MR. MARSHMAN'S HISTORY OF INDIA.*
THIS, the third volume of Mr. Marshman's History of India, con- cludes the work, and we are therefore in a position to form a complete judgment on its general value. Its merits are many, as we pointed out in a notice of the first two volumes, one of the greatest among them being a singular lucidity of style, which enables the author to condense history into a sort of pemmican, without producing the choking effect usual with compendiums. It would be difficult, for example, to find a more exhaustive history of the facts of the Afghan war than Mr. Marshman has com- pressed into some 120 pages, or a more complete narrative of progress than the forty pages devoted to the Administration of Lord William Bentinck. This condensation is the more remark- able, because Mr. Marshman rarely records a transaction without an opinion on its merits, seldom mentions a British or Native notability without a brief but clear estimate of his character, and whenever it is possible enriches his account with the actual words of the State documents he has so carefully studied. In the account, for example, of Lord Dalhousie's " annexation policy," Mr. Marshman supplies in very brief but very telling extracts the main opinions of those who attacked and those who defended the Native States, yet the account is as readable as any article in a quarterly review. On individuals his judg- ments, with rare exceptions,—of which his account of Lord Minto is the most important,—strike us as a little too favourable, a tittle too much influenced by Anglo-Indian tradition—a tradition, it should be remarked, always exceptionally kindly. India is, per- haps, the only Empire in the world where hostile traditions die out, a peculiarity owing partly to the family-party character of its governing class, but chiefly to the fact that it is not those who obey, but those who command, who have written the histories of its great men. We demur altogether to the estimate of Sir John Malcolm, a man who lacked not only some of the powers, but some of the ideas, of a statesman ; who, for example, behaved in the Madras Mutiny as if he had been a diplomatist accredited to belligerents; and we have a smell that Sir Charles Metcalfe is accepted—as, indeed, he always is by Anglo-Indian historians— at very much more than his true value. His own summary of his own policy stamps him, in our judgment, as no statesman, more especially when it is remembered that the man who thus announced his faith in the sword broke the sword when he freed the Press from all despotic restraints. "Sir Charles Metcalfe asserted that our Government, which was one of conquerors and foreigners, was always precarious, and that, as it arose, so to say, in a day, it would disappear in a night. t My notions,' he said, ' of Indian policy begin and end in a powerful and efficient army ; our real strength consists in the few European regiments scattered singly over a vast space of subjugated territory. My general creed is confined to two grand specifics—army and colonization." As a rule, however, we agree with Mr. Marshman's judgments of character, marked as they are by a philosophic moderation, and think his kit-cat sketches add greatly to the value, as they certainly do to the liveliness of his narrative. We select, as an instance, the career of an officer whose name outside India has been almost forgotten :— "Captain Dixon [writes Mr. Marshman] entered on the duties of his *Meese Superintendent of the Mairs, a perfectly savage tribe, in Ajmere, with a feeling of enthusiasm. He felt that to render his labours suc- cessful he must be continually out in camp, in fervid heat or drenching rain, and that he must become a slave to his task until it was fully accomplished. To this honourable bondage he consecrated his of life. He lived among the people, and made himself acquainted with the condition of every village, and often of every household in it. Ho • The History of India, from the Earliest Period to the Close of Lord Dalhousie's Administration. By John Clark Marshman. Vol. III. London: Longmans. 1367. was without any European assistance, but under his training and dis- cipline his native establishment became thoroughly efficient. To accus- tom the wild highlanders to habits of agricultural industry it was above all things necessary to secure a supply of water for their fields. But the fall of rain in that hilly country was very capricious, and when it came could with difficulty be retained for continuous use. He accord- ingly prevailed on Government to make advances for works of irri- gation, and dug reservoirs and wells, and formed embankments to husband and distribute the water. He covered the slopes of the hills with terraces, and by these appliances gave the waste jungle an aspect of luxuriant cultivation. The financial result of this improvement was encouraging in no ordinary degree. The sum advanced by the State for these waterworks—and in India they always return cent. per cent.— was a little above two lace, while the augmentation of the revenue through the increase of assessment exceeded four lace. The moral result of these labours was seen in the transformation of a wild and predatory tribe into an orderly, docile, and industrious population, with unbounded confidence in their European benefactors. To encourage the resort of traders, Captain Dixon erected a town in the district, and surrounded it with a wall, to give a feeling of security to the immigrants. It appealed to rise in the wilderness with the wand of a magician, and in a short time was filled with 2,000 families engaged in mercantile and manufacturing pursuits. In all the annals of the India House there is no record more grateful than that of the energetic and successful labours of this officer in the civilization of Mairwarra."
