MR. BRIGHT ON INDIA.
" WERE we to be driven out of India to-morrow" (i.e., December 2nd, 1788), said Burke, in one of the most eloquent of his speeches, "nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by anything better than the ourang-outang or the tiger." "Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost
for ever to India Their prey is lodged in England ; and the cries of India are given to seas and winds, to be blown about in every breaking-up of the monsoon over a remote and unhearing ocean." The first part of this reproach is happily no longer applicable. But can it honestly be said that the latter part is even now altogether undeserved? The cries of India are still, as regards the mass of Englishmen, blown about "over a remote and unhearing ocean." But their echoes have begun to reach our shores, and one of the most signal proofs of the awakening of the public conscience to a sense of our responsibility towards the vast multitude of our fellow- subjects in India is the crowded meeting which was held last Wednesday in Willis's Rooms, to hear an address from a native of India on the grievances and aspirations of his countrymen. No doubt, many of those who ,nuie present, and of the crowds who could not gain admission for lack of space, were mainly attracted by the expectation of an eloquent speech from Mr. Bright. But this was certainly not the sole motive of a large part of the ipdience,—of the imposing array of Members of Parliament, for example, to whom a speech from Mr. Bright is no novelty.. It was very evident, from the demeanour of the meeting, that the subject itself, even apart from the form of its treatment by the different speakers, was eminently attractive. It is pro- bable that few of those who were present anticipated any additional attraction to the subject from the oratory of the native gentleman who introduced it. To such his speech must have been
a most agreeable surprise. Delivered without a single note, in clear, terse, idiomatic English, which rose occasionally to subdued eloquence, and which did not betray a trace of foreign accent, Mr. Lalmohun Ghose commanded the delighted attention of his audience for upwards of half an hour ; and he might safely have spoken for another half-hour without any risk of ex- hausting their patience. But he had to think of the eminent orator who was to follow him, and he judiciously compressed his matter into the space of little more than half an hour. It is no small praise to add that the lucidity of his statement did not seem to suffer at all from its conciseness. If, indeed, he had allowed himself more tune, he might have embraced more subjects—one of which was afterwards referred to by Sir David Wedderbum—within the scope of his survey, as well as elucidated more fully his views on some of the subjects on which he did touch. Mr. Ghose, for example, advocated the extension of Lord Cornwallis's Permanent Settlement. From this proposal Mr. Fawcett recorded his dissent, in the interesting speech in which he proposed the thanks of the meeting to Mr. Ghose. It is not unlikely, however, that if Mr. Ghose had had time to develope his ideas more at length upon that ques- tion, the discrepancy between himself and Mr. Fawcett would not have been a very wide one. It is to be regretted that the Press has given so meagre a report of what was, in more senses than one, a remarkable speech. Mr. Mose began his address by remarking on the change which has been passing over India within the last few years. By the spread of education, the increased facilities of communication by means of railways and telegraphs, and by the agency of the Native Press, the cdiverse populations of India are being gradually welded, he said, into one nationality. This is one of the results of English rule for which Mr. Ghose expressed, on behalf of his countrymen, the most lively gratitude. But the purpose of his mission to this country is not to expatiate on the blessings of English rule in India, inestimable as he frankly admitted those blessings to be, but to point out the defects and blots which stint their natural outflow, and rob them of much of their grace. He is himself a xemindar of Bengal, and a barrister of reputation in Calcutta, and has been deputed to this country by an in- fluential association, fairly representing the opinions of educated natives in all the Presidencies. The case, therefore, to which he invites the attention of the British public is in every way worthy of the most serious consideration. Its leading points may be briefly enumerated. The first is the financial grievance. Quite lately the Indian Government has imposed upon the native population a burden of taxation amounting to about £1,500,000 annually ; and this increased taxation falls with the most crushing effect upon the poorest part of the population, descending, as it does, to incomes of not more than four shillings per week, while the official class are themselves exempted. The plea for this oppressive addition to the taxation of India was the necessity of providing a remedy against the recurrence of famine. This has been called in question with a degree of assurance which, con- sidering the facts, it is hardly too much to characterile as cynical. The pledges which the Government of India gave on this point are recorded in official documents, and Mr. Bright drove them home on Wednesday with telling effect. But the Famine Fund thus rung from the penury of the people of India has been squandered on what Mr. Ghose de- nounced, with the sympathetic cheers of his audience, as "a needless and aggressive war,"—cheers which were repeated with enthusiasm when he expressed his scorn for "the divorce of morals from politics," of which the Afghan war has been so flagrant an example. or did the meet- ing seem in the least consoled by the Treaty of peace with Yakoob Khan. On the contrary, it laughed approvingly with Mr. Bright, when he afterwards declared that a war which had begun in "folly and wickedness," had ended in a peace 'which was "ignominious." When the war was declared we were told by its authors that it was very popular with the native population. Yet Mr. Ghose declared emphatically that if the natives could have been polled, they would have regis- tered "an indignant protest" against the Afghan war. We see no reason to question the statement, and it enabled Mr. Gliose to press, with a fair amount of plausibility, the claim of the natives to some form of popular representation. At present they are powerless and voiceless. Their Press has been gagged, and one of their most influential and best conducted of their newspapers has been silenced for the crime of admitting into its columns an objectionable letter. The whole population has, more- over, been completely disarmed. According to native ideas, this is an indignity. But it is also a hardship, as Mr. Bright
