LORD BEACONSFIELD IN INDIA. T HE creation of a new Imperial
Order of the Crown of India restricted to women might be passed over as a rather foolish " fad " with which it pleases a popular Sovereign to amuse herself, just as one passes over a friend's mania for blue china or smoke-coloured carpets, but that it is symptomatic of a policy which is both bad and dangerous, the policy of turning govern- ment in India into a melodrama. Lord Beaconsfield has never ceased to be "the wondrous boy who wrote ' Ahoy,'" the semi- poetic romance which his admirers have agreed to forget, and which most Englishmen despise, but which seems to men who know Asia as full of his special genius as it is of second-rate pantomimic effects. His imagination is not excited by England the "weary Titan," or England the "workshop of the world," or even England the "mother of nations," but by England the Empress in Asia, a stage Empress in a scenic Asia, and one of his objects is to make that position as visible to the world as to himself. It was for this that he advised her Majesty to declare herself Empress of India, and persisted in that advice, in the teeth of the sarcastic disapproval of all true Englishmen. It is for this that he now advises her Majesty, contrary to the tacit understanding arrived at in Parliament, to sign commis- sions "R. and I.,"" Regina et Imperatrix ;" and for this that he approves Or suggests those huge pageants in India which con- trast so grotesquely with the sober or painful realities of the hour there, with an embarrassed Treasury and heavier taxation, and the official recognition of a cycle of famine. It is for this that he is making of the Anglo-Indians a sort of decorated caste, till if the present system goes on, the wearer of a star or a man with a handle to his name will be considered pre- sumptively, in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary, to have lived in India. Not content with the Order of the Star of India, which was just getting old enough and full enough to be respected, he advises her Majesty to create a new one, with the mouth-filling designation of "The Order of the Empire," and to distribute its honours by fifties at a time, besides making them the ex officio right of members of the Vice- roy's Council, and it is this which has induced him to recommend the decree of Saturday, creating an Order for Women, which is hopelessly at variance with every Indian tradition, and un- less we mistake her people altogether, with 'many of their deepest sentiments of honour. A Queen Regnant may exist in India, and when she exists she is practically released from the duty of seclusion, which is overridden by the higher duty of governing well; but the pride of an Indian Prince is that his women should remain hidden, should never be mentioned, should never be paraded before the public in any way whatever. Lord Beaconsfield has disregarded this feeling, has gazetted in London the names of the highest Indian ladies, and has recommended the creation of an Order the effect of which is positively grotesque, which includes the Princesses, some of the great ladies of the Court, Mussulman and Hindoo ladies, whom a considerate Indian editor would not so much as name in his paper, however honorifically, for fear of the pain he would give, and who are protected by a custom as strong as law from even appearing as witnesses ; and a number of ladies who happen to be the wives of men who are 'administering Indian provinces, not one of whom has, we be- lieve, any other special claim on India than that she has done the Empire the honour of residing in it. The distinction refused to Florence Nightingale—for whom, though not by whom, it was asked—and never suggested for women like Mary Carpenter, is granted wholesale to the members of a caste which has not of necessity done anything except live, the caste meaning of the grant being accentuated by the careful exclusion of every distinguished soldier's name. The wives of Indian Civil Administrators are for no reason, except that they reside tem- porarily in Asia, distinguished, so far as the Court can do it, above all the scores of English ladies of equal rank and the hundreds who have done greater service to the kingdom and mankind.