The same disposition to lenity characterizes Mr. Marshman's comments upon most, though by no means all, the doubtful trans- actions of British rule, a lenity which it is not difficult to explain. It has been said by a reviewer otherwise favourable to his work, that its author is too unfriendly to natives ; but this is not the case. On the contrary, it is evidently towards the Viceroys who sought the elevation of the natives as Lord William Bentiuck did, that Mr. Marshmau's heart goes out ; he is friendly to vernacular education as opposed to English, though hostile to " Orientalism ;" and on the great question of all, that which perpetually divides opinion in India, the advisability of opening great careers to the people, he is emphatically pro-native. The extract is long, but it embodies in striking language the one conviction which we believe to be essential to the rulers of India :— " The measure which above all others has endeared the memory of Lord William Bentinck to the natives of India, is that which he in- augurated of introducing them to honourable employment in the public service. Allusion has been made in a former chapter to the cardinal error of Lord Cornwallis's policy, that of excluding them from every office except the lowest and the worst paid. This exclusion was forti- fied by the peculiar constitution of the Company, which remunerated the Court of Directors for their labours in the government of India by patronage, and not by money, and thus created a strong tendency to secure the monopoly of offices to their nominees. It would be difficult to discover in history another instance of this ostracism of a whole people. The grandsons of the Gauls who resisted Caesar became Roman senators. The grandsons of the Rajpoots who opposed Baber in his attempt to establish the Mogul power, and at the battle of Biana all but nipped his enterprise in the bud, were employed by his grand- son Akbar in the government of provinces and the command of armies, and they fought valiantly for him on the shores of the Bay of Bengal and on the banks of the Oxus. They rewarded his confidence by un- shaken loyalty to his throne, even when it was endangered by the con- spiracies of his own Mohammedan satraps. But wherever our sovereignty was established in India, the path of honourable ambition and every prospect of fame, wealth, and power was at once closed on the natives of the country. This proscription was rendered the more galling by comparison with the practice of the Native Courts around, where the highest prizes of power were open to universal competition. The con- trast was, moreover, aggravated by the fact that the Native Princes them- selves, the Nizam and Tippoo, Sindia and Holkar, and Runjeet Sing, adopted a more liberal policy, and freely entrusted offices of the highest responsibility, both military and political, to European foreigners. No benefit which we might confer on the country could be deemed an adequate compensation for the loss of all share in the Govern- ment, one of the highest and most honourable aspirations of humanity. It was vain to expect any attachment to our rale when even the best affected of our native subjects could see no remedy for this degrada- tion but in the subversion of our Government. The enlargement of the native mind by education only served to augment the evil, by sharpen- ing expectations which could not be gratified. But it required an in- trepid reformer like Lord William Bentinck at the head of the Govern- ment to carry out these lirge views. This liberal policy was inaugu- rated by the Regulations of 1831, which completely reconstructed the legal establishments of the Bengal Presidency, and entrusted the primary jurisdiction of all suits, of whatever character or amount, not excluding those instituted against Government, to native agency. Tho new system provided for three grades of native judges, the highest that of Principal Sadder Ameen, on 500 rupees a month, subsequently raised to 750, which is still egregiously inadequate to the position and responsibilities of the office. The principle of employing natives in important offices was gradually extended to other departments, and it has resulted in imparting a degree of vigour and popularity to the British Administration which it never enjoyed before. So greatly indeed has this privilege been appreciated by the natives, that there is some risk of their losing the manly feeling of independence in their great eagerness for public employ. The policy introduced by Lord William Bentinck has been zealously and nobly followed up by his successors. Now paths of distinction have been opened to native ambi- tion, and a native judge now sits on the bench of the highest Court in Calcutta, and natives of rank and influence occupy seats in the Legisla- tive Council."
Mr. Marshman, moreover, never loses an opportunity of extol- ling a great native statesman like Akbar, and it is not to natives, but only to Native States, that he can be called unjust, an injustice, if it be one, arising mainly from his original point of view. His whole work is evidently written under the influence of a conviction that British government, with all its shortcomings, is a good government for Asiatics ; that pro- vided all careers are thrown open to the people, it is, as De Tocqueville pronounced it to be, a "vivifying government ;" that under it the greatest happiness of the greatest number is most effectually secured, and that an " annexation " is, therefore, to the people affected rather a change of government than a loss of inde- pendence. We should question if he believed nationality to be even an element in Indian political feeling, and he clearly denies that it produced the Mutiny. It is of course quite open to any one to controvert that view, and a history of British India written by a competent but hostile native would be a most interesting contribution to literature ; but still this view is the only justification for the existence of the Empire, and is held more or less distinctly by almost every great Indian administrator, in- cluding many of those who think, as this reviewer does, that the ex- periment of Native Chief Commissioners ought speedily to be tried. Mr. Marshman does not resist that view, indeed applauds the eleva- tion of natives to a still higher post—the Legislative Council table ; but he is evidently convinced that native hereditary despotism is, except in very exceptional cases, a bad and demoralizing form of government. That is surely a view not unknown to Europe, and though, of course, it colours the author's reflections, and in cases like the annexation of Nagpore perhaps unduly influences his judgment, it cannot be said to impair his impartiality more than Mr. Grote's democratic view impairs his in regard to Grecian affairs. To ourselves it certainly seems that both the Orientalist and the Anglicist view of the question are outside discussion until we have settled whether native careers are to be as free under the British as under the native monarchy. If they are, then British rule seems to us clearly the better, as being in leas danger of be- coming stereotyped ; if not, then we confess we doubt. Mr. Marsh- man starts from the theory that they ought to be free, and read by that light his dislike of Native States is no more a proof of anti- native feeling than the dislike of many German historians for their petty principalities is a proof of anti-German sentiment. It is in this sense, we imagine, that British rule is called enlightened, and native rule barbarous—a term otherwise quite inapplicable to a civilization which has covered a continent with great cities, constructed a scheme of society which may be bad, but which those who live under it will die to defend, and anticipated many of the subtlest philosophical speculations of Europe. Surely it is well and not ill that this is the view the future educators of India should take, that the new race should be bred up to believe that the British Government in superseding their great families in- tends not to close their careers, but to direct their natural ambi- tion towards ends higher than those the Native Princes usually strove to secure.
There is one singular omission in this book as a history which we greatly regret. Mr. Marshman throughout his narrative is curiously impartial as between the Company and the Crown,— though he says the Empire was built by the servants of the Company, whereas it was built by the Governor-Generals, who were selected by the Crown,—but he has not given any estimate of the true merits and demerits of the Company as a governing body,—a subject upon which his opinion would, from the circumstances of his career, have been invaluable.
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