pointed out. For in many villages of India not only the cattle, but the lives of the inhabitants, are constantly exposed to the attacks of wild beasts. The Disarmament Act has deprived them of their means of defence. And it is under these circumstances that the people of India are compelled by the Home Government to bear the whole burden of a war of which, according to their spokesman at Willis's Rooms, they entirely disapprove. No passage in any of the speeches de- livered elicited heartier applause than Mr. Fawcett's emphatic declaration that it was a gross injustice to the constituencies of this country to suppose that this mean and cowardly policy was approved by them. In condemning the repeal of the im- port duty on cotton, Mr. Ghose was careful to guard himself against the imputation of being an advocate for Pro- tection. He declared himself an ardent Free-trader, and had no difficulty in showing that his objection to the repeal of the cotton-tax did not mean a hankering after Protection. The British Government, be it remembered, has not simply repealed a prohibitory tax. The tax in question touched the pockets of some influential people in Lancashire ; but it yielded too important an item of revenue to be given up without some equivalent. The-cotton manufacturers of Lancashire, however, have much influence in a general election. The voiceless millions of the Queen's subjects in India have none. The Government has accordingly relieved the pockets of the Lancashire manu- facturers by the abolition of the duty on cotton imported into India ; and the vacuum thus caused in the Indian exchequer they have filled by the imposition of odious taxes on the im- poverished and unrepresented natives. It is idle to palliate so transparent an electioneering dodge by unctuous appeals to the doctrine of Free-trade.
But probably the most important, in the long-run, oT Mr. nose's list of grievances, and perhaps the most difficult to deal with satisfactorily, is the wholesale exclusion of the natives from any sensible share in the administration of their own country. In the Army they cannot rise above the rank of subaltern. The Civil Service is, indeed, open to them theoreti- cally, but their admission into it has hitherto been clogged with conditions which exclude them. In renewing the Charter of the East India Company in 1833 both Houses of Parliament solemnly decreed, without a dissentient voice, that no native of India, "shall, by reason of religion, place, birth, descent, and colour, or any of them, be disabled from holding any place, or office, or employment whatever." In the Proclamation in which the Queen announced, in 1858, the transference of the Govern- ment of India to herself, this pledge was aolemnly repeated. These promises were understood avowedly by the Court of Directors as throwing open both the Covenanted and Uncovenanted Services to natives, without restriction. "How have those promises been fulfilled V" asked Mr. Bright ; and answering, his own question, he showed that, for tho first twenty years after 1833," not one native of India was appointed to any office to which natives were ineligible before 1833." And during the forty-six years which have intervened from 1833 to 1879, he declared that " only nine persons, nativea of India," had been admitted to the Covenanted Service. These are startling facts, and Mr. Bright even ventured to say that difficulties. were put in the way of the natives, on purpose to exclude them. Without going into the question of motives, however, the difficulties themselves are indisputable. What justification can be offered for the oppressive rule which obliged Native candidates to pass their examination in England ? And as if this were not a sufficient obstacle, the Government some time ago reduced the eligible age of candidates from twenty-one to
nineteen years. The practical effect of this was to compel Native candidates to come to England to prepare for their examination at the age of about seventeen. Is it likely that youths of that age would be sent by their parents, without friends or protectors, to pursue their solitary studies in a strange land for two years ? And if any wore bold enough to make the venture, and the candidate failed to pass the examination, he had no other chance,, for he was past the eligible age. Certainly this was a grievance which demanded a speedy remedy ; and we are glad to observe, as we are writing, that the remedy has been supplied in the now regulations published yesterday by the Government of India, As to the subject generally of the admission of the Natives, with- out restriction and on equal terms, to all offices short of the very highest, it is too large a question to be discussed at the end of an article. In one sense, English rule in India can
never be other than an anomaly. We shall never govern it like previous conquerors. They settled down in the country,
and made it their home. Our occupation of it will never be anything else than that of a foreign garrison. And as we educate the natives, and weld them more and more into that unity of feeling and hope 4nd action which constitute national life, are we not, in fact, preparing them to do without us V That, however, is a problem which belongs to the dim future ; and its advent in any practical form may, we believe, be postponed indefinitely by the application of a policy which shall enable the mass of the population to perceive that our rule is for their good, and which shall, at the same time, admit the educated. classes fairly to careers of honour and profit in the administra- tion of their native country.
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