LORD RIPON. T HAT Lord Ripon should be attacked by those
who dis- approve the Ilbert Bill is natural enough, for the dis- pute which underlies that question rouses very fierce antagon- isms, as well of modes of thinking, as of caste, creed, and colour. But that the Viceroy of India should be attacked, as he has been in the Times of Wednesday, as almost an imbecile, on the grounds put forward in that journal, is positively monstrous. Our acquaintance with English journalism is now, unhappily, a long one, but we cannot remember an article at once so irreligious and so cynically unfair. Lord Ripon, as everybody knows, felt impelled, six or seven years ago, to join the Roman Catholic Church. He lost by so doing all that it is possible for a man in his position to lose,—a secure place in English politics, the favour of the majority of his countrymen, scope for a natural ambition, the support, though not the regard, of most valued friends, and the approval, though not the affection, of his closest connec- tions. Being, however, a firm as well as a conscientious man, he faced all those results calmly, and for the sake of what he believed to be truth gave up, as it seemed for ever, all hopes of public life. This act of self-abnegation the Times of Wednesday describes in these words :— " He had obtained as a Whig magnate a position in the party which his abilities would assuredly never have won, and as there were no more rewards for him at home, and he was not fit for the Cabinet, he was sent to govern India. When he was appointed, we had numerous protests addressed to us from all parts of the country, on the ground that a man who changes his religion in middle-life is not fit to govern an empire. Though sympathising with these pro- tests, which came, not from fanatics, bat from their antipodes, we were unwilling to take up an attitude that might have seemed invidious. But, had we done so, no one would now be bold enough to say that we had been unjust. A man who, at the mature age of fifty or thereabouts, apostatises from the religion of his fathers, on the ground of grave doubts' as to the validity of English Orders or the views of the Anglican Church about the nature of the Eucharist, certainly does not possess the strength and solidity of intellect required in a ruler. A man who, at that age, passes a crushing vote of censure upon his own private judgment by handing it over to a priest, deserves no more confidence from others. Men of sense make up their minds on these subjects at an early age, and it is only rather poor and narrow-brained persons who are troubled at thirty with any question about the form of religion they have lived under. To have gone over to Borne is not Lord Ripon's offence, but rather that he is of the type of man who thinks of going over at all to any new Church in middle-life. The Romans had a contempt for those who deserted the faith of their fathers, and it was well founded. A man who at forty or fifty has not found some way of reconciling his religion and his life is a weak creature, no matter in what trappings he may be decked, or on what pedestal partiality may place him."
Only the day before, the Times had declared Martin Luther a hero for doing at thirty-seven precisely what Lord Ripon did, and proclaiming to all the world that he had failed to recon- cile his religion and his life, and must go out finally and for ever from the Church in which he was bred up. If ever a strong man lived, even a brutally strong man, it was Martin Luther ; yet, in the judgment of men whom the Times will allow to be hard-headed, there was yet a stronger, and John Knox first acknowledged his " apostasy " when thirty-eight, and did not finally break with Rome till he was forty-one. Cardinal Newman, whose ability even the Times would hardly question, though probably a Catholic in feeling at forty-two, did not enter the Roman Church till he was forty-five, and Cardinal Manning was a clergyman in English Orders till he was forty-three. If we were to wander farther afield, and include either converts from Paganism, like Mahommed, or those who have quitted Christianity for some form of disbelief, we could fill columns with lists of strong men who have " apostatised " after forty, and have never been deemed, even by theological opponents, wanting either in couiage or brain-power. In truth, if age has anything to do with the matter, it tells the other way. It would not be unreasonable for a cynical onlooker to say that a lad of twenty-one, bred up in the tradition of a great faith, should hesitate to quit it before he had gained a wider experience and a deeper learning ; but to say that a man of fifty, who, in opposition to every worldly interest, changes his faith, thereby stamps himself a fool, is to deny that religion can have any importance at all, to assert that the problem of the Whence and Whither ought to have less hold upon men's minds than even a question of politics, upon which men of mature years and undoubted capacity abandon old convictions every day. If it was imbecile in Lord Ripon to quit the Church of England in mature years, why was it a sign of strength in Peel, then in his fullest manhood, to declare against Catholic Disabilities, or when his
mind had further matured, to reject his hereditary faith in Protection for the gospel of Free-trade?
