- fairly overruled ; but in the main the Protecting Power, judged by all historic precedents, is even splendidly dis- interested. India ought to pay two millions a, year towards the maintenance of the Imperial Fleet, and she does pay £100,000. Without the protection of that Fleet she would be exposed to incessant invasion, would on the coast be the prey of the worst pirates in the world,. Chinese, Malay, Arab, and Mugh, and would lose more than half the trade which is gradually making of her the grand silver depOt of the world. With that trade, with, her necessity for safe communication with the outer world, and with her immensely long coast-line, it would cost an independent Emperor at least three millions a year to keep up a sufficient fleet, and India now pays just a thirtieth of that sum. The Great Mogul, it is true, did without that expenditure ; but then he did without the trade too, and his coasts were ravaged for centuries by every variety of Asiatic and even European pirate, the Portuguese, for instance, on one occasion reducing a. province into a depopulated desert by cutting the dykes. Then, alone among the great Empires of the world, India pays nothing towards the grandeur or the com- fort of its Monarch. The Civil List of the Great Mogul, the expenditure of the Court as a Court and not as a governing body, certainly exceeded a million a year, and that is exclusive of the huge bribes paid to favourites and Ministers, and in bad reigns even to the Emperor, to obtain appointments in which pillage soon recouped the Satraps for their outlay. There may be points—in our judgment there are points—in which the British supremacy is injurious instead of beneficial to India, but most certainly fiscal oppression is not one of them. The demand that she should pay for her troops when employed in the Soudan must therefore be con- sidered by itself, and so considered it is by no means an unjust one. We think we can make this clear by an argument which, though substantially the same as that used by Lord George Hamilton in the debate of Monday, is some- what different in form, and may be more appreciable by the majority of our readers. Granting that a Great Mogul, an independent Emperor of India, absolutely needed free communication for his people and for his commerce with the Mediterranean—and this datum is conceded on all bands—what would be his permanent attitude towards Egypt ? Clearly one of intense solicitude for her safety as against any enemy who might close the route, or threaten the persons or the trade to whom and to which freedom of traffic was so vital. He would take Egypt himself if he could, so as to make the road his own, but if he could not, he would ally himself with Egypt, would defend her against all in- vaders, would strike at any enemy of hers within striking distance, would if she were seriously menaced send a corps d'armie of his own to her aid. He would know, even better than the British Government knows, that for his Indian objects no enemy to Egypt could be half so for- midable as the Dervishes, for no other enemy would tear up commerce by the roots, no other enemy would fail to keep faith as to the freedom of the route, and any other enemy would hesitate to destroy his own prosperity by monstrous and incessantly repeated exactions upon merchandise in transit. Europe remits silver, for instance, wholesale to India, and no one can even think of a Dervish "Government protecting that silver in its passage. The :Great Mogul would know, as Mr. Morley does not, that the warriors of the desert overmatch the tamed Arabs of .the Delta, that distance is nothing to riding tribes, and that the Soudanese, if resisted by Egypt alone, would in- fallibly conquer its people and destroy its civilisation. The Great Mogul, therefore, would be delighted with the hence of a blow at the Dervishes, would lend the aid of troops to his Egyptian ally, and would, if he knew geography, level his blow either from Massowah or Suakin. We take that policy, the condition being granted, to be almost self-evident, and we believe that the method of paying the troops is equally matter of not uncertain calculation. The Great Mogul would ask irod for them from his ally ; he would ask the means transport within the invaded territory; and he would -claim to be reimbursed for any special expenses, but the regular pay and expenses of his men he would provide himself. He would say, and say truly, that they were employed on his own work, on business essential to the -revenue of his kingdom, and that therefore, even if he could, not spare them, and had to replace them by fresh levies, their cost would continue to be a just charge upon his Treasury. If that statement is true, and we cannot conceive where the answer to it can be, the Secretary for India has acted exactly as an independent and far-seeing Emperor of India would have acted, and what can he do ji ore ? He has no right to make Mungul Dees a present the expense of John Smith, merely to earn from the unthinking credit for generosity. But, we shall be told, if the argument is as clear as you say, why is the Government of India unanimous in rejecting it ? The Government of India never considers the argument at all, but acts in reality upon impulses of its own. It holds, to begin with, very properly that, in the absence of representative institutions, its business is to defend India from paying anything or anybody it can possibly avoid, that if it does not represent that side nobody will represent it, and that when the claimant is the British Government its own dignity requires it to fight hard. It is, moreover, dreadfully afraid of pre- cedents. It might be called on, it thinks, by the British democracy, which it profoundly distrusts, to help in paying for the conquest of half Africa, and it had better resist at first and "establish the principle" while the demand is small. It has a bitter recollection of having on previous occasions had to pay very heavy bille,especially a monstrous one in 1882, and it is by no means confident that the home Ministry will always be disinterested. And above all it feels almost as bitterly as if it were independent that it has no substantial control over the policy for which it has to provide both men and money. The Government of India is obedient to a degree which the historian of the future will consider almost miraculous. Not only does it never threaten to set up for itself, as Colonial Governments have often in practice done, but it never resists an order, however much opposed to its own ideas of expediency or fairness, yielding even, as the free Colonies never do, upon questions like the tariff. It has not, for all that, the precise feeling of a subordinate Government. It is too big, has too large resources at its disposal, is responsible for too large a section of the human race. It frets under a peremptory order disposing without its own consent of its men and its money, and as it has no other mode of remonstrance, is very apt indeed, especially in fiscal matters, to condemn an order as unjust when, if it had been consulted, it would probably have allowed that the Imperial Govern- ment was well advised. We doubt if the Indian Government is quite as bitter as its language would imply ; but if it ill, what can the Imperial Government do ? Is it to suffer it to be laid down as a principle that if it ever asks for the temporary use of Indian troops the Indian Government is to be the sole and exclusive judge of whether the use of those troops will or will not benefit India? That is the present pretension of the Indian Government, and prejudiced as we are in its favour, we cannot but think the pretension too dangerous to Imperial interests to be allowed. At all events, even if Simla ought to govern Downing Street and not Downing Street Simla, the pretension is fatal to that which Mr. Morley and his friends most respect in this world,—the sovereign authority throughout the Empire of the House of Commons.
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