"PERISH, INDIA !"
[To THE EDITOR OF THZ "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—In the notice of Mr. Jennings's "Anecdotal History of Parrliament," which appeared in your issue of August 18th, the reviewer remarks (p. 1,065), "It may be well in future editions to state, for the benefit of Conservative readers, that Mr. Bright did not exclaim, 'Perish, India!'"
Have these words ever been attributed to Mr. Bright P It is quite possible that they may have been, considering how un- warrantably they have been fathered on Mr. E. A. Freeman. But probably your contributor, by a slip of the pen or of memory, wrote "India," for "Savoy. The following extracts may serve to account for the lapens. They are taken from a characteristic letter addressed by Mr. Freeman to the editor of the Daily News, the letter bearing date December 19th, 1878:—
"I am surprised," writes Mr. Freeman, "to see in your paper of to-day, under the signature of 'John Delaware Lewis,' a letter taking for granted that I had at some time used the words, 'Perish, India!' That slanderous fable has been so often contradicted by me in your columns and elsewhere, that I had really begun to hope that no one any longer believed it ; and that no one, save Peers in the service of Lord Beaconsfield, would venture to assert or imply what they must know to be false. But Mr. Lewis clearly believed that the words were uttered, becausu he speaks of my celebrated expression,' and takes some trouble with the titivation whether it was or was not original.' Let me assure Mr. Lewis that the expression was not borrowed by me from Robes- pierre, or anybody else ; it may have been either borrowed or original, on the part of the person who invented it. The inventor was a corre- spondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, shortly after the meeting in St.. James's Hall, in December, 1876, when the words were falsely said to have been used. I at once contradicted the misstatement. Not- withstanding my contradiction, the false quotation was made over- and over again, and I contradicted it several times, both in your pages, and in those of the Times. Those who repeated the story had every means of knowing that it was false, and I am justified in treating them as wilful slanderers. Such a one was Sir Stafford Northcote, —well 'educated,' doubtless, by his master, lie asserted the false statement ; I contradicted it. Either in that contradiction, or in a. later one in the Times, I said that I should say no more about the matter, but leave any one who chose again to assert the falsehood, to his own conscience. Sir Stafford Northcote, seemingly thinking that
he was now safe, again asserted it. This was last year It is rather odd that, believing the words to have been uttered, he [Mr. Lewis] should have gone as far as Robespierre for a parallel, when he might have found one much nearer home. It has been generally believed that Mr. Bright once uttered the words, 'Perish, Savoy? But, judging from my own experience, it is very likely that he never did. One may, however, suspect that 'Perish, Savoy !' was the pat- tern after which the words, Perish, India!' were invented by the
correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette What I really said was this := Perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India, rather than we should strike ono blow or speak one word in behalf of the wrong, against the right !' " I should not be justified in asking you, Sir, to devote so much of your valuable space to the correction of so small an error, did I not venture to suppose that you will agree with me in thinking Mr. Freeman's protest is well worth reproduction at the present time, when the sort of political pettifogging which that gentleman so pointedly condemns is at least as prevalent as ever. Just now, indeed, as it seems to me, politicians of the " phrasemongering " order take a peculiar pleasure in repeating, with parrot-like persistency, such clap-trap as they well know to have not even the smallest justification in fact. Lord Beaconsfield could take up a germ of truth, and, presto ! it became a frail but brilliant flower of rhetoric, so that his admiring audience was tickled and decei‘ed ; but with the magician, the Tories have buried his wand. And now—well, surely there are few things more flat, stale, and unprofitable than clumsy jugglery, or more wearisome and disgusting than an oft-repeated and as often unsuccessful attempt at hood-
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