TOPICS OF THE DAY.
INDIA AND PARLIAMENT.
Tin drama of India legislation is approaching the fifth act, but se strangely equivocal are its incidents that it remains still doubtful whether, when the curtain falls, the House will prove to have been playing a comedy, or a tragedy. From an early moment after the fall of Lord Palmerston's Government, we formed and announced emphatically the opinion, that the state of the House, in reference to parties, precluded all hope of an effectual settlement of this question upon its merits, and with a wise appreciation of its difficulties. If the history of the session have not, by this time, abundantly proved the truth of this opinion, we conceive that it would be merely wasted time to attempt anew its demon- stration. The principal incidents of the past week place, in a startling light, the utterly false position into which the Legisla- ture has been misled upon the subject ; and bring out, in a manner afflicting in the extreme to those who feel the responsi- bility of the moment, the way in which India has been made the stalking-horse of Ministerial difficulties. On Monday night the Government obtained a marked victory over the Opposition, headed by Lord J. Russell and Lord Palmerston, upon the question whether the council should be partly elected and partly nominated, or wholly nominated. Those two noble lords maintained the latter view, upon a naked assertion that, according to constitutional doctrine, the Crown ought not to be fettered in the election of its officers. The use of this argument shows, at once, that those who advance it fail altogether to acknowledge any independent need. or utility for a council. Because it is to furnish, not executive functionaries of the Crown, but skilled authorities on legis- lation and policy that a council is maintained to be necessary, to mitigate and regulate the power of a Secretary of State. Duly perceiving this truth, the House affirmed the view of the Government by a substantial majority, in the evident intention, by declaring for a mixed elective and nominated council, of thus qualifying, in a marked way, the position of an absolute Secretary of State. There remained many resolutions and amendments to discuss; resolutions affecting the relations between Secretary and council, the vital point of the whole question, and also finance. But on Thursday night a change came o'er the spirit of the chronic nightmare under which the House has laboured this session. Lord Stanley opened the discussion by declaring in substance that, although the House had at the instigation of the Government voted for a council on the mixed principle, yet the difficulties of finding a constituency were so great, that the elective function must in reality be assigned to the council itself, the obvious consequence of which would be, that, in effect the only permanently operative principle would be that of nomination. This course is almost to be characterized as a fraud upon the House and the question. After having snatched a victory from the Opposition, for merely Parliamentary purposes, by the adoption of the elective principle, after having reaped the ad- vantage of placino. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in the common and weak position of advocating the unmixed nominative council which the Rouse wisely shrinks from, the Government coolly announces that the difficulties of election are virtually in- superable. The House is informed that the principle will virtually be given up, and that the remaining resolutions will not be pro- ceeded with. They are stated ambiguously to have served. their turn, and a bill is brought in, amidst the laughter of the House, to embody the principles already voted, although by con- fession of all parties the real difficulties of the subject have either been evaded, or never approached, or merely adjourned. All this is mere scepticism and mockery ; and indicates a de- spair of any useful result. Really Lord Stanley must be gifted. with no ordinary sang-froid to have taken the steps he did on Thursday. While he was deliberately abandoning the principle of Monday night's vote, and quashing his own supposed victory, he still found himself able to tell the House that he was carrying out its intentions. But in all Parliamentary history there has been nothing like this last proceeding of the Administration, in respect either to legislative dealing with any question, or to Minis- terial good faith. It must be obvious to every one that the Govern- ment has never had anything like a grasp of the subject, with which it has been dealing, nor even any intention of dealing honestly with the House. If the elective principle was to be virtually sur- rendered on Thursday, why was a Ministerial victory obtained by its assertion on Monday ? Every Liberal Member who, holding strongly the necessity of the elective element in the council, was obliged to vote against his party on Monday night, must have heard with strangely bitter feeling the announcement of the Thursday, which showed him that there was to be no elective Principle after all. It must have been clear to him that the only effect of his vote was the further disorganization of the Opposi- tion and his own party. Now we have all along been keenly sensible of the disarray and chaos of the Liberal Opposition, and dwelt on it unsparingly. We have asserted more strongly than has been done by Liberal journals, the importance of its re- settlement before returning to the other side of the House. No journal has more steadily maintained that view. And we do not in the least recede from it now. But we would urge most se- riously and energetically upon those who still retain, if only by courtesy, the post of Liberal leaders, and upon their party, that this last illustration of the candour and statesmanship of the Ca- binet of which Mr. Disraeli is the evil genius, is such as to en- force peremptorily the duty of that speedy and effective reor- ganization of the Liberal majority, which would justify the re- moval of the Cabinet from power before the recess. We repeat, indeed, once again, that, unless such a reorganization is possible, not even the events of the present week justify an assault upon the Cabinet. But, if it be possible, the course taken by the Government this last week makes such an assault justifiable and imperative. If it be allowed to a Government with impunity to sever an Opposition by the as- sertion on the Monday night of a principle, which is in effect, sur- rendered. three days afterwards for the one maintained by the Opposition leaders, Parliamentary institutions will not continue long to occupy the place they have hitherto done in the respect of the country.
