Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913
by Earl of Evelyn Baring Cromer · English · Gutenberg #17320 · 609,984 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913
Author: Earl of Evelyn Baring Cromer
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLITICAL AND LITERARY ESSAYS, 1908-1913 ***
Produced by Taavi Kalju and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Million Book Project)
POLITICAL AND LITERARY
ESSAYS
1908-1913
BY THE
EARL OF CROMER
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1913
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
PREFACE
I have to thank the editors of _The Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_,
_The Nineteenth Century and After_, and _The Spectator_ for allowing the
republication of these essays, all of which appeared originally in their
respective columns.
No important alterations or additions have been made, but I should like
to observe, as regards the first essay of the series--on "The Government
of Subject Races"--that, although only six years have elapsed since it
was written, events in India have moved rapidly during that short
period. I adhere to the opinions expressed in that essay so far as they
go, but it will be obvious to any one who has paid attention to Indian
affairs that, if the subject had to be treated now, many very important
issues, to which I have not alluded, would have to be imported into the
discussion.
CROMER.
_September 30, 1913._
CONTENTS
PAGE
"THE EDINBURGH REVIEW"
I. THE GOVERNMENT OF SUBJECT RACES 3
II. TRANSLATION AND PARAPHRASE 54
"THE QUARTERLY REVIEW"
III. SIR ALFRED LYALL 77
"THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER"
IV. ARMY REFORM 107
V. THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF FREE TRADE 127
VI. CHINA 141
VII. THE CAPITULATIONS IN EGYPT 156
"THE SPECTATOR"
VIII. DISRAELI 177
IX. RUSSIAN ROMANCE 204
X. THE WRITING OF HISTORY 214
XI. THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY 226
XII. LORD MILNER AND PARTY 237
XIII. THE FRENCH IN ALGERIA 250
XIV. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 264
XV. WELLINGTONIANA 277
XVI. BURMA 287
XVII. A PSEUDO-HERO OF THE REVOLUTION 298
XVIII. THE FUTURE OF THE CLASSICS 307
XIX. AN INDIAN IDEALIST 317
XX. THE FISCAL QUESTION IN INDIA 227
XXI. ROME AND MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 340
XXII. A ROYAL PHILOSOPHER 351
XXIII. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL 361
XXIV. PORTUGUESE SLAVERY 372
XXV. ENGLAND AND ISLAM 407
XXVI. SOME INDIAN PROBLEMS 416
XXVII. THE NAPOLEON OF TAINE 427
XXVIII. SONGS, PATRIOTIC AND NATIONAL 439
XXIX. SONGS, NAVAL AND MILITARY 449
INDEX 459
"THE EDINBURGH REVIEW"
I
THE GOVERNMENT OF SUBJECT RACES[1]
_"The Edinburgh Review," January 1908_
The "courtly Claudian," as Mr. Hodgkin, in his admirable and instructive
work, calls the poet of the Roman decadence, concluded some lines which
have often been quoted as applicable to the British Empire, with the
dogmatic assertion that no limit could be assigned to the duration of
Roman sway. _Nec terminus unquam Romanae ditionis erit._ At the time
this hazardous prophecy was made, the huge overgrown Roman Empire was
tottering to its fall. Does a similar fate await the British Empire? Are
we so far self-deceived, and are we so incapable of peering into the
future as to be unable to see that many of the steps which now appear
calculated to enhance and to stereotype Anglo-Saxon domination, are but
the precursors of a period of national decay and senility?
A thorough examination of this vital question would necessarily involve
the treatment of a great variety of subjects. The heart of the British
Empire is to be found in Great Britain. It is not proposed in this place
to deal either with the working of British political institutions, or
with the various important social and economic problems which the actual
condition of England presents, but only with the extremities of the body
politic, and more especially with those where the inhabitants of the
countries under British rule are not of Anglo-Saxon origin.
What should be the profession of faith of a sound but reasonable
Imperialist? He will not be possessed with any secret desire to see the
whole of Africa or of Asia painted red on the maps. He will entertain
not only a moral dislike, but also a political mistrust of that
excessive earth-hunger, which views with jealous eyes the extension of
other and neighbouring European nations. He will have no fear of
competition. He will believe that, in the treatment of subject races,
the methods of government practised by England, though sometimes open to
legitimate criticism, are superior, morally and economically, to those
of any other foreign nation; and that, strong in the possession and
maintenance of those methods, we shall be able to hold our own against
all competitors.
On the other hand, he will have no sympathy with those who, as Lord
Cromer said in a recent speech, "are so fearful of Imperial greatness
that they are unwilling that we should accomplish our manifest destiny,
and who would thus have us sink into political insignificance by
refusing the main title which makes us great."
An Imperial policy must, of course, be carried out with reasonable
prudence, and the principles of government which guide our relations
with whatsoever races are brought under our control must be politically
and economically sound and morally defensible. This is, in fact, the
keystone of the Imperial arch. The main justification of Imperialism is
to be found in the use which is made of the Imperial power. If we make a
good use of our power, we may face the future without fear that we shall
be overtaken by the Nemesis which attended Roman misrule. If the reverse
is the case, the British Empire will deserve to fall, and of a surety it
will ultimately fall. There is truth in the saying, of which perhaps we
sometimes hear rather too much, that the maintenance of the Empire
depends on the sword; but so little does it depend on the sword alone
that if once we have to draw the sword, not merely to suppress some
local effervescence, but to overcome a general upheaval of subject
races goaded to action either by deliberate oppression, which is highly
improbable, or by unintentional misgovernment, which is far more
conceivable, the sword will assuredly be powerless to defend us for
long, and the days of our Imperial rule will be numbered.
To those who believe that when they rest from their earthly labours
their works will follow them, and that they must account to a Higher
Tribunal for the use or misuse of any powers which may have been
entrusted to them in this world, no further defence of the plea that
Imperialism should rest on a moral basis is required. Those who
entertain no such belief may perhaps be convinced by the argument that,
from a national point of view, a policy based on principles of sound
morality is wiser, inasmuch as it is likely to be more successful, than
one which excludes all considerations save those of cynical
self-interest. There was truth in the commonplace remark made by a
subject of ancient Rome, himself a slave and presumably of Oriental
extraction, that bad government will bring the mightiest empire to
ruin.[2]
Some advantage may perhaps be derived from inquiring, however briefly
and imperfectly, into the causes which led to the ruin of that
political edifice, which in point of grandeur and extent, is alone
worthy of comparison with the British Empire. The subject has been
treated by many of the most able writers and thinkers whom the world has
produced--Gibbon, Guizot, Mommsen, Milman, Seeley, and others. For
present purposes the classification given by Mr. Hodgkin of the causes
which led to the downfall of the Western Empire has been adopted. They
were six in number, viz.:
1. The foundation of Constantinople.
2. Christianity.
3. Slavery.
4. The pauperisation of the Roman proletariat.
5. The destruction of the middle class by the fiscal oppression of the
Curiales.
6. Barbarous finance.
1. _The Foundation of Constantinople._--It is, for obvious reasons,
unnecessary to discuss this cause. It was one of special application to
the circumstances of the time, notably to the threatening attitude
towards Rome assumed by the now decadent State of Persia.
2. _Christianity._--That the foundation of Christianity exercised a
profoundly disintegrating effect on the Roman Empire is unquestionable.
Gibbon, although he possibly confounds the tenets of the new creed with
the defects of its hierarchy, dwells with characteristic emphasis on
this congenial subject.[3] Mr. Hodgkin, speaking of the analogy between
the British present and the Roman past, says:
The Christian religion is with us no explosive force threatening
the disruption of our most cherished institutions. On the contrary,
it has been said, not as a mere figure of speech, that
"Christianity is part of the common law of England." And even the
bitterest enemies of our religion will scarcely deny that, upon the
whole, a nation imbued with the teaching of the New Testament is
more easy to govern than one which derived its notions of divine
morality from the stories of the dwellers on Olympus.