It is useless to strive with an opponent who can use such arguments, but there is one intellectual puzzle in the situation which greatly interests us. A large number of those who are irritated by Lord Ripon's policy in India as a policy of Indo- philism are undoubtedly of opinion that the Viceroy favours the natives because he has become a Roman Catholic. Now, what is the explanation of that singular impression ? What is there in the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, as opposed to the tenets of the Protestant Churches, which should make Lord Ripon as a Catholic like Mahounedans, Pagans, or Theists better than as a Protestant ho could have done ? We should say that as against Mahommedaniam, Catholicism was on the whole a little the more bitter of the two ; while as concerning Paganism, the views of the two creeds, though somewhat differently expressed, are practi- cally identical, both believing that Pagans are either finally lost or saved by invincible ignorance. Certainly, nothing in Catholicism tends to induce Catholic rulers to promote the unbaptised, or to acknowledge that equality between believers and misbelievers can be a dogma of the faith. Catholic Kings have not persecuted heretics more determinedly than they have persecuted Mahominedans, Jews, and the strange varieties of Paganism which once covered the whole of Portuguese and Spanish America. The suspicion is, in fact, absurd, and is due to two causes,—one, that Englishmen dislike unpopular converts to Catholicism with additional intensity because of their conversion,—and another, that prominent Catholics are usually Irishmen, who either feel or profess unusual sympathy with all conquered nationalities. To suppose that a great English noble trained to statesmanship guides his policy upon purely religious grounds, even if those grounds existed, is nonsensical,—just as nonsensical as it would be to say that Sir George Jessel's judgments as Master of the Rolls were deflected by his adherence to the Synagogue. But then we are told Lord Ripon is a popularity-bunter. He may be, for what we know, though going over to Rome is not exactly the way to secure popularity ; but, at any rate, he is not hunting popularity in India. He is getting himself cursed by those who can give him reputation, in order, as he thinks, to benefit the silent. The truth is, Lord Ripon is a sound, honest Radical, a little too much inclined, as Radical nobles usually are, to apply his principles with too little deference for opposing circumstances. Nine times out of ten he will be right, but the tenth time be will be wrong. In theory, the Ilbert Bill, as it is called, can- not be attacked, unless, indeed, we lay down the principle that Mahommedan or heathen Judges cannot be trusted, which we do lay down as regards all independent Asiatic coun- tries, but have abandoned as regards India by subject- ing all classes to them in civil cases. But in practice it is so important that the only progressive class in India should feel pleasantly towards the Natives, and should confide in the Courts, that to introduce a Bill which roused race-hatred and destroyed confidence was, unless the necessity was grave, an error of judgment. The necessity is not pleaded, and Lord Ripon should have waited until the real people made a grievance of a privilege which, as a community, they do not even know, and care nothing whatever about. The mere fact that it was necessary to exempt all cantonments from the operation of the Bill should have warned him of the danger ahead. He would, however, never have brought in the Bill, if he had dreamed of the feel- ing it would rouse; and he has modified it, as Lord Northbrook informed his audience at the Colston Dinner, on Tuesday, till it can do very little harm, only a few most experienced Native Judges receiving the new power, and the accused European, if he suspects unfairness, being allowed to apply for a change of venue. For the rest, Lord Ripon is quite right. The
Bengal Tenure Bill, whatever its demerits, is a recurrence to the old Indian principle that the ultimate ownership of the
soil resides in the tiller of it, and was as strongly supported by Lord Dalhousie and Lord Lawrence as by Lord Ripon ; while the Local Self-Government Bill is absolutely neces- sary, if local taxation is to be made sufficiently heavy.
It is nonsense to say that Natives of India cannot govern their own cities, when they created, enriched, and managed them for thousands of years. Calcutta is a camp of huts compared with- Benares, and no white man has ordered the stately splendour of Jeypore. Whether election is a good
mode of getting native governing committees together is a dis- putable point, the true native method being government by a self-elected, yet representative junta ; but it is a fair experi- mentto try, and one which gives the lower householders some- thing like fair-play. The Ilbert Bill injures, because it frightens, a most useful class, but the other Bills directly benefit whole nations ; and it is by them, and not by one accidental measure, still less by his personal religious creed, that Lord Ripon should be judged.
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