The Press. — London, England, 1853-06-04 00:00:00

JUNE 4, 1853. Tittratart. The d idotinistratitm. of the East India Company a History of Indian Progress. By John Nil Ram Kaye. London : Bentley. THZ title of this work is a " petitio principii." Mr. Kaye styles it " a history of Indian pro gress ;" whereas the main question in dispute between the Company and the public is, whether India have made any progress under our government or no. The work itself pro fesses to be one, not of controversy, but of narrative —which latter is controversy dis guised in the most ingenious and plausible form. It has been said of some great lawyers, that their statement was worth other men's argument ; and unquestionably the very as sumption of impartiality which is inherent in the historical style enables an ingenious par tisan to employ it with considerable effect for the diffusion of his particular views. This privilege of the pamphleteer Mr. Kaye has used, but not abused. His evidence is all in favour of the Company ; but it is reliable as far as it goes. It is the truth, though not exactly the whole truth ; and, read with a knowledge of the writer's bias, it contains perhaps as useful a summary of the Indian question as any work now in print. One great merit Mr. Kaye possesses, and that a rare one with modern political authors—he carefully eschews superfluous statistics, opining rightly " that it is principally by representing men in action that the writer on Indian affitirs must hope to fix the attention of the public." In this sentence is contained the explana tion of a fact disagreeably familiar to the his torical student—the dulness, namely, of those portions of history which treat of the working of constitutional and regularly organised Go vernments in peaceful times. In proportion as the action of a Government becomes more mechanical, the influence of individual charac ter diminishes, and the narrative loses that dramatic interest which nothing except indi vidual character can create or support. This is to a great extent the ease with India, where everything is done, or supposed to be done, by rule and system ; and it has co-operated with other causes to produce that singular, and to foreigners almost incomprehensible, apathy which prevails in England on Oriental matters. The subject deserves a fuller analysis; but we must return to Mr. Kaye. Lord John Russell, early in the present ses sion, moved the House of Connnons to laughter by gravely defending the Company's adminis tration, on the ground that it was, at all events, better than that of the native princes whom it had replaced. Mr. Kaye fastens on the hint, and elaborates it into a chapter extending over fifty octavo pages,wherein the Mogul Emperors are brought into very unfavourable comparisoi with their vice-regal successors. From this clever review we can only select a few passages. not as the best, but as the most characteristic both of the author's style, and of his line of argument. He is describing the Mogul Court in the reigns of Akbar Jehanguive and Shah Jehan:— It would be tliffieult to exaggerate the idea which in those days was entertained by our countrymen of the power, wealth, and grandeur of the Great Mogul. Far above all kings and emperors, iu the imaginations of men, ranked this mighty Eastern potentate ; and two centuries later the name of the Great Mogul, capped with its traditionary magnificence those of all the potentates of the earth, in the nursery sports of English children. Nor did the con ception owe much to the prodigality of the imagination. The prince who covered acres of land with carpets of silk and gold, who reared above them stately paN thous glittering with diamonds and pearls, whose elephants and homes were lustrous with trappings of jewels and gold, whose crimson tents stretched out over long milesof level country, and whose throne the practised eyes of European lapidaries valued at six millions of English money, might well be re garded, as the most magnitieent sovereign of the earth. But magnificence is not benevolence. It must be admitted that the most lavish of o u r English v icero ys has never been more than partially aullattated.* Our splendour is at best but tinsel and tawdriness beside the lustrous magni ficence of the Mogul Courts. We have never attempted to compete with them in this direction. Let credit be allowed them for their royal progresses—their stately palaces — their gorgeous tombs. The genius of our country does not display itself in demonstrations of this kind. lint we have far greater wonde!s to show—tar gr ander spectacles *sir James Mackintosh !Spoke of Lori Wellesley as " anftas f tvd Governor-General." Lord Wellesl e y had as good an idea o vice-regal pomp as any man who peer went out to India, but at best ho was only a very little" Great Mogul." THE PRESS. to exhibit. When we hive got millions to spend we do not lock them up in peacock-thrones. And the question of public works—confess