From the special point of view now under consideration, the case for
Christianity admits of being even more strongly stated than this, for no
attempt will be made to deal with the principles which should guide the
government of a people imbued with the teaching of the New Testament,
but rather with the subordinate, but still highly important question of
the treatment which a people, presumed to be already imbued with that
teaching, should accord to subject races who are ignorant or irreceptive
of its precepts. From this point of view it may be said that
Christianity, far from being an explosive force, is not merely a
powerful ally. It is an ally without whose assistance continued success
is unattainable. Although dictates of worldly prudence and opportunism
are alone sufficient to ensure the rejection of a policy of official
proselytism, it is none the less true that the code of Christian
morality is the only sure foundation on which the whole of our vast
Imperial fabric can be built if it is to be durable. The stability of
our rule depends to a great extent upon whether the forces acting in
favour of applying the Christian code of morality to subject races are
capable of overcoming those moving in a somewhat opposite direction. We
are inclined to think that our Teutonic veracity and gravity, our
national conscientiousness, our British spirit of fair play, to use the
cant phrase of the day, our free institutions, and our press--which,
although it occasionally shows unpleasant symptoms of sinking beneath
the yoke of special and not highly reputable interests, is still greatly
superior in tone to that of any other nation--are sufficient guarantees
against relapse into the morass of political immorality which
characterised the relations between nation and nation, and notably
between the strong and the weak, even so late as the eighteenth
century.[4] It is to be hoped and believed that, for the time being,
this contention is well founded, but what assurance is there--if the
Book which embodies the code of Christian morality may without
irreverence be quoted--that "that which is done is that which shall be
done"?[5] That is the crucial question.
There appear to be at present existent in England two different Imperial
schools of thought, which, without being absolutely antagonistic,
represent very opposite principles. One school, which, for want of a
better name, may be styled that of philanthropy, is occasionally tainted
with the zeal which outruns discretion, and with the want of accuracy
which often characterises those whose emotions predominate over their
reason. The violence and want of mental equilibrium at times displayed
by the partisans of this school of thought not infrequently give rise to
misgivings lest the Duke of Wellington should have prophesied truly when
he said, "If you lose India, the House of Commons will lose it for
you."[6] These manifest defects should not, however, blind us to the
fact that the philanthropists and sentimentalists are deeply imbued with
the grave national responsibilities which devolve on England, and with
the lofty aspirations which attach themselves to her civilising and
moralising mission.
The other is the commercial school. Pitt once said that "British policy
is British trade." The general correctness of this aphorism cannot be
challenged, but, like most aphorisms, it only conveys a portion of the
truth; for the commercial spirit, though eminently beneficent when under
some degree of moral control, may become not merely hurtful, but even
subversive of Imperial dominion, when it is allowed to run riot.
Livingstone said that in five hundred years the only thing the natives
of Africa had learnt from the Portuguese was to distil bad spirits with
the help of an old gun barrel. This is, without doubt, an extreme
case--so extreme, indeed, that even the hardened conscience of
diplomatic Europe was eventually shamed into taking some half-hearted
action in the direction of preventing a whole continent from being
demoralised in order that the distillers and vendors of cheap spirits
might realise large profits. But it would not be difficult to cite other
analogous, though less striking, instances. Occasions are, indeed, not
infrequent when the interests of commerce apparently clash with those of
good government. The word "apparently" is used with intent; for though
some few individuals may acquire a temporary benefit by sacrificing
moral principle on the altar of pecuniary gain, it may confidently be
stated that, in respect to the wider and more lasting benefits of trade,
no real antagonism exists between commercial self-interest and public
morality.[7]
To be more explicit, what is meant when it is said that the commercial
spirit should be under some control is this--that in dealing with
Indians or Egyptians, or Shilluks, or Zulus, the first question is to
consider what course is most conducive to Indian, Egyptian, Shilluk, or
Zulu interests. We need not always inquire too closely what these
people, who are all, nationally speaking, more or less _in statu
pupillari_, themselves think is best in their own interests, although
this is a point which deserves serious consideration. But it is
essential that each special issue should be decided mainly with
reference to what, by the light of Western knowledge and experience
tempered by local considerations, we conscientiously think is best for
the subject race, without reference to any real or supposed advantage
which may accrue to England as a nation, or--as is more frequently the
case--to the special interests represented by some one or more
influential classes of Englishmen. If the British nation as a whole
persistently bears this principle in mind, and insists sternly on its
application, though we can never create a patriotism akin to that based
on affinity of race or community of language, we may perhaps foster some
sort of cosmopolitan allegiance grounded on the respect always accorded
to superior talents and unselfish conduct, and on the gratitude derived
both from favours conferred and from those to come.[8] There may then at
all events be some hope that the Egyptian will hesitate before he throws
in his lot with any future Arabi The Berberine dweller on the banks of
the Nile may, perhaps, cast no wistful glances back to the time when,
albeit he or his progenitors were oppressed, the oppression came from
the hand of a co-religionist. Even the Central African savage may
eventually learn to chant a hymn in honour of _Astraea Redux_, as
represented by the British official who denies him gin but gives him
justice. More than this, commerce will gain. It must necessarily follow
in the train of civilisation, and, whilst it will speedily droop if that
civilisation is spurious, it will, on the other hand, increase in volume
in direct proportion to the extent to which the true principles of
Western progress are assimilated by the subjects of the British king and
the customers of the British trader. This latter must be taught patience
at the hands, of the statesman and the moralist. It is a somewhat
difficult lesson to learn. The trader not only wishes to acquire wealth;
he not infrequently wishes that its acquisition should be rapid, even at
the expense of morality and of the permanent interests of his country.
Nam dives qui fieri vult,
Et cito vult fieri. Sed quae reverentia legum,
Quis metus aut pudor est unquam properantis avari?[9]
This question demands consideration from another point of view. A clever
Frenchman, keenly alive to what he thought was the decadence of his own
nation, published a remarkable book in 1897. He practically admitted
that the Anglophobia so common on the continent of Europe is the outcome
of jealousy.[10] He acknowledged the proved superiority of the
Anglo-Saxon over the Latin races, and he set himself to examine the
causes of that superiority. The general conclusion at which he arrived
was that the strength of the Anglo-Saxon race lay in the fact that its
society, its government, and its habits of thought were eminently
"particularist," as opposed to the "communitarian" principles prevalent
on the continent of Europe. He was probably quite right. It has, indeed,
become a commonplace of English political thought that for centuries
past, from the days of Raleigh to those of Rhodes, the position of
England in the world has been due more to the exertions, to the
resources, and occasionally, perhaps, to the absence of scruple found in
the individual Anglo-Saxon, than to any encouragement or help derived
from British Governments, whether of the Elizabethan, Georgian, or
Victorian type. The principle of relying largely on individual effort
has, in truth, produced marvellous results. It is singularly suited to
develop some of the best qualities of the vigorous, self-assertive
Anglo-Saxon race. It is to be hoped that self-help may long continue to
be our national watchword.
It is now somewhat the fashion to regard as benighted the school of
thought which was founded two hundred years ago by Du Quesnay and the
French Physiocrates, which reached its zenith in the person of Adam
Smith, and whose influence rapidly declined in England after the great
battle of Free Trade had been fought and won. But whatever may have been
the faults of that school, and however little its philosophy is capable
of affording an answer to many of the complex questions which modern
government and society present, it laid fast hold of one unquestionably
sound principle. It entertained a deep mistrust of Government
interference in the social and economic relations of life. Moreover, it
saw, long before the fact became apparent to the rest of the world,
that, in spite not only of some outward dissimilarities of methods but
even of an instinctive mutual repulsion, despotic bureaucracy was the
natural ally of those communistic principles which the economists deemed
it their main business in life to combat and condemn. Many regard with
some disquietude the frequent concessions which have of late years been
made in England to demands for State interference. Nevertheless, it is
to be hoped that the main principle advocated by the economists still
holds the field, that individualism is not being crushed out of
existence, and that the majority of our countrymen still believe that
State interference--being an evil, although sometimes admittedly a
necessary evil--should be jealously watched and restricted to the
minimum amount absolutely necessary in each special case.