We do not object, if the Queen pleases by this multiplica- tion of Orders and decorations to throw away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the Crown ; but we do object very strongly to the assumption which pervades all these ceremonial displays,—that the Indian dependency is the main object of the care of the Crown, that there is a second pivot of Imperial interest in Calcutta, that the policy of Great Britain is to be regulated not by solicitude for the welfare of Indians, but with a primary view to their interest and glorifi- cation. That is the tone which the Court, under Lord Beacons- field's counsel, is setting, and it is a tone which, for a hundred reasons, is most impolitic and injurious. It is a tone which every day makes some fresh statesman ask himself whether, after all, it is so good that India and England should be fettered together, whether the burden is not equal to the gain, whether Imperialism may not before long infect our domestic politics, whether the freedom of England's policy may not in the end be hampered by a Court view of India's necessities. It is no light thing and no pleasant thing for Englishmen to be told every day that they must not do what they think right or wise, or even profitable, because if they do "forty millions of their Muissuhnan subjects" will punish their policy and avenge their own betrayed and insulted Khalif. It is no light thing and no pleasant thing to feel that the first object of existence just now with this great and historic State is to be sure that no one shall sink a boat in an Egyptian ditch, and that she must stake her future on a war to prevent a few Cossacks from crossing Mesopotamia, lest the Princes whom we have defeated at any odds and in a century of battle should avail them- selves of Cossack aid to give themselves new and far more ex- acting masters. And it is no light and no pleasant thing to see, though that is comparatively a trifle, that service to the kingdom is thought nothing of in comparison with service to its dependency ; that the men who, by endless toil and patience and self-sacrifice make our Departments work, the soldiers who command our regiments, the sailors responsible for our huge new floating fortresses, are nobodies in the eye of the dispensers of honour, compared with the men who govern and sometimes misgovern Indian Provinces, and who for that work are paid double the highest allowances granted to the Ministers of the Crown. If that kind of thing goes on, if every other consideration is sacrificed to an imaginary necessity of conciliating Indians, who can only be conciliated by justice and rectitude, this worst of all consequences will ensue,—that Englishmen, instead of being proud of India, will weary of her, will regard her with disfavour as a rival to England, and will silently wish that the inevitable day when separation must take place should not be too long postponed. No kind of feeling, not even neglect, could be so injurious to India as that, and no state of opinion be imagined so likely to lead to a catastrophe. The first condition of our sway in India—a sway which we believe to be beneficial to Britain, to India, and to the whole world—is that the vast sacrifice it entails—a sacrifice which may be measured by the single fact that India is the one insuperable difficulty in the way of a conscription — should be made with willingness, without jealousy, with a sense of pride, and not with a sense of humiliation. The Tories are fond of saying that one Liberal exclaimed, "Pe rish, India!" though he said nothing of the ' sort ; but it is Lord Beaconsfield who, if he pursues the melo- dramatic policy which alone seems to have charms for his imagination, will cause Englishmen to think that the sentence was not so outrageous as they deemed. As to the effect of all this fanfaronnade in India itself, we are too bewildered to offer an opinion. We might as well judge a picture by lime-light, or declare a cathedral nave lofty or low when lighted by a display of sixpenny rockets and twopenny roman candles. We have been accustomed to think that among the requisites for good government in India was silence ; that she was best administered by toil-worn men in black to whom a Star seemed a far-off reward, and a life of successful labour well paid by obscure competence at home ; that her Princes were dangerous nobles, tolerated because her people wished it ; that her Government should be of all Governments in the world the most efficient, the most modest, and the least distracted by the empty ambitions which disturb Courts. Warren Hastings, who built the Civil Administration, never received a decoration ; Lord William Bentinck, who re- dressed native wrongs, would have smiled with serene Dutch contempt at the notion of being rewarded by a tawdry decora- tion for his wife—true, his race was as old as Holland, and had helped to liberate England, so tinsel did not impress him, — and Lord Dalhousie, who gave his Sovereign eight kingdoms, would not, to have won a ninth, have exhibited himself upon a painted elephant with Englishwomen as part of an Oriental pageant ; but they were not the servants of a novelist. We have been accustomed to think that our duty to India was our duty to her labouring millions, and not to her mushroom Princes—there is only one conspicuous Prince out of Rajpootana who is not new — that their acquiescence, secured by justice and honesty, was our first guarantee—except, indeed, the sword, whose wielders it is now etiquette to pass over silently—and this new India, this land of fireworks, and processions, and spangles, and Princes with stars, and Viceroys with dreamily poetic speeches, is to us so unknown that we hesitate even to hold, much less to pronounce, an opinion. Perhaps it is all well. Perhaps India should be governed by comedians, with parts sketched out for them by an Oriental novelist, and hear her fate from time to time in rhythmical periods, pronounced while a grand trans- parency goes up and decorated figurantes dance applause ; but if so, the world is a feebler place and a worse place than the most pessimistic philosopher has as yet ventured to imagine. And if so, India does not require the services of English states- men. Let us hand it over at once to those to whom it belongs, —to Boucicault, and Burnand, and Beverley, and the heir of Telbin's brush.
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