THE BRITISH PEOPLE AND THE DARK RACES. T HE great error
of the British people in their dealings with the dark races under their control is that they expect gratitude from them, and when it is refused, as, for reasons stated below, it always will be, are apt to grow unreasonably angry. That the work done for them is great and beneficial, especially in Egypt, where the sceptre fell to a hand that fitted it, is past all question, and furnishes the sufficient justification for depriving so large a section of humanity of their otherwise complete claim to independence and self-government. Although it is true that we have in most of the dark regions commenced our work with the intention of securing gain, we have almost everywhere shown an intention and a power of rising to a higher level of motive. Though not quite the first white race to abolish slavery, we were the first to make a great sacrifice in order to be rid of that " combination of all crimes." In most of our dark dependencies we have established personal liberty, and in India, which is in- comparably our greatest possession, we have solved the problem of reconciling such liberty with absolute govern- ment by entrusting administration to a picked caste which has nothing to gain either from oppression or from the employment of masses of labour. If all India were a goldfield, no civilian would be the richer. We maintain everywhere the Paz Britannica, which secures to every man the full enjoyment of life and property, neither of which when we assumed the sceptre was safe for a single day. We distribute justice, which if in civil affairs slow and cumbrous, is in criminal affairs rapid and efficient, and are heartily pleased if under our rule any class becomes wealthy and comparatively enlightened. We desire and promote the education of all, and though in pursuit of that great end we have made many blunders, some of them very serious, we have never shrunk from the task from any consideration of the effect of enlightenment on the submissiveness of our subjects. We are estab- lishing everywhere a respect for law as distinguished from personal will, sometimes with the rather absurd effect of making great populations incurably litigious. We have learned how to abstain from interfering with inferior creeds, and yet to ameliorate their operation whenever they are opposed to the inherent conscience. While in com- munities which otherwise would be exposed to sanguinary anarchy we perform such eminent service we cannot, we think, be held to be wicked for putting down rebellion. All we are morally bound to do is to be as lenient as possible in the circumstances, to abstain from "cruel and unusual punishments," to prevent rebellion by such a visible exhibition of force and preparedness as shall make insurrection seem hopeless to sensible men, and to administer so firmly and consistently that resistance to the law suggests itself as little as resistance to the opera- tions of Nature. Nobody rages at rain even if it destroys his crop.
Nevertheless, though we hold it perfectly just to maintain the right of ruling when it has once fallen into our hands, we hold it most unjust to hate our dark subjects because of their occasional explosions of dis- content. They purchase our services, the greatness of which we fully admit, at a very heavy price. In the first place, they lose independence, which all of them value, and many of them, if Mohammedans, think belongs to them by a direct revelation of God. It is idle to talk about "fanaticism." There can be no doubt that Mohammed meant his converts to rule those who rejected his mission, and in asserting by force that they will rule all outside their own creed they are but obeying one of the first precepts of their religion. As a matter of fact, Christians have precisely the same idea, though it is not formulated in the same way ; and as a consequence no organised Christian people anywhere in the world consents peaceably to be governed by non-Christian rulers. In the second place, the dark peoples lose the disposal of the national fortune, and the upper class, who would share in that fortune if the white man were away, cannot be expected to approve a manage- ment which debars them from its control and enjoyment. Again, we are compelled to put an end to the exercise of power in the forms which all the dark races appreciate, and in most cases to terminate all careers except money- making and the practice of the law, more especially those careers which lead to thrones, or to those military exploits which to the dark as to the white imagination seem so noble and attractive. As has been said frequently before, we triple the security, but destroy the interestingness, of the dark man's life. Often he reasons, being usually a man with an imagination, that he has lost more than he has gained, and rises in insurrection—if he sees a chance— in order to re-establish his own scheme of endurable life. We are compelled to put him down, or give up the task which seems to have been imposed upon us by a Will higher than our own ; but this is no justification for the hatred which, in words at all events, we are occasionally too ready to express. We quite admit that the dark man, through an incurable vice in his nature which sometimes makes government easier, when in insurrection often gives intolerable provocation. He is inherently so afraid of the superior ability of the ruling caste that he thinks his only chance of independence is to kill it out, and includes women and children in his sentence of proscription. So did the " Barbarians," the ancestors of the great European races who swept over the Roman Empire, often leaving behind them solitude, and always making slaves, which the modern dark races of humanity do not attempt to do. We entirely admit also that the suffering of the whites when such an explosion occurs is greater than that of the Romans, owing to the difference of colour. The notion of submission to inferiors increases the poignancy of defeat. This, however, though it is full reason for remaining armed, and for fighting, when the emergency occurs, to the death—even in India, where we were so fearfully out-numbered, there never was in the Mutiny even a whisper of compromise, the white men all deciding to continue ruling or go under —is no justification for imitating the dark men in their cruelties, or forgetting that sovereignty cannot be based on punishment alone. As for the refusal of quarter—which we see some of the Volunteers in the heat of the contest in Natal have recommended, shouting to their leaders, "Let there be no surrenders ! "—that is as impolitic as it is un- Christian. The white object in suppressing a rising should be victory, not massacre, the mere threat of which can but harden the courage of men who, like the Bantus every- where in Africa, are among the bravest of mankind.
The practical results of the principles we are advocating are that we must do our work in justice and mercy, without expecting the reward in "love," which we most assuredly shall not receive; that we should keep ourselves armed in such a way and in such strength that we should never be liable to a fit of that cruelty which is born of panic; and that we should regard our sovereignty over dark races not as an occasion of pride, still less as a source of gain, but as a grave and burdensome work which it is our duty to perform with as little injury to our own permanent character as we can contrive. We have a right to quell insurrection, but we have no moral right whatever to make of insurrection an excuse for turning ourselves into virtual slave-holders. Justice is not a geographical virtue, and we are bound to be as just in Delhi or Johannesburg as we are in London or in Ottawa. If in addition to this great principle we can bring ourselves always to display the lesser virtues of patience and politeness, we shall find that one half of our difficulties have silently glided out of the road. Those dark peoples who acknowledge the excellence of our dominion still hate our manners as they would be hated if we displayed them to inferiors at home. The peculiar insolence of the ruling castes which caused most of the horrors of the French Revolution, and will, we fear, make any popular uprising in Russia a widely spread massacre of the landowners, has fortunately died slowly out of British home ways, and it should be kept down in dealing with the dark races, not by laws or rules, but by an ever- present atmosphere of consideration pressing invisibly but with irresistible weight. We are not asking too much, surely, when we ask from the Englishman among a subject people the bearing of a British officer towards British soldiers.
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