Attention is drawn to this point in order to show that the observations
which follow are in no degree based on any general desire to exalt the
power of the State at the expense of the individual.
Our habits of thought, our past history, and our national character all,
therefore, point in the direction of allowing individualism as wide a
scope as possible in the work of national expansion. Hence the career of
the East India Company and the tendency displayed more recently in
Africa to govern through the agency of private companies. On the other
hand, it is greatly to be doubted whether the principles, which a wise
policy would dictate in the treatment of subject races, will receive
their application to so full an extent at the hands of private
individuals as would be the case at the hands of the State. The
guarantee for good government is even less solid where power is
entrusted to a corporate body, for, as Turgot once said, "La morale des
corps les plus scrupuleux ne vaut jamais celle des particuliers
honnêtes."[11] In both cases, public opinion is relatively impotent. In
the case of direct Government action, on the other hand, the views of
those who wish to uphold a high standard of public morality can find
expression in Parliament, and the latter can, if it chooses, oblige the
Government to control its agents and call them to account for unjust,
unwise, or overbearing conduct. More than this, State officials, having
no interests to serve but those of good government, are more likely to
pay regard to the welfare of the subject race than commercial agents,
who must necessarily be hampered in their action by the pecuniary
interests of their employers.
Our national policy must, of course, be what would be called in statics
the resultant of the various currents of opinion represented in our
national society. Whether Imperialism will continue to rest on a sound
basis depends, therefore, to no small extent, on the degree to which
the moralising elements in the nation can, without injury to all that
is sound and healthy in individualist action, control those defects
which may not improbably spring out of the egotism of the commercial
spirit, if it be subject to no effective check.[12]
If this problem can be satisfactorily solved, then Christianity, far
from being a disruptive force, as was the case with Rome, will prove one
of the strongest elements of Imperial cohesion.
3. _Slavery._--It is not necessary to discuss this question, for there
can be no doubt that, in so far as his connexion with subject races is
concerned, the Anglo-Saxon in modern times comes, not to enslave, but to
liberate from slavery. The fact that he does so is, indeed, one of his
best title-deeds to Imperial dominion.
4. _The Pauperisation of the Roman Proletariat._--This is the _Panem et
Circenses_ policy. Mr. Hodgkin appears to think that in this direction
lies the main danger which threatens the British Empire.
"Of all the forces," he says, "which were at work for the
destruction of the prosperity of the Roman world, none is more
deserving of the careful study of an English statesman than the
grain-largesses to the populace of Rome.... Will the great
Democracies of the twentieth century resist the temptation to use
political power as a means of material self-enrichment?"
Possibly Mr. Hodgkin is right. The manner in which the leaders of the
Paris Commune dealt with the rights of property during their disastrous,
but fortunately very brief, period of office in 1871, serves as a
warning of what, in an extreme case, may be expected of despotic
democracy in its most aggravated form. Moreover, misgovernment, and the
fiscal oppression which is the almost necessary accompaniment of
militarism dominant over a poverty-stricken population, have latterly
developed on the continent of Europe, and more especially in Italy, a
school of action--for anarchism can scarcely be dignified by the name of
a school of thought--which regards human life as scarcely more sacred
than property. It may be that some lower depth has yet to be reached,
although it is almost inconceivable that such should be the case.
Anarchy takes us past the stage of any defined political or social
programme. It would appear, so far as can at present be judged, to
embody the last despairing cry of ultra-democracy "Furens."
It is permissible to hope that our national sobriety, coupled with the
inherited traditions derived from centuries of free government, will
save us from such extreme manifestations of democratic tyranny as those
to which allusion has been made above. The special danger in England
would appear rather to arise from the probability of gradual dry rot,
due to prolonged offence against the infallible and relentless laws of
economic science. Both British employers of labour and British workmen
are insular in their habits of thought, and insular in the range of
their acquired knowledge. They do not appear as yet to be thoroughly
alive to the new position created for British trade by foreign
competition. It is greatly to be hoped that they will awake to the
realities of the situation before any permanent harm is done to British
trade, for the loss of trade involves as its ultimate result the
pauperisation of the proletariat, the adoption of reckless expedients
based on the _Panem et Circenses_ policy to fill the mouths and quell
the voices of the multitude, and finally the suicide of that Empire
which is the offspring of trade, and which can only continue to exist so
long as its parent continues to thrive and to flourish.
5. _The Destruction of the Middle Class by the Fiscal Oppression of the
Curiales._--Leaving aside points of detail, which were only of special
application to the circumstances of the time, this cause of Roman decay
may, for all purposes of comparison and instruction, be stated in the
following terms: funds, which should have been spent by the
municipalities on local objects, were, from about the close of the third
century, diverted to the Imperial Exchequer, by which they were not
infrequently squandered in such a manner as to confer no benefit of any
kind on the taxpayers, whether local or Imperial. Thus, the system of
local self-government, which, Mr. Hodgkin says, was, during the early
centuries of the Empire, "both in name and fact Republican," was
shattered.
It does not appear probable that an attempt will ever be made to divert
the public revenues of the outlying dependencies of Great Britain to the
Imperial Exchequer. The lesson taught by the loss of the American
Colonies has sunk deeply into the public mind. Moreover, the example of
Spain stands as a warning to all the world. The principle that local
revenues should be expended locally has become part of the political
creed of Englishmen; neither is it at all likely to be infringed, even
in respect to those dependencies whose rights and privileges are not
safeguarded by self-governing institutions.
There may, however, be some little danger ahead in a sense exactly
opposite to that which was incurred by Rome--the danger, that is to
say, that, under the pressure of Imperialism, backed by influential
class and personal interests, too large an amount of the Imperial
revenue may be diverted to the outlying dependencies. If this were done,
two evils might not improbably ensue.
In the first place, the British democracy might become restive under
taxation imposed for objects the utility of which would not perhaps be
fully appreciated, and might therefore be disposed to cast off too
hastily the mantle of Imperialism. It is but a short time ago that an
influential school of politicians persistently dwelt on the theme that
the colonies were a burthen to the Mother Country. Although, for the
time being, views of this sort are out of fashion, no assurance can be
felt that the swing of the pendulum may not bring round another
anti-Imperialist phase of public opinion.
In the second place, if financial aid to any considerable extent were
afforded by the British Treasury to the outlying dependencies, a serious
risk would be run that this concession would be followed at no distant
period by a plea in favour of financial control from England. The
establishment of this latter principle would strike a blow at one of the
main props on which our Imperial fabric is based. It would tend to
substitute a centralised, in the place of our present decentralised
system. Those who are immediately responsible for the administration of
our outlying dependencies will, therefore, act wisely if they abstain
from asking too readily for Imperial pecuniary aid in order to solve
local difficulties.
These considerations naturally lead to some reflections on the
principles of government adopted in those dependencies of the Empire,
the inhabitants of which are not of the Anglo-Saxon race. Colonies whose
inhabitants are mainly of British origin stand, of course, on a wholly
different footing. They carry their Anglo-Saxon institutions and habits
of thought with them to their distant homes.
