THE POSITION OF BRITAIN IN THE WORLD.
IN the remarkable speech of Friday week in which the Under-Secretary for War introduced his Estimates, Mr. Brodrick made a statement quite en passant, and yet with a certain gravity, on which our more thoughtful readers will do well to reflect at least for a few moments. The people of the United Kingdom now possess the supreme lordship over eleven millions of square miles of the earth's surface, all of it habitable, much of it thickly inhabited, and some of it richer in potential sources of wealth than any other sections of the globe. That is to say, they own and are responsible for, sometimes in the most direct and painful way, slices of the world equal in the aggregate to fifty-five times the area of France, inhabited by a population which, though part of it has never been accurately counted, can hardly in the aggregate be less than a fourth of the whole human race, or if we exclude the Continent of Europe, where we now hold only Gib- raltar, and the territory of the yellow races, in which we possess only the foothold of birds of passage, very nearly a clear third. Over at least half that area, and at least three-fourths of that population—the proportion is really much greater, the white men outside these islands being as yet a mere fraction of the whole—our power may be roughly described as "absolute,"—that is, we can do all that any other irresponsible Government could do ; can establish, or refuse to establish, any endurable system of law ; can tax up to the limit which produces insurrection ; can organise as great auxiliary armies as we can pay ; and can start, direct, and make effective any system of instruc- tion which we may agree to adopt, and can bribe or coax or compel the people to adopt too. Under such circum- stances, is it unreasonable, can it be priggish, ought it even to be wearisome, to ask our readers, so many of whom help to govern the Kingdom, to reflect earnestly whether our intellectual strength—we are not speaking for the moment of our physical force, which gains by some annexations, e.g., that of Haussa territory—is not suffi- ciently mortgaged, whether we ought not deliberately to abstain from taking charge of more subjects, at all events in regions—e.g., the whole of the vast Mongolian region —where we have not yet begun to undertake the burden, the moral as well as physical burden, of founding an Empire? And is it not time to settle broadly, so far as short-sighted human beings may, the principles upon which we intend to proceed in governing this vast aggre- gate of human beings while they are committed to our charge ? There must be such principles, and three of them at least would seem to be clearly outlined by that destiny or Providence which has given to these little and not very fertile islands embedded in the chilly North Atlantic so vast a "sphere of influence."
(1.) We are bound if we conquer to govern, and not lazily to shirk that task under the pretext, in which none of us believe, that he dark races committed to our charge are ready for self-government.- They are not ready, or, with the chasm which we all know to exist between their thoughts and our thoughts, their aspirations and our hopes, their view and our view of the divine order, they would,' as they could at any moment, cause us to disappear, as a stratum of wheat grains would disappear in a sieve full of rape seed if the sieve were shaken. There is no power whatever in the hands of those who govern India or Africa, or, for that matter, Spanish America, to resist a general effort of the population to throw the white races out. Until they are ready our duty is to govern, to guide, to train, in short, to rule, as completely and with as little repentance as if we were angels appointed to that task. Doubt upon that point, hesitation upon that point, pro- duces nothing except fear, and with fear disappears the serenity of which alone good government can be born. It follows that we would grant no votes to dark subjects, no initiative in political action, and, except through in- surrection, no vetoing power, any more than we would grant such authority to the boys in school. The ruler should consult their opinion assiduously, not to obey it, but as a grand factor towards his comprehension of the points at which his guidance will be fruitful or the reverse, remembering, however, always that on certain moral points—as, for instance, infanticide, widow-burning, or slavery—the instinct of humanity will always give him the necessary strength. It follows that the rulers of all our subject populations should be chosen much more carefully than we now choose, that to regard such choosings as patronage is very nearly a crime, and that- those who, having been chosen, succeed in their task, should never be removed until they show symptoms either of weariness or of exhaustion of powers. To talk of a "term" for a man like Lord Cromer, or Sir George Grey, is an affront to the general in- terest of humanity, as is also too narrow a limitation of his powers. The Premier or the Colonial Secretary should choose as if he were choosing a husband for his daughter, and if the man chosen succeeded, the choice should be very nearly as permanent. There is no time in five years for a real coachman to know his cattle, or how so to drive as to bring out their powers. It follows also that the governing instrument should be a trained service, and one so treated that it is not hungry for gain and regards dismissal as a kind of sentence to civil death.
(2.) The control of dark society should be maintained always in principle, and except during insurrection always in practice, through a regime of law. The writer con- fesses that in earlier life he thought this an error, and that more could be done for two-thirds of mankind through vigorous despotism ; but the watching of years has assured him that this is a mistake, that into every human will caprice will enter, that law is the supreme educating agent, and that to give the agent its full efficacy it should have something of the inflexibility which we perceive in Nature. It is difficult in a country like this, governed bic law for generations, to bring home the reasons for thic, belief, but -there is one branch of the subject about which the grand dogma will perhaps be understood. Any fairly extensive system of law, be it English, Roman, Mahommedan, or Chinese, will if honestly carried out—and in a British territory the corruption of a Judge should be an unpardonable crime—allow the public fortune to grow almost without limits. All races are industrious if they are sure of their wealth, and except under the rarest circumstances every industrious man produces more than will keep him and his house. India is probably three times as wealthy, and Ceylon twenty times, as either were under native rulers, solely because as regards pro- perty, trade, and inheritance they have passed under rules of law which, whether wise or unwise—our law of caveat emptor works throughout our dark dominion infinite mischief—are practically inflexible. We do not believe that any able financier, or trader, or planter will dispute this proposition, and though it applies only to commercial and property law, it is equally true of the whole duty of citizenship. Any law, if it is only maintained as a law of Nature, maintains itself, gradually educates the people, enters into their instinctive morality, and relieves them of one of the greatest of all sources of human evil, the social fear which is always born when mankind is sub- jected to capricious will. For the formation of a strong society with healthy instincts, and an inherent power of progress, better the Blue Laws of Connecticut than the government of the Antonines or of Lord William Bentinck. Mahommedan Law is radically bad in principle, but it is that Law, with its imperative obligations, which has kept Mussulman vitality from dying of bad rulers. Lynch L tw is the strongest in the world, because behind it is irresistible physical force, but New York prospers as Texas never will till law has asserted its uncontested supremacy.
(3.) And lastly there must be, subject to the action of strong laws stringently carried out by an administration free from responsibility except to Great Britain, and acting in important matters through white agency alone, a steadily maintained freedom of the individual. With- out freedom there can be no progress for the body of the people, no diffusion of wealth, no development either in the general mind, or what is nearly as important, in the habit of voluntary association for the conquest of impedi- ments in the way of social advance. Wholly apart from the doctrine, which, nevertheless, we believe, that it is a crime for a Christian to own a slave, slavery is fatal to social progress, because the rulers of society can never display the higher virtues; to true citizenship, because every freeman becomes necessarily an aristocrat of the bad type ; and even to industry, because those who should work hardest become ashamed of labour. The citizens of Rome conquered their world, made slaves by the million, and thenceforward kept themselves alive upon State doles. The single compulsion to work should be the awful one set up by Nature, that you will starve if you don't ; the single limitation on work should be that it must not unfairly injure another worker. The industry of millions whose earnings are safe will soon make the community rich, as it has done even in the over-populated deltas of China or the swarming villages of Belgium. It is a mere corollary of this broad principle, that freedom is a right, that, subject to the necessity of maintaining public order and one or two rules of morality accepted by the universal conscience, men should be free to say what they like, write what they like, and learn what they like. It is only by free utterance that the foolishness of most utterance is revealed, and that men learn what English politicians learn every day,—what of wisdom there may be in the voices of the multitude. There is a good deal, if there is any residuum of truth in the ideas of democracy, and there is some which will slowly increase even when the democracy is black.
If these three principles are maintained, we may yet see an endurable and an advancing society in the vast con- tinents of which we have had the audacity to undertake the rule. If the first is abandoned, that rule, which requires at least three centuries for its full benefits to be felt, will speedily be subverted. If the second is given up, the educative effect of wise rule will be simply nil. And if the third is not reverenced, the ruled will be debased and the rulers demoralised, until the only hope for the world will lie as it lay at the end of the Roman period, in a vast upheaval or rush from outside, amidst which human society everywhere save in Europe will again be chaos. Three times already because of the neglect of these truths Asia has thrown Europe out, and Africa will be quicker, more bloodthirsty, and more complete in its success.
Previous page
