INDIAN IGNORANCES.
IF we might believe any of the spokesmen for the parties contend- ing on the subject of India, we might suppose, alternately, that no one party knows anything whatever upon the subject matter. The Minister who is in some degree responsible, the President of Con- trol—the _ZEolus who sits up in his high office and moderates the Directors—ought to know something about that which he has governed and for which he is to legislate : but it is all a mistake; according to Colonel Sykes, facts, statistics, arguments, all contro- vert the five-hours speech of Sir Charles Wood. The Chairman of the East India Company, then, he must know something of it ; and from Ms account the Government of the Direct- ors has been meritorious and beneficial, a blessing of which men can only desire the continuance ? Not at all ; Sir Charles Wood only apologizes for continuing it, and men who have been in India, officers, even proprietors of "stock," declare that the con- duct of the Directors, the selection of members for that post, the very constitution of the Directorate, all belong to a complicated blunder. The Reformers, who are reinforced by Anglo-Indians, represent the Minister and the Directors as being equally but se- verally wrong, in all their facts, statistics, and arguments. Each side has its own array of these materials for polemical warfare. The Natives of India ought at least to know something of the way in which they stand, and they have sent accounts to the House of Commons in petitions : but they know nothing about it. The peti- tions to the House of Commons Colonel Sykes simply disposes of by pronouncing " crasse ignorantite." " If that shoe pinches your Lordship," cries the fashionable Crispin, " I will be damned " ; and Lord Foppington consents to be pinched against his convic- tion, because his antagonist in the controversy " is a good shoe- maker." But the Natives of India do not make the same admis- sion towards Clonel Sykes and his colleagues : they are pinched, but they do not admit that the Directors are good shoemakers. On the contrary, in the Indian version of the story, the Directors are cobblers incessantly straying beyond their last.
Now we have only one remark to make respecting the funda- mental assertion of Colonel Sykes about "ignorance,"—that it is not true. If information on the subject is desired, we have enough and to spare ; for we have bales of information about India. If theoretical, historical, and practical knowledge is a cure for ig- norance, we have men who are abundantly supplied : the only per- plexity is that the authorities differ. With regard to most other subjects there are many expositions the collation of which enables us to make that approximation to the truth which is alone permitted to human intelligence. But here we have an over-abundance of information ; only, unfortunately, it is always declared to be of the wrong kind. There are many authorities, but they all agree on. only one point, which is, to discredit each one in turn. Each par- ticular authority, it may almost be said, has arrayed against him a majority consisting of all the rest.
Now this is perplexity; and if English public, or English states- men, go wrong, we must declare that the fault is not theirs but that of their critics. With all the virtuous objection which these men have to the proposition of Ministers, there is but one of them that has a measure prepared of his own, but a few that have so much as a sketch ; and there is no " independent " self-appointed statesman that can obtain a following. Such double conflict im- plies, either that these men do not know how to use their informa- tion, or that they want that public virtue which obliges each man to sacrifice his own personal crotchets in order to attain a public assent. While the Indian Reformers or Anti-Reformers can do nothing but declare everybody else to be in the wrong, they scarcely deserve attention; and when they arrogate to themselves, each one of them, the possession of the knowledge, we may reply that their knowledge is of little worth since they cannot turn it to account. Before they merit so much attention as they claim, they are bound to agree amongst themselves, and to present their proposition in a form which can be intelligible to the English mind in its essentials, in its practice, and in the authority by which it is indorsed.
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