Englishmen are less imitative than most Europeans in this sense--that
they are less disposed to apply the administrative and political systems
of their own country to the government of backward populations; but in
spite of their relatively high degree of political elasticity, they
cannot shake themselves altogether free from political
conventionalities. Moreover, the experienced minority is constantly
being pressed by the inexperienced majority in the direction of
imitation. Knowing the somewhat excessive degree of adulation which some
sections of the British public are disposed to pay to their special
idol, Lord Dufferin, in 1883, was almost apologetic to his countrymen
for abstaining from an act of political folly. He pleaded strenuously
for delay in the introduction of parliamentary institutions into Egypt,
on the ground that our attempts "to mitigate predominant absolutism" in
India had been slow, hesitating, and tentative. He brought poetic
metaphor to his aid. He deprecated paying too much attention to the
"murmuring leaves," in other words, imagining that the establishment of
a Chamber of Notables implied constitutional freedom, and he exhorted
his countrymen "to seek for the roots," that is to say, to allow each
Egyptian village to elect its own mayor (Sheikh).
It cannot be too clearly understood that whether we deal with the roots,
or the trunk, or the branches, or the leaves, free institutions in the
full sense of the term must for generations to come be wholly unsuitable
to countries such as India and Egypt. If the use of a metaphor, though
of a less polished type, be allowed, it may be said that it will
probably never be possible to make a Western silk purse out of an
Eastern sow's ear; at all events, if the impossibility of the task be
called in question, it should be recognised that the process of
manufacture will be extremely lengthy and tedious.
But it is often urged that, although no rational person would wish to
advocate the premature creation of ultra-liberal institutions in
backward countries, at the same time that for several reasons it is
desirable to move gradually in this direction. The adoption of this
method is, it is said, the only way to remedy the evils attendant on a
system of personal government in an extreme form; it enables us to learn
the views of the natives of the country, even although we may not accord
to the latter full power of deciding whether or not those views should
be put in practice; lastly, it constitutes a means of political
education, through the agency of which the subject race will gradually
acquire the qualities necessary to autonomy.
The force of these arguments cannot be denied, but there should be no
delusion as to the weight which should be attached to them. It has been
very truly remarked by a writer, who has dealt with the idiosyncrasies
of a singularly versatile nation, whose genius presented in every
respect a marked contrast to that of Eastern races, that from the dawn
of history Eastern politics have been "stricken with a fatal
simplicity."[13] Do not let us for one moment imagine that the fatally
simple idea of despotic rule will readily give way to the far more
complex conception of ordered liberty. The transformation, if it ever
takes place at all, will probably be the work, not of generations, but
of centuries.
So limited is the stock of political ideas in the world that some
modified copy of parliamentary institutions is, without doubt, the only
method which has yet been invented for mitigating the evils attendant on
the personal system of government. But it is a method which is
thoroughly uncongenial to Oriental habits of thought. It may be doubted
whether, by the adoption of this exotic system, we gain any real insight
into native aspirations and opinions. As to the educational process, the
experience of India is not very encouraging. The good government of most
Indian towns depends to this day mainly, not on the Municipal
Commissioners, who are generally natives, but on the influence of the
President, who is usually an Englishman.
A further consideration in connection with this point is also of some
importance. It is that British officials in Eastern countries should be
encouraged by all possible means to learn the views and the requirements
of the native population. The establishment of mock parliaments tends
rather in the opposite direction, for the official on the spot sees
through the mockery and is not infrequently disposed to abandon any
attempt to ascertain real native opinion, through disgust at the
unreality, crudity, or folly of the views set forth by the putative
representatives of native society.
For these reasons it is important that, in our well-intentioned
endeavours to impregnate the Oriental mind with our insular habits of
thought, we should proceed with the utmost caution, and that we should
remember that our primary duty is, not to introduce a system which,
under the specious cloak of free institutions, will enable a small
minority of natives to misgovern their countrymen, but to establish one
which will enable the mass of the population to be governed according to
the code of Christian morality. A freely elected Egyptian Parliament,
supposing such a thing to be possible, would not improbably legislate
for the protection of the slave-owner, if not the slave-dealer, and no
assurance can be felt that the electors of Rajputana, if they had their
own way, would not re-establish suttee. Good government has the merit of
presenting a more or less attainable ideal. Before Orientals can attain
anything approaching to the British ideal of self-government they will
have to undergo very numerous transmigrations of political thought.
The question of local self-government may be considered from another,
and almost equally important point of view.
When writers such as M. Demolins speak of the "particularist" system of
England and of the "communitarian" system prevalent on the continent of
Europe, they generally mean to contrast the British plan of acting
through the agency of private individuals with the Continental practice
of relying almost entirely on the action of the State. This is the
primary and perhaps the most important signification of the two phrases,
but the principles which these phrases are intended to represent admit
of another application.
It is difficult for those Englishmen who have not been brought into
business relations with Continental officials to realise the extreme
centralisation of their administrative and diplomatic procedures. The
tendency of every French central authority is to allow no discretionary
power whatever to his subordinate. He wishes, often from a distance, to
control every detail of the administration. The tendency of the
subordinate, on the other hand, is to lean in everything on superior
authority. He does not dare to take any personal responsibility; indeed,
it is possible to go further and say that the corroding action of
bureaucracy renders those who live under its baneful shadow almost
incapable of assuming responsibility. By force of habit and training it
has become irksome to them. They fly for refuge to a superior official,
who, in his turn, if the case at all admits of the adoption of such a
course, hastens to merge his individuality in the voluminous pages of a
code or a Government circular.
The British official, on the other hand, whether in England or abroad,
is an Englishman first and an official afterwards. He possesses his full
share of national characteristics. He is by inheritance an
individualist. He lives in a society which, so far from being, as is the
case on the Continent, saturated with respect for officialism, is
somewhat prone to regard officialism and incompetency as synonymous
terms. By such association, any bureaucratic tendency which may exist on
the part of the British official is kept in check, whilst his
individualism is subjected to a sustained and healthy course of tonic
treatment.
Thus, the British system breeds a race of officials who relatively to
those holding analogous posts on the Continent, are disposed to exercise
their central authority in a manner sympathetic to individualism; who,
if they are inclined to err in the sense of over-centralisation, are
often held in check by statesmen imbued with the decentralising spirit;
and who, under these influences, are inclined to accord to local agents
a far wider latitude than those trained in the Continental school of
bureaucracy would consider either safe or desirable.
On the other hand, looking to the position and attributes of the local
agents themselves, it is singular to observe how the habit of assuming
responsibility, coupled with national predispositions acting in the same
direction, generates and fosters a capacity for the beneficial exercise
of power. This feature is not merely noticeable in comparing British
with Continental officials, but also in contrasting various classes of
Englishmen _inter se_. The most highly centralised of all our English
offices is the War Office. For this reason, and also because a military
life necessarily and rightly engenders a habit of implicit obedience to
orders, soldiers are generally less disposed than civilians to assume
personal responsibility and to act on their own initiative.
Nevertheless, whether in military or civil life, it may be said that the
spirit of decentralisation pervades the whole British administrative
system, and that it has given birth to a class of officials who have
both the desire and the capacity to govern, who constitute what Bacon
called[14] the _Participes curarum_, namely, "those upon whom Princes
doe discharge the greatest weight of their affaires," and who are
instruments of incomparable value in the execution of a policy of
Imperialism.
The method of exercising the central control under the British system
calls for some further remarks. It varies greatly in different
localities.
Under the Indian system a council of experts is attached to the
Secretary of State in England. A good authority on this subject says[15]
that there can be no question of the advantage of this system.
No man, however experienced and laborious, could properly direct
and control the various interests of so vast an Empire, unless he
were aided by men with knowledge of different parts of the country,
and possessing an intimate acquaintance with the different and
complicated subjects involved in the government and welfare of so
many incongruous races.
On the assumption that India is to be governed from London, there can be
no doubt of the validity of this argument. But, as has been frequently
pointed out,[16] this system tends inevitably towards
over-centralisation, and if the British Government is to continue to
exercise a sort of πανκρατορία to use an expressive Greek phrase, over a
number of outlying dependencies of very various types,
over-centralisation is a danger which should be carefully shunned. It is
wiser to obtain local knowledge from those on the spot, rather than from
those whose local experience must necessarily diminish in value in
direct proportion to the length of the period during which they have
been absent from the special locality, and who, moreover, are under a
strong temptation, after they leave the dependency, to exercise a
detailed control over their successors. It is greatly to be doubted,
therefore, whether, should the occasion arise, this portion of the
Indian system is deserving of reproduction.