We trust that, on the second reading of the India Bill, No. 3, all these considerations will be superadded to the many objections against legislation, which have been accumulating in men's minds during the last ten months, and induce the House to pause, even at the eleventh hour, before it enters into the course which all the Parliamentary leaders have been forcing it into. It is now the common conviction, not attempted to be disguised, that no really well-considered measure can pass this session. All that can pos- sibly be done is to sketch out an outline, which will derive all its significance and force from the way in which it will be filled up by the Ministers of the Crown during the recess. Is it supposed that the House or the country is prepared to commit a power so vague, undefined, and dangerous to the discredited Admin- istration whose master-spirit is a mere adventurer who has raised himself, upon a pedestal of calumny, to high place in the council of the Crown ? What, is it supposed, will be the sentiments of the services in India when they read the story of the cynical precipitation, or helpless incapacity with which the Legislature shall have dealt with possessions so vast, so dis- turbed and shaken, so perilous at all times to hold, so environed by old dangers and new ? Will they bear with patience and no diminished attachment or allegiance to their country the over- whelming contrast presented by two pictures? One of the hand- ful of Englishmen, fighting under a murderous sun for empire and the English name amidst disaffected millions ; the other, of the British Legislature ready with unextinguishable laughter, to vote anything to get rid of India and bury it in that whited sepulchre, Downing Street, if only Members may escape betimes from the foul river which they should long ago have cleansed. The House may even yet be impressed by considerations of this kind, and adopt the plan of a new and short lease for the East India Company, with or without a Commission to report upon the whole subject, ad- dressed to all the greatest authorities on Indian affairs' and required to report in a limited time. Evidently it is being dragged on, or forcing itself on, from the feeling that it has been betrayed into a serious dilemma' by the unprecedented manner in which the subject has been handled by the leaders of both parties. If a secret vote of the House could be taken at this moment, upon the question whether legislation shall be pro- ceeded with, the majority against the proposal would be so over- whelming as to convey an impressive lesson to the country. We write under the strong feeling that, in a case of this kind, it is cul- pable cowardice for any one who can however feebly, influence the course of events, to allow the thought that it is now "too late," to paralyze exertion. Surely Englishmen have seen ample illustration of the pass to which France has been brought by the de- cline of civic virtue and courage indicated by this yielding to fate, not to make head stoutly against the approaches of this mental malady. If it be true, as beyond a shadow of a doubt it is, that India is at this moment the mere sport of circumstances in Parliament ; if it be true that the attempts to legislate are directed to any end in the world but the advantage of India, and animated by the very minimum of knowledge or authority, it is a grievous breach of duty for those who so think, to abstain from the energetic pro- clamation of their opinions. If they do, we augur that the day will not be distant when there will be a violent reaction and a self- reproach, by which the Indian interests, now so contemptuously disregarded, will be signally avenged. After the illustration, which this week has afforded, of the way in which the serious difficulties of this question are to be met, after the unexampled evasion of the problem of the Council's composition we feel it would be the merest waste of time to dis- cuss the details and principles of the proposed measure. There is no way in which a journal can usefully discuss the subject, at the present moment, except in relation to the Ministerial and party necessities for which alone it is kept before the House. In- troduced at first by Lord Palmerston in order to stave off the promised Reform Bill, it was prolonged by Lord Derby's Govern- ment for the merest purpose of self-preservation, and upon rea- sons of the most transparent absurdity and insincerity. Because the House had consented to allow a powerful Minister to bring in a bill abolishing the East India Company, it was gravely con- tended that the Company was so discredited that it must needs be abolished. Nobody can mistake the dexterous hand which thus devoted a session to the discussion of a long, thorny, and difficult subject, nixin which nobody bad light, but on which both of the great parties in the House thus took up common ground. The
misfortune ia, that both sides having thus vitiated their action by a radical insincerity and obliquity of purpose, the remedy of a recommencement seems almost hopeless of attainment. But we rely still upon the practical wisdom and instinct and civil courage of a body of English gentlemen, and we rely still more on the dog-days, and on the river. And if only the wise minority are true to themselves they may still render it impossible to commit the fortunes of the empire in India to the extra-Parliamentary developments which a crude measure, passed in disgust of the subject, may receive at the hands of an immature doctrinaire like Lord Stanley and a mature naanceuvrer like Mr. Disraeli. We do not think that the moral weight and deep seriousness of pur- pose, for which Lord Derby is now so distinguished, will be sufficient to counterbalance and regulate aright the strong cha- racteristics of those two colleagues whom we have named. And we cannot certainly view with patience the prospect of the work, to which the Cabinet will devote the recess, of strengthening it own position by dexterous manipulation of English affairs, in- cluding those critical affairs of India, all over the globe. The overwhelming necessity of the moment is one, for which appa- rently there are no materials and no men, reorganization of the Liberal majority upon a strong sound footing, which should put an end to this grotesque Parliamentary morris-dance. But we shall be patient and impartial after all, as between Mr. Disraeli and. this nation. If it deserves something better than that gentleman and his colleagues, it will assuredly find that something in due time. If not, he must needs remain where he is, a sign of the decay of the soul of this once great-souled country, which suffers itself to be led, by that which is the object of its laughter and its scorn.
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