edly the weakest part of the Company's ease— ls ingeniously, but not unfairly, treated in the following sentences: — The ground upon which we here tread is rough with controversial asperities. They who, desiring to produce strong contrasts unfavouraWe to the British-Indian tiovernment, y extol and exaggerate the bene fi cenc e of the Mogul greedy are ever pointing to the remains o f the great aqueducts and reservoirs which the traveller in India stumbles upon and pauses over ; whilst another party, perhaps, with equal want of candour, declares that the Mogul princes were nothing better than selfish tyrauts, and that all the roads which were made, a ll the trees that were planted, all the wells that were dug, all the earavau serial that were erected. and all the canals that were ex cavated by them, owed their origin to nothing more ennobling than a desire to render their journeys more agreeable and their residences more habitable to their Im perial Majesties themselves. In all probability, the truth is to be found midway between these two extremes. To a certain extent, both parties are right. The Mogul Eat. perms may not have been wholly umiak' of the interests of their subjects. They were never unmindful of their own. Fortunately for the former, the claims of the two w ere nut wholly antagonistic. if the Emperor had shut himself up in a single palace, it is possible that the tine causeways and the noble aqueducts, over the remains of which we now abed our archteologiad tears, would not exist to agitate the sources of our regret. But as the Great Mogul was, by nature, of the peripatetic class—es he delighted in change of scene and change of residence—it was necessary that there should be roads over which to move the material MSS of his leviathan camp, and it was desirable that the sultriness of his regal halting-plaeex should lie mitigated by baths and fountains, supplied by a constant flow of the refreshing element. The roads were made, mud they bene fited the people. The canals were dug, and they benefited the le-ople. But, when the Emperor todered the construc tion of a nail, or the excavation of a canal, and determined the direction which either should take, it may lie doubted whether the line that was taken was always that which most promoted the internal traffic or the agricultural inigation of the country. The personal convenience of the Etuperor lane self was of more account than the happiness and prnsperity of the people. But the happiness and prosperity of the Iwo * were not wholly forgotten. The Mogul Etnperms some what reversed the sentiment contained in Barlow's' Mina. top minute on the Regulations of " It is a source of pleasing reflection," they thought, "to know that, in pro portion as we contribute to the happiness of ourterlyee and the prosperity of the Cowl, the nearer we appowelt to tlwse objects"—i.e., the welfare of the people. The " principal object" of the Mogul tiovertmwtst was certainly not the happiness of the governed. Tills is true ; and equally so is the remark of our author a few pages later—" That the beneficence of the Mogul Emperors hail nothing of it sustained character about it ; that it was personal and accidental, dependent on nothing more stable than the charneter of the individual ruler." Aml Mr. Kaye, by way of heightening the contrast, proeeeds to give instances of harsh and summary punishments inflicted by order of these Emperors, which he follows up with the perfectly correct but rather trite comment, that under our laws " the poorest coolie is entitled to all the solemn formalities of a judi cial trial. - But there are two sides to every question. A Weir and his successors were arbitrary despots, after the Oriental manner. But they were despots who knew the feelings and participated in the habits of their subjects. Under them natives of India rime to the highest degrees of civil eminence. The Hindu and the Mahometan were equally employed awl promoted. No alien race monopolised the great offices of the state, and levelled all be neath them to an equality f pauperism and servitude. Mr. Kayo shall o himself bear us witness here : The Mahomedan conqueror rapidly became Hindonised. He fused himself into the general mass of the peeple. He was not a Tartar, or an Afghan, but a Mahomedin Idian. India was his country ;he was not merely in it hu n t of it. He, or his father, or some more remote Knees , tor. had emigrated thither, and lied forgotten the mutiny he had left behind. But between the English conywror and his Jlindo• subject therein an impassable gulf. There is nothing in common between them. The British gentle• men, who fill all the principal otlieea of the state, are tint Christian Indians, but Christian Englishmen. They have brought their own costume and their own enetoms with them, and they keep them on the banks of the tiangee as they would on the Lanka of the Thames. They livea al o a t e e —utterly separated from the mass of the people—nd surrounded with a prestige of superior wisdom and se penor strength; but still, in many respects, an astonish ment and a reproach in the eyes of our benighted brethren. Our author, with a paradoxical ingenuity which is really amusing, contends that this ignorance on the part of English officials is an advantage, inasmuch as it precludes them from interfering despotically in the private affairs • See ante, page 2. 111 of those whom they govern. Our answer is a simple denial of the fact. They do interfere— they are despotic—and, though welbmeaning. they arc, in the majority of instances. profoundly unacquainted with native ideas and habits. That they mean well is an apology individually for them, but does not make min ters better as regards the people. Nor is there much more weight in Mr. Kaye 's plea, that the exclusion of a few natives from office fails to affect the happiness of the masses. Again hear the counsel now quoting with approval the language of his clients It is small consolation to the husbandman whom crops are destroyed, or to the artisan whose house is burnt to the ground, that there is no law against his sitting as a juilge, or commanding a regiment of horse. It is of far more an portauee to hint that they who romuland regiments of horse should protect instead of oppressing, and that they who sit as judges should conscientiously Stin.lllll/441 jilst to the people. It appears to me that the view taken of this matter by the coon of Dirertors of the East India Company is pre-eminently wind. " Facilities of official intercourse," they atom in an admirable letter to the Surreal° tiovernment of India, enunciating their opinions respecting the interpretation of the I shorter Art o f 11431, " can little affect the bulk of the peoph• tinder any Govtio• meat, and least under a good Government. It is not by bolding out incentives to official ambition, hut by nprpg.• ing crime, by securing and guarding property. by creating confidence, by ensuring to industry the fruit of its by putecting uwn in the 'undisturbed enjo, meta of theme rights, and in the unfettered swieise of their facultios, that tiovernment best ministers to the public wealth awl 114111111110Sti. In effect, the toms *mess to ottiee he chatty valuable when it is a part of general freedom.... In the above argument the whole point in dispute is assumed. It is contended that the welfare of the ninny and the official enspio - ment of the few ale things igeompatible, and. therefore, that the latter must give way. lint is this so'? All history, all experience, prat e` the reverse. Half the miseries of the buttons race, in every age and country, have arisen frs an rulers believing that they understl/01. th e' interests of the people better than the leeople• itself did. Were this axiom of p o litics kerne in mind, the world might be happier than it is. Finance is proverbially a (lull subject, and no amount of literary skill can make it otherwise. Mr. Kaye devotes to it 130 pages ; anti it is justice to him to say that his entolysis is clear, concise, and unencumbered with needless de tail. We cannot attempt a regular summary of his arguments, but a few isolated dicta de serve transplantation. "It is too much," he says, " a characteristic of modern Indio ad " ministration to exalt the revenue branch of " the public service at the t•xpense of the Judi " tint I believe this opinion in showed by " many of our ablest intlion ittiministrittors." A remarkable admission this, 811141 011 e 111411•44 than borne out by the facts inliliteed in Mr. Norton's celebrated pamphlet. lie dwells also, with force and truth, on the differenee between English end Indian taxation—that difference being, that whereas in England a Chancellor of the Exchequer wishing to hr popular must propose some financial noel city, were it only for variety's sake, a n d to show that he is earning his salary, the. !aleph. of India had rather put up with 1111 elleiCllt in justice than risk a change which t h ey will o ut easily believe to be designed for their benefit. The reason is plain. They lustre• been too little accustomed to kindness tee understand, far less to expect, it. For them there an' no public instruetors, and, knowing little of the inten tions of Oovernment, they a re naturally prone to suspect the worst. This is it truth which well deserves to be borne in mind, and which will lieeome even more important us the (lima power of Parlintnent over India increnses. The principal items of Indian revenue 11111 lee classed its follows : Land tax l4 titillions sterling. t:nstono , . • • • . salt 1 1011/81 • • Stamps sled miseellaneous items Akhaeree, erten on licences to spirits . . . 1 Total . . . 26 millions. Ti, which must he subled the revenues of home newly-sicquired provinces, and from which must be dedueted the charges of collection. There remains after both operations a nut • The. Court of Direetnrs to the Gmeenot Council, December 10, leaf. MS. Records. of laths la