There is, however, another portion of that system which is in every
respect admirable, and the creation of which bears the impress of that
keen political insight which, according to many Continental authorities,
is the birthright of the Anglo-Saxon race. India is governed locally by
a council composed mainly of officials who have passed their adult lives
in the country; but the Viceroy, and occasionally the legal and
financial members of Council, are sent from England and are usually
chosen by reason of their general qualifications, rather than on account
of any special knowledge of Indian affairs. This system avoids the
dangers consequent on over-centralisation, whilst at the same time it
associates with the administration of the country some individuals who
are personally imbued with the general principles of government which
are favoured by the central authority. Its tendency is to correct the
defect from which the officials employed in the outlying portions of the
Empire are most likely to suffer, namely, that of magnifying the
importance of some local event or consideration, and of unduly
neglecting arguments based on considerations of wider Imperial import.
It enhances the idea of proportion, which is one of the main qualities
necessary to any politician or governing body. Long attention to one
subject, or group of subjects, is apt to narrow the vision of
specialists. The adjunct of an element, which is not Anglo-Indian, to
the Indian Government acts as a corrective to this evil. The members of
the Government who are sent from England, if they have no local
experience, are at all events exempt from local prejudices. They bring
to bear on the questions which come before them a wide general knowledge
and, in many cases, the liberal spirit and vigorous common sense which
are acquired in the course of an English parliamentary career.
It may be added, as a matter of important detail, that it would be
desirable, in order to give continuity to Indian policy, to select young
men to fill the place of Viceroy, and to extend the period of office
from five to seven, or even to ten years.
Although over-centralisation is to be avoided, a certain amount of
control from a central authority is not only unavoidable; if properly
exercised, it is most beneficial. One danger to which the local agent
is exposed is that, being ill-informed of circumstances lying outside
his range of political vision, he may lose sight of the general
principles which guide the policy of the Empire; he may treat subjects
of local interest in a manner calculated to damage, or even to
jeopardise, Imperial interests. The central authority is in a position
to obviate any danger arising from this cause. To ensure the harmonious
working of the different parts of the machine, the central authority
should endeavour, so far as is possible, to realise the circumstances
attendant on the government of the dependency; whilst the local agent
should be constantly on the watch lest he should overrate the importance
of some local issue, or fail to appreciate fully the difficulties which
beset the action of the central authority.
To sum up all that there is to be said on this branch of the subject, it
may be hoped that the fate which befell Rome, in so far as it was due to
the special causes of decay now under consideration, may be averted by
close adherence to two important principles. The first of these
principles is that local revenues should be expended locally. The second
is that over-centralisation should above all things be avoided. This may
be done either by the creation of self-governing institutions in those
dependencies whose civilisation is sufficiently advanced to justify the
adoption of this course; or by decentralising the executive Government
in cases where self-government, in the ordinary acceptation of the term,
is impossible or undesirable.
6. _Barbarous Finance._--Mr. Hodgkin says that the system of Imperial
taxation under the Roman Empire was "wasteful, oppressive, and in a
word, barbarous." He gives, as an instance in point, the Roman
Indiction. This was the name given to the system under which the taxable
value of the land throughout the Empire was reassessed every fifteen
years. At each reassessment, Mr. Hodgkin says, "the few who had
prospered found themselves assessed on the higher value which their
lands had acquired, while the many who were sinking down into poverty
obtained, it is to be feared, but little relief from taxation on account
of the higher rate which was charged to all."
It is somewhat unpleasant to reflect that the system which Mr. Hodgkin
so strongly condemns, and which he even regards as one of the causes of
the downfall of the Roman Empire, is--save in respect to the intervals
of periodical reassessment--very similar to that which exists everywhere
in India, except in the province of Bengal, where the rights conferred
on the zemindars under Lord Cornwallis's Permanent Settlement are still
respected in spite of occasional unwise suggestions that time and the
fall in the value of the rupee have obliterated any moral obligations to
maintain them. Nor are the results obtained in India altogether
dissimilar from those observable under Roman rule. The knowledge that
reassessment was imminent has, it is believed, often discouraged the
outlay of private capital on improving the land. More than this, it is
notorious that, at one time, some provinces suffered greatly from the
mistakes made by the settlement officers. These latter were animated
with the best intentions, but, in spite of their marked ability--for
they were all specially selected men--they often found the task
entrusted to them impossible of execution. Unfortunately political or
administrative errors cannot be condoned by reason of good intentions.
Like the Greeks of old, the natives of India suffer from the mistakes of
their rulers.
The intentions of the British, as compared with the Roman Government
are, however, noteworthy from one point of view, inasmuch as from a
correct appreciation of those intentions it is possible to evolve a
principle perhaps in some degree calculated to avert the consequences
which befell Rome, partly by reason of fiscal errors.
In spite of some high-sounding commonplaces which were at times
enunciated by Roman lawgivers and statesmen, and in which a ring of
utilitarian philosophy is to be recognised,[17] and of the further fact
that, as in the case of Verres, a check was sometimes applied to the
excesses of local Governors, it is almost certainly true that the rulers
of Rome did not habitually act on the recognition of any very strong
moral obligation binding on the Imperial Government in its treatment of
subject races. The merits of any fiscal system were probably judged
mainly from the point of view of the amount of funds which it poured
into the Treasury. The fiscal principles on which the Emperors of Rome
acted survived long after the fall of the Roman Empire. They deserve the
epithet of "barbarous" which Mr. Hodgkin has bestowed upon them.
The point of departure of the British Government is altogether
different. Its intentions are admirable. Every farthing which has been
spent--and, it may be feared, often wasted--on the numerous military
expeditions in which the Government of India has been engaged during the
last century would, in the eyes of many, certainly be considered as
expenditure incurred on objects which were of paramount interest to the
Indian taxpayers. Moreover, a whole category of British legislation
connected with fiscal matters has been undertaken, not so much with a
view to increase the revenue as with the object of distributing the
burthen of taxation equally amongst the different classes of society.
Much of this legislation has been perfectly justifiable and even
beneficial. Nevertheless, it should never be forgotten that it is
generally based on the purely Western principle that abstract justice is
in itself a desirable thing to attain, and that a fiscal or
administrative system stands condemned if it is wanting in symmetry. It
was against any extreme application of this principle that Burke
directed some of his most forcible diatribes.[18] It has been already
pointed out that the commendable want of intellectual symmetry which is
the inherited possession of the Englishman gives him a very great
advantage as an Imperialist agent over those trained in the rigid and
bureaucratic school of Continental Europe. But the Englishman is a
Western, albeit an Anglo-Saxon Western, and, from the point of view of
all processes of reasoning, the gulf which separates any one member of
the European family from another is infinitely less wide than that which
divides all Westerns from all Orientals. Even the Englishman, therefore,
is constrained--sometimes much against his will--to bow down in that
temple of Logic, the existence of which the Oriental is disposed
altogether to ignore. Indeed, sometimes the choice lies between the
enforcement on the reluctant Oriental of principles based on
logic--occasionally on the very simple science of arithmetic--or
abandoning the work of civilisation altogether. From this point of view,
the dangers to which the British Empire is exposed by reason of fiscal
measures are due not, as was the case with Rome, to barbarous, but
rather to ultra-scientific finance. The following is a case in point.
The land-tax has always been the principal source from which Oriental
potentates have derived their revenues. For all practical purposes it
may be said that the system which they have adopted has generally been
to take as much from the cultivators as they could get. Reformers, such
as the Emperor Akbar, have at times endeavoured to introduce more
enlightened methods of taxation, and to carry into practice the
theories upon which the fiscal system in all Moslem countries is based.
