*ttfator uIemeut
APRIL 3 1858.
BOOKS.
MISS MARTINEAU ON THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.* Tins remarkable work is a powerful plea for delay in legislation for India. We think we may be rendering some service in placing a short account of it before our readers. We have elsewhere inti- mated what, in our opinion, are the principles which ought to guide the Legislature in the present altered condition of the question. The obstruction which unforeseen circumstances have offered to the passage of an India Bill carries with it this great advantage, that the nation at large will have more time for the ma- ture consideration of a subject of such extreme importance. We fear that the country is at present in that state of "little know- ledge" about India which may prove to be "a dangerous thing."
Under these circumstances we cannot but heartily welcome
such a production as the one before us, which, while utterly un- influenced by the party-passions and transient fallacies Of the hour, deals with the subject in a broad and statesmanlike spirit. Without agreeing in all points with the views which Miss Mar- tineau has so powerfully and lucidly expounded, we yet feel that all her opinions deserve the most careful consideration. Her ser- vices to politics and literature have been so important and varied in character as to entitle her to be regarded as one of the first po- litical thinkers and authorities of our time. Most deeply is it to be regretted that a woman so wonderfully gifted with knowledge, intellect, imagination, so discerning as a political teacher, so per- severing as a philanthropist, as an artist so profound and truthful, should ever have surrendered herself to the delusions of "positive philosophy." Certain we are, however, that her place will be se- cure among the very first writers of our language, and that a style so transparent in its purity, so quietly expressive, and so singu- larly free from affectation, will be even increasingly admired when the fashionable and fantastic brilliancy- which is now so popular and so strained after shall have fallen into disrepute.
The volume before us, though brief, is wide and comprehensive in its range, full of pregnant and suggestive remarks, and leaving untouched no important aspect of the question. It brings out in an exceedingly impressive manner the difficulties which are in- herent in the attempt of England to legislate organically for India. It is therefore well adapted to the needs of the present hour, while at the same time it lays down principles which, whether im- mediately recognized or not, must prove of permanent value, and vindicate their place sooner or later in the future regulation of India. If recognized in time they will be the seeds of wise and healthy legislation. If neglected now, they may force attention hereafter in a plentiful crop of calamities. The following may serve as an outline of Miss Martineau's ar- gument.
Hasty legislation is to be deprecated, in the first place on ac- count of the ignorance which prevails, not only in the country, but in Parliament. Knowledge about India is the monopoly of a special class—to the majority of Englishmen, India is a terra incognita, a land untraversed even in imagination. Can Parliament compensate for its long former neglect by sudden and therefore necessarily hasty legislation, especially by a measure calculated to diminish the influence of the very class of men to whose opinions it ought to defer ? India cannot be treated as a colony ; its ancient and mysterious civilization stands in such complete contrast to our own, that it would be the utmost rash- ness to attempt to link the two countries together under the same system of Parliamentary government. Consequently the Indian administration should be kept as clear as possible from the fluctua- tions of English party politics. Now the East India Company has hitherto acted as a breakwater against these influences. This alone has secured stability to the Indian Government. Our rule in India could not have been otherwise maintained. Shall we run the risk of interfering with the present organization, without being well-assured that we have something better to substitute ? The case is utterly unprecedented ; we have deliberately to adopt a scheme of rule for a variety of populations whose character, history, and social system are almost entirely unknown to us. The interaction of the English and Indian governments has to be ad- justed in the manner most beneficial to both countries. Many difficulties may be escaped by simply taking time. The sup- pression of the mutiny will not be aided by the promulgation of a new constitution. On the contrary, the great object should be to maintain the authority of the Company unchanged and un- impaired in prestige. At any rate, no legislation should take place except as the consequence of careful and deliberate inquiry.
"The question is unique, whether we consider the length of time that In- dia has been our dependency, or the magnitude and variety of the human races involved, or the unlikeness to ourselves of the people whose destiny we propose to determine. Such a problem clearly requires great knowledge, • Suimestions towards the Future Government of India. By Harriet Martineau. [MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT.]
patience, and disinterested sagacity, for its satisfactory solution : and there Is nothing in an insurrection, and six mouths' national agony from it, which can endow us with the requisite qualifications; but rather the contrary. We know that we are not furnished with the knowledge : as for the rest, if, as a people, we are undisturbed by passion at what has taken place, we shall be disposed to wait, in order to learn and judge: and if we are disturbed by passion so as to be impatient to be settling Indian affairs, we are clearly unfit to legislate. Whichever way it is looked at, the peculiarity of the case is a protest against precipitancy."
After forcibly pointing :out the dangers which may arise from "precipitate public opinion," Miss Martineau proceeds to a de- lineation of the political and social objects which we ought to en- deavour to attain. She points out that though representative government is impossible, yet India may have a constitution. And we may say for ourselves, that we think no part of her vo- lume more strikingly suggestive than this, where she dwells forcibly upon the much neglected distinction between constitu- tional government, which implies law and checked authority, and representative government, which implies direct popular inter- vention. It should be our aim, says Miss Martineau, to fami- liarize the Hindoos more and more with the conception of a" fun- damental law." They should be raised out of that condition of mind which forbids their conceiving any ideas on government except in connexion with the personal character or overbearing will of their rulers. "The idea of a sacred basis of law and go- vernment, independent of individual caprice, is one which could be easily and safely communicated to everybody in India." But legislation for India must be based on Anglo-Indian opinion.
"It is not to be supposed that any Parliamentary Committee that can be appointed will consider itself competent to legislate immediately for Kin- does and Mohammedans, with their antique and mediwval customs and as- sociations, and their inaccessible structure of mind. Such legislation, doubtfully practicable at best, must come, as the only feasible government has come till now, through the brains of Anglo-Indians who lose sympathy with Parliament just in proportion as they succeed in legislating for the people around them. Parliament should take a hint from this fact when oollod onto legislate for India off-hand. If the existing body of operative laws in India are working well, there is no reason for haste in the consider- ation of them : if ill, Parliament is not qualfied to improve them on the in- stant, nor to point out who can do it to better purpose than the authors and improvers of those laws."
Among other political objects, are freedom of the press, reli- gious liberty, equitable taxation, and the substitution of a civil for a military state of society. Miss Martineau protests against the mutiny being taken as an occasion for reverting to a military policy. Rather ought we, according to her, to substitute a mili- tary police for a regular army., and find work for the restless ele- ments of the population, by industrial and commercial develop- ment. We ought to promote agriculture trade, and the arts, and also to encourage colonization. Hitherto, it is only as sol- diers or governmental civilians that the English have come into contact with the Natives. Encouragement should now be given to our merchants, planters, and settlers to reside in India, so that they no longer hold the prejudiced position of interlopers, but exhibit to the Native mind the type of English citizenship. So may the Natives themselves be led to aspire to a similar citizen- ship, and through moral education become qualified by something of Anglo-Saxon loyalty, as they are now by inward faculty, for taking part in public employments. But what kind of specific educational training will they be willing to receive at our hands ? We agree with Miss Martineau that scientific teaching affords the requisite common. ground, on which an intellectual sympathy may be established. "it is a case of the extremest difficulty, we must remember ; a case in which the chasm to be bridged over is that of race, complicated with oppo- sitions in all the phases of the mind's existence. From the very outset, the formation of associations is different; the faith is (in the Hindoo case) not only different, but creating an opposite character of mind ; the action of the moral faculties, and of some of the intellectual, is inverted ; and there is nothing in the whole range of human ideas which can operate in the same way on the European and Native mind but fact, or, in its extended sense, science."
Modern science is the legitimate offspring of Christianity ; and it is by no unnatural ascent from the broad table-land of science that the ever-glorious mountains of faith, hope, and aspiration rise. It is, we trust, far from impossible that the Hindoo intellect may find in scientific training many and varied approaches to a purer and loftier faith. We trust it may be seen that the disciples of Humboldt, of Herschel, and of Faraday, may be missionaries in a real sense, preparing the way for the spiritual regeneration of the East. But meantime the function of the English in India is not primarily to instruct, but to govern. Let us supply the de- mand which really exists for stable and equitable government, and other wants may be awakened. Society may purify itself; a deeper spiritual longing may be stimulated, and India may become the scene of a home-grown religious civilization, of which Christian- ity may become the life-principle.
In discussing the "double government," Miss Martineau de- precates change, defends the Court of Directors as the body really cognizant of India, and considers that its authority should be increased rather than diminished, and freed from the over- weening influence exercised by the Board of Control. And she forcibly suggests, that if the recent mutinies be the result of shortcomings on the part of the Government, and if the Board of Control has practically governed or misgoverned India, it would be better to reform the Board itself than to depose in its favour the comparatively, blameless part of the administration. At any rate, inquiry should be instituted. It may turn out that the Directors are as little responsible for the present disorganization of India, as they were for the war in Affghanistan. The thing to be desired may be, not that the Minister should supersede the Court of Directors, but that he should himself be controlled, or at least largely influenced, by a vigorous Council with independent power of action. It is remarkable that while so much discussion has taken place about the working of the double government in London, but little has been said of the Indian Government in Calcutta. Yet this is on many accounts the more important question of the two. Many kinds of Councils and Senates for India have been proposed to be located in Cannon Row ; and Mr. H. M. Parker, in his Plan for the Home Government of India" goes so far as to include in his assembly, "six Native Indian Councillors, speaking and writing English fluently." But no one seems to have considered whether the welfare of India may not demand that the Governor-General should be provided with more numerous and more efficient ad- visers. Bu.t Mr. Campbell, the author of "India as it may be," writing in 1853, does not limit his plan of reconstruction to the Home Government merely. We have written this article in order to lay before our readers some of the opinions of an eminent political thinker on the great creation of the time. Whatever changes may have occurred, since the publication of this work, in the Parliamentary aspect of the question, they are not of a nature to diminish the force and applicability of its argument. In conclusion, we give, in Miss Martineau's own words, the sum and substance of her recommen- dations.
"We should not legislate unnecessarily in a time of excitement. We should not legislate hastily when the means of knowledge are in our hands, and the knowledge itself can be had by methods already instituted, and in time for all practical purposes. We should not legislate for a hun- dred millions of people when our field of vision is engrossed by a class of a hundred thousand. We should not legislate in a mood of depression from grief, or of passion from injury. We should not legislate by means of an unprepared House of Commons, recently elected by unwanted constitu- encies. We should not for any alight or doubtful reasons risk the distrust and alienation which will infallibly be occasioned throughout India by the deposition of the great immutable sovereign the Company, which has been the object of their allegiance for successive generations. We should not permit the deposition of such an authority in an hour of adversity, for which, if any authority is answerable, it is not mainly the Company, but in the first place the Board of Control, which has long been finally and su- premely responsible for measures of Government in relation to India. We should not hastily extinguish the power (too singular to be ever replaced) by which our Asiatic empire was acquired and has been sustained, without cost to the British people while supporting millions of them by a commerce capable of comprehending tens of millions more. We should not throw away the vast stores or crush the prodigious apparatus of Indian knowledge which exists in the midst of us, combined in the form of a government un- paralleled in the history of the world for civic success and social progres- sion; no resources being at our command for supplying the need if by act of Parliament this moving power is blown off into space and as a motive force annihilated. This is enough. We must not be rash. We are igno- rant; but that defect may be repaired, if only we will not be rash. "As for what is to be done as well as not done, we must investigate the whole subject. The Company has set on foot an inquiry into the causes of the revolt. Parliament should do the same ; and the inquiry should com- prehend a complete review of the whole theory and practice of Indian go- vernment at least from the institution of the double government till now. The requisite basis of knowledge obtained, the ulterior aims may be pur- sued and the progression of our Indian empire provided for, whether by the Company's policy, revised, amended, and brought into coalescence with the Imperial Government, or by another scheme."
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