Those theories are by no means so objectionable as is often supposed.
But the reforms which some few capable rulers attempted to introduce
have almost always crumbled away under the régime of their
successors.[19] In practice, the only limit to the demands of the ruler
of an Oriental State has been the ability of the taxpayers to satisfy
them.[20] The only defence of the taxpayers has lain in the concealment
of their incomes at the risk of being tortured till they divulged their
amount.
Nevertheless, even under such a system as this, the wind is tempered to
the shorn lamb by the fact that Oriental rulers recognise that they
cannot get money from a man who possesses none. If, from drought or
other causes, the cultivator raises no crop, he is not required to pay
any land-tax. The idea of expropriation for the non-payment of taxes is
purely Western and modern. Under Roman law, it was the rule in contracts
for rent that a tenant was not bound to pay if any _vis major_ prevented
him from reaping.
The European system is very different. A far less heavy demand is made
on the cultivator, but he is, at all events in principle and sometimes
in practice, called upon to meet it in good and bad years alike. He is
expected to save in years of plenty in order to make good the deficit in
lean years. If he is unable to pay, he is liable to be expropriated, and
he often is expropriated. This plan is just, logical, and very Western.
It may be questioned whether Oriental cultivators do not sometimes
rather prefer the oppression and elasticity of the Eastern to the
justice and rigidity of the Western system.
Various palliatives have been adopted in India with a view to giving
some elasticity to the working of the Land Revenue system. In Egypt,
where the administration is much less Anglicised than in India, and
where, for various reasons, the treatment of this subject presents
relatively fewer difficulties, it is the practice now, as was the case
under purely native rule, to remit the taxes on what is known as
_Sharaki_ lands, that is to say, land which, owing to a low Nile, has
not been irrigated. It is not, however, necessary to dwell on the
details of this subject. It will be sufficient to draw attention to the
different points of view from which the Eastern and the Western approach
the subject of fiscal administration. The latter urges with unanswerable
logic that financial equilibrium must be maintained, and that he cannot
frame a trustworthy Budget unless he knows the amount he may count on
receiving from direct taxes, especially from the land-tax. The Eastern
replies that he knows nothing of either financial equilibrium or of
budgets, that it has, indeed, from time immemorial been the custom to
leave him nought but a bare pittance when he had money, but to refrain
from any endeavours to extort money from him when he had none.
Another instance drawn, not from the practices of fiscal administration,
but from legislation on a cognate subject, may be cited.
Directly Western civilisation comes in contact with a backward Oriental
Society, the relations between debtor and creditor are entirely changed.
A social revolution is effected. The Western applies his code with stern
and ruthless logic. The child-like Eastern, on the other hand, cannot be
made to understand that his house should be sold over his head because
he affixed his seal to a document, which, very probably, he had never
read, or, at all events, had never fully understood, and which was
presented to him by a man at one time apparently animated with
benevolent intentions, inasmuch as he wished to lend him money, but who
subsequently showed his malevolence by asking to be repaid his loan with
interest at an exorbitant rate.
Here, again, many palliatives have been suggested and some have been
applied, but many of them sin against the economic law, which provides
that legislation intended to protect a man against the consequences of
his own folly or improvidence is generally unproductive of result.
In truth, no thoroughly effective remedy can be applied in cases such as
those mentioned above, without abandoning all real attempt at progress.
Civilisation must, unfortunately, have its victims, amongst whom are to
some extent inevitably numbered those who do not recognise the paramount
necessities of the Budget system, and those who contract debts with an
inadequate appreciation of the _caveat emptor_ principle. Nevertheless,
the Western financier will act wisely if, casting aside some portion of
his Western habit of thought, he recognises the facts with which he has
to deal, and if, fully appreciating the intimate connection between
finance and politics in an Eastern country, he endeavours, so far as is
possible, to temper the clean-cut science of his fiscal measures in such
a manner as to suit the customs and intellectual standard of the subject
race with which he has to deal.
The question of the amount of taxation levied stands apart from the
method of its imposition. It may be laid down as a principle of
universal application that high taxation is incompatible with assured
stability of Imperial rule.[21]
The financier and the hydraulic engineer, who is a powerful ally of the
financier, have probably a greater potentiality of creating an
artificial and self-interested loyalty than even the judge. The reasons
are obvious. In the first place, the number of criminals, or even of
civil litigants, in any society is limited; whereas practically the
whole population consists of taxpayers. In the second place, the
arbitrary methods of administering justice practised by Oriental rulers
do not shock their subjects nearly so much as Europeans are often
disposed to think. Custom has made it in them a property of easiness.
They often, indeed, fail to appreciate the intentions, and are disposed
to resent the methods, of those whose object it is to establish justice
in the law-courts. On the other hand, the most ignorant Egyptian fellah
or Indian ryot can understand the difference between a Government which
takes nine-tenths of his crop in the shape of land-tax, and one which
only takes one-third or one-fourth. He can realise that he is better off
if the water is allowed to flow periodically on to his fields, than he
was when the influential landowner, who possessed a property up-stream
on the canal, made a dam and prevented him from getting any water at
all.
These principles would probably meet with general acceptance from all
who have considered the question of Imperial rule. They are, indeed,
almost commonplace. Unfortunately, in practice the necessity of
conforming to them is often forgotten. India is the great instance in
point. Englishmen are often so convinced that the natives of India ought
to be loyal, they hear so much said of their loyalty, they appreciate so
little the causes which are at work to produce disloyalty, and, in spite
of occasional mistakes due to errors of judgment, they are in reality so
earnestly desirous of doing what they consider, sometimes perhaps
erroneously, their duty towards the native population, that they are apt
to lose sight of the fact that the self-interest of the subject race is
the principal basis of the whole Imperial fabric. They forget, whilst
they are adding to the upper story of the house, that the foundations
may give way.
This is not the place to enter into any lengthy discussion upon Indian
affairs. It may be said, however, that the Indian history of the last
few years certainly gives cause for some anxiety. Attention was at one
time too exclusively paid to frontier policy, which constitutes only
one, and that not the most important, element of the complex Indian
problem.
That the policy of "masterly inactivity," to use the phrase
epigrammatically, but perhaps somewhat incorrectly, applied to the line
of action advocated by Lord Lawrence in 1869, required some
modifications as the onward movement of Russia in Asia developed, will
scarcely be contested by the most devoted of Lawrentian partisans and
followers. That those modifications were wisely introduced is a
proposition the truth of which it is difficult to admit. The portion of
Lord Lawrence's programme which was necessarily temporary, inasmuch as
it depended on the circumstances of the time, was rejected without
taking sufficient account of the further and far more important portion
which was of permanent application. This latter portion was defined in
an historic and oft-quoted despatch which he indited on the eve of his
departure from India, and which may be regarded as his political
testament. In this despatch, Lord Lawrence, speaking with all the
authority due to a lifelong acquaintance with Indian affairs, laid down
the broad general principle that the strongest security of our rule lay
"in the contentment, if not in the attachment, of the masses."[22] The
truth of this general principle was at one time too much neglected.
Under the influence of a predominant militarism acting on too pliant
politicians, vast military expenditure was incurred. Territory lying
outside the natural geographical frontier of India was occupied, the
acquisition of which was condemned not merely by sound policy, but also
by sound strategy. Taxation was increased, and, generally, the material
interests of the natives of India were sacrificed and British Imperial
rule exposed to subsequent danger, in order to satisfy the exigencies of
a school of soldier-politicians who only saw one, and that the most
technical, aspect of a very wide and complex question.
Neither, unfortunately, is there any sure guarantee that the mistakes,
which it is now almost universally admitted were made, will not recur.
Where, indeed, are we to look for any effective check? The rulers of
India, whether they sit in Calcutta or London, may again be carried away
by the partial views of an influential class, or of a few masterful
individuals. It is absurd to speak of creating free institutions in
India to control the Indian Government. Experience has shown that
parliamentary action in England not infrequently degenerates into
acrimonious discussion and recrimination dictated by party passion; in
any case, it is generally too late to change the course of events. Still
less reliance can be placed on the action of the British Press, which
falls a ready victim to the specious arguments advanced by some
strategical pseudo-Imperialist in high position, or by some fervent
acolyte who has learnt at the feet of his master the fatal and facile
lesson of how an Empire, built up by statesmen, may be wrecked by the
well-intentioned but mistaken measures recommended by specialists to
ensure Imperial salvation. The managers of the London newspapers afford,
indeed, be it said to their credit, every facility for the publication
of views adverse to those which they themselves advocate. But it is none
the less true that, during the years when the unwise frontier policy of
a few years ago was being planned and executed, the voices of the
opposition, although they were those of Indian statesmen and officials
who could speak with the highest authority, failed to obtain an adequate
hearing until the evil was irremediable. On the other hand, the views of
the strategical specialists went abroad over the land, with the result
that ill-informed and careless public opinion followed their advice
without having any very precise idea of whither it was being led.
It would appear, therefore, that there is need for great care and
watchfulness in the management of Indian affairs. That same
inconsistency of character and absence of definite aim, which are such
notable Anglo-Saxon qualities and which adapt themselves so admirably to
the requirements of Imperial rule, may in some respects constitute an
additional danger. If we are not to adopt a policy based on securing the
contentment of the subject race by ministering to their material
interests, we must of necessity make a distinct approach to the
counter-policy of governing by the sword alone. In that case, it would
be as well not to allow a free native Press, or to encourage high
education. Any repressive or retrograde measures in either of these
directions would, without doubt, meet with strong and, to a great
extent, reasonable opposition in England. A large section of the public,
forgetful of the fact that they had stood passively by whilst measures,
such as the imposition of increased taxes, which the natives of India
really resent, were adopted, would protest loudly against the adoption
of other measures which are, indeed, open to objection, but which
nevertheless touch Oriental in a far less degree than they affect
Western public feeling. The result of this inconsistency is that our
present system rather tends to turn out demagogues from our colleges, to
give them every facility for sowing their subversive views broadcast
over the land, and at the same time to prepare the ground for the
reception of the seed which they sow. Now this is the very reverse of a
sound Imperial policy. We cannot, it is true, effectually prevent the
manufacture of demagogues without adopting measures which would render
us false to our acknowledged principles of government and to our
civilising mission. But we may govern in such a manner as to give the
demagogue no fulcrum with which to move his credulous and ill-informed
countrymen and co-religionists. The leading principle of a government of
this nature should be that low taxation is the most potent instrument
with which to conjure discontent. This is the policy which will tend
more than any other to the stability of Imperial rule. If it is to be
adopted, two elements of British society will have to be kept in check
at the hands of the statesman acting in concert with the moralist. These
are Militarism and Commercial Egotism. The Empire depends in a great
degree on the strength and efficiency of its army. It thrives on its
commerce. But if the soldier and the trader are not kept under some
degree of statesmanlike control, they are capable of becoming the most
formidable, though unconscious, enemies of the British Empire.
It will be seen, therefore, that though there are some disquieting
circumstances attendant on our Imperial rule, the general result of an
examination into the causes which led to the collapse of Roman power,
and a comparison of those causes with the principles on which the
British Empire is governed, are, on the whole, encouraging. To every
danger which threatens there is a safeguard. To every portion of the
body politic in which symptoms of disease may occur, it is possible to
apply a remedy.
Christianity is our most powerful ally. We are the sworn enemies of the
slave-dealer and the slave-owner. The dangers arising from the possible
pauperisation of the proletariat may, it is to be hoped, be averted by
our national character and by the natural play of our time-honoured
institutions. If we adhere steadily to the principle that local revenues
are to be expended locally, and if, at the same time, we give all
reasonable encouragement to local self-government and shun any tendency
towards over-centralisation, we shall steer clear of one of the rocks on
which the Roman ship of state was wrecked. Unskilful or unwise finance
is our greatest danger, but here again the remedy lies ready to hand if
we are wise enough to avail ourselves of it. It consists in adapting our
fiscal methods to the requirements of our subject races, and still more
in the steadfast rejection of any proposals which, by rendering high
taxation inevitable, will infringe the cardinal principle on which a
sound Imperial policy should be based. That principle is that, whilst
the sword should be always ready for use, it should be kept in reserve
for great emergencies, and that we should endeavour to find, in the
contentment of the subject race, a more worthy and, it may be hoped, a
stronger bond of union between the rulers and the ruled.
If any more sweeping generalisation than this is required, it may be
said that the whole, or nearly the whole, of the essential points of a
sound Imperial policy admit of being embodied in this one statement,
that, whilst steadily avoiding any movement in the direction of official
proselytism, our relations with the various races who are subjects of
the King of England should be founded on the granite rock of the
Christian moral code.
Humanity, as it passes through phase after phase of the historical
movement, may advance indefinitely in excellence; but its advance
will be an indefinite approximation to the Christian type. A
divergence from that type, to whatever extent it may take place,
will not be progress, but debasement and corruption. In a moral
point of view, in short, the world may abandon Christianity, but
can never advance beyond it. This is not a matter of authority, or
even of revelation. If it is true, it is a matter of reason as much
as anything in the world.[23]
[Footnote 1: _Italy and Her Invaders_. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1892.]
[Footnote 2: Male imperando summum imperium amittitur.--PUBLIUS
SYRUS.]
[Footnote 3: _Decline and Fall_, chap. xx.]
[Footnote 4: Any one who wishes to gain an insight into the fundamental
principles which governed those relations cannot do better than read the
opening chapters of Sorel's _L'Europe et la Révolution Française_.]
[Footnote 5: Ecclesiastes i. 9.]
[Footnote 6: _Life and Letters of Sir James Graham_, vol. ii. p. 328.]
[Footnote 7: Lord Farrer says: "It is the privilege of honourable trade
that, like mercy, it is twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives and
him that takes; each of its dealings is of necessity a benefit to both
parties. But traders and speculators are not always the most scrupulous
of mankind. Their dealings with savage and half-civilised nations too
often betray sharp practice, sometimes violence and wrong. The persons
who carry on our trade on the outskirts of civilisation are not
distinguished by a special appreciation of the rights of others, nor are
the speculators, who are attracted by the enormous profits to be made by
precarious investments in half-civilised countries, people in whose
hands we should desire to place the fortunes or reputation of our
country. When a difficulty arises between ourselves and one of the
weaker nations, these are the persons whose voice is most loudly raised
for acts of violence, of aggression, or of revenge."--_The State in its
Relation to Trade_, p. 177.]
[Footnote 8: It should never be forgotten that, in Oriental countries,
whatever good is done to the masses is necessarily purchased at the
expense of incurring the resentment of the ruling classes, who abused
the power they formerly possessed. Seeley (_Expansion of England_, p.
320) says with great truth: "It would be very rash to assume that any
gratitude, which may have been aroused here and there by our
administration, can be more than sufficient to counterbalance the
discontent which we have excited among those whom we have ousted from
authority and influence."]
[Footnote 9: Juvenal, xiv. 176-8.]
[Footnote 10: "La supériorité des Anglo-Saxons! Si on ne la proclame
pas, on la subit et on la redoute; les craintes, les méfiances et
parfois les haines que soulève l'Anglais l'attestent assez haut....
"Nous ne pouvons faire un pas à travers le monde, sans rencontrer
l'Anglais. Nous ne pouvons jeter les yeux sur nos anciennes possessions,
sans y voir flotter le pavilion anglais." _A Quoi tient la Supériorité
des Anglo-Saxons?_--Demolins. This work, as well as another on much the
same subject (_L'Europa giovane_, by Guglielmo Ferrero), were reviewed
in the _Edinburgh Review_ for January 1898.]
[Footnote 11: _Vie de Turgot_, i. 47. In the debate on the India Act in
1858, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, whose views were generally
distinguished for their moderation, said: "I do most confidently
maintain that no civilised Government ever existed on the face of this
earth which was more corrupt, more perfidious, and more capricious than
the East India Company was from 1758 to 1784, when it was placed under
Parliamentary control."]
[Footnote 12: "It still remains true that there is a large body of
public opinion in England which carries into all politics a sound moral
sense, and which places a just and righteous policy higher than any mere
party interest. It is on the power and pressure of this opinion that the
high character of English government must ultimately depend."--_Map of
Life_, Lecky, p. 184. It will be a matter for surprise if the
ultra-bureaucratic spirit, coupled with a somewhat pronounced degree of
commercial egotism, do not prove the two rocks on which German colonial
enterprise will be eventually shipwrecked.]
[Footnote 13: Butcher, _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_, p. 27.]
[Footnote 14: _Essays_. "Of Honour and Reputation."]
[Footnote 15: _Sir Charles Wood's Administration of Indian Affairs,
1859-66._ West. 1867. Sir Algernon West was Private Secretary to Sir
Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, who was the first Secretary of
State for India appointed after the passing of the India Act of 1858,
and, therefore, inaugurated the new system.]
[Footnote 16: See, _inter alia_, Chesney's _Indian Polity_, p. 136.]
[Footnote 17: Perhaps the best-known example is "Salus populi suprema
lex esto," a maxim which, as Selden has pointed out (_Table Talk_,
ciii.), is very frequently misapplied. See also the advice given by the
Emperor Claudius to the Parthian Mithridates (Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 11).]
[Footnote 18: "The idea of forcing everything to an artificial equality
has something, at first view, very captivating in it. It has all the
appearance imaginable of justice and good order; and very many persons,
without any sort of partial purposes, have been led to adopt such
schemes, and to pursue them with great earnestness and warmth. Though I
have no doubt that the minute, laborious, and very expensive _cadastre_,
which was made by the King of Sardinia, has done no sort of good, and
that after all his pains a few years will restore all things to their
first inequality, yet it has been the admiration of half the reforming
financiers of Europe; I mean the official financiers, as well as the
speculative."--_Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis_, ii. 126.]
[Footnote 19: Mill, _History of British India_, vi. 433.]
[Footnote 20: Elphinstone, _History of India_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 21: Lord Lawrence said: "Light taxation is, in my mind, the
panacea for foreign rule in India." Bosworth Smith, _Life of Lord
Lawrence_, vol. ii. p. 497.]
[Footnote 22: The essential portions of this despatch, in so far as the
purposes of the present argument are concerned, are given in Sir Richard
Temple's work (p. 185), and in Bosworth Smith's _Life of Lord Lawrence_,
vol. ii. p. 186.]
[Footnote 23: Goldwin Smith, _Lectures on the Study of History_, p.
154.]
II
TRANSLATION AND PARAPHRASE
_"The Edinburgh Review," July 1913_
When Emerson said "We like everything to do its office, whether it be a
milch-cow or a rattlesnake," he assumed, perhaps somewhat too hastily in
the latter case, that all the world understands the functions which a
milch-cow or a rattlesnake is called upon to perform. No one can doubt
that the office of a translator is to translate, but a wide difference
of opinion may exist, and, in fact, has always existed, as to the
latitude which he may allow himself in translating. Is he to adhere
rigidly to a literal rendering of the original text, or is paraphrase
permissible, and, if permissible, within what limits may it be adopted?
In deciding which of these courses to pursue, the translator stands
between Scylla and Charybdis. If he departs too widely from the precise
words of the text, he incurs the blame of the purist, who will accuse
him of foisting language on the original author which the latter never
employed, with the possible result that even the ideas or sentiments
which it had been intended to convey have been disfigured. If, on the
other hand, he renders word for word, he will often find, more
especially if his translation be in verse, that in a cacophonous attempt
to force the genius of one language into an unnatural channel, the whole
of the beauty and even, possibly, some of the real meaning of the
original have been allowed to evaporate. Dr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, in an
instructive article on Translation contributed to the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ quotes the high authority of Dryden as to the course which
should be followed in the execution of an ideal translation.
A translator (Dryden writes) that would write with any force or
spirit of an original must never dwell on the words of his author.
He ought to possess himself entirely, and perfectly comprehend the
genius and sense of his author, the nature of the subject, and the
terms of the art or subject treated of; and then he will express
himself as justly, and with as much life, as if he wrote an
original; whereas he who copies word for word loses all the spirit
in the tedious transfusion.
In the application of Dryden's canon a distinction has to be made
between prose and verse. The composition of good prose, which Coleridge
described as "words in the right order," is, indeed, of the utmost
importance for all the purposes of the historian, the writer on
philosophy, or the orator. An example of the manner in which fine prose
can bring to the mind a vivid conception of a striking event is Jeremy
Collier's description of Cranmer's death, which excited the enthusiastic
admiration of Mr. Gladstone.[24] He seemed [Collier wrote] "to repel the
force of the fire and to overlook the torture, by strength of thought."
Nevertheless, the main object of the prose writer, and still more of the
orator, should be to state his facts or to prove his case. Cato laid
down the very sound principle "rem tene, verba sequentur," and
Quintilian held that "no speaker, when important interests are involved,
should be very solicitous about his words." It is true that this
principle is one that has been more often honoured in the breach than
the observance. Lucian, in his _Lexiphanes_,[25] directs the shafts of
his keen satire against the meticulous attention to phraseology
practised by his contemporaries. Cardinal Bembo sacrificed substance to
form to the extent of advising young men not to read St. Paul for fear
that their style should be injured, and Professor Saintsbury[26]
mentions the case of a French author, Paul de Saint-Victor, who "used,
when sitting down to write, to put words that had struck his fancy at
intervals over the sheet, and write his matter in and up to them." These
are instances of that word-worship run mad which has not infrequently
led to dire results, inasmuch as it has tended to engender the belief
that statesmanship is synonymous with fine writing or perfervid oratory.
The oratory in which Demosthenes excelled, Professor Bury says,[27] "was
one of the curses of Greek politics."
The attention paid by the ancients to what may be termed tricks of style
has probably in some degree enhanced the difficulties of prose
translation. It may not always be easy in a foreign language to
reproduce the subtle linguistic shades of Demosthenic oratory--the
Anaphora (repetition of the same word at the beginning of co-ordinate
sentences following one another), the Anastrophe (the final word of a
sentence repeated at the beginning of one immediately following), the
Polysyndeton (the same conjunction repeated), or the Epidiorthosis (the
correction of an expression). Nevertheless, in dealing with a prose
composition, the weight of the arguments, the lucidity with which the
facts are set forth, and the force with which the conclusions are driven
home, rank, or should rank, in the mind of the reader higher than any
feelings which are derived from the music of the words or the skilful
order in which they are arranged. Moreover, in prose more frequently
than in verse, it is the beauty of the idea expressed which attracts
rather than the language in which it is clothed. Thus, for instance,
there can be no difficulty in translating the celebrated metaphor of
Pericles[28] that "the loss of the youth of the city was as if the
spring was taken out of the year," because the beauty of the idea can in
no way suffer by presenting it in English, French, or German rather than
in the original Greek. Again, to quote another instance from Latin, the
fine epitaph to St. Ovinus in Ely Cathedral: "Lucem tuam Ovino da, Deus,
et requiem," loses nothing of its terse pathos by being rendered into
English. Occasionally, indeed, the truth is forced upon us that even in
prose "a thing may be well said once but cannot be well said twice" (τὸ
καλῶς εἰπεῖν ἅπαξ περιγίγνεται, δὶς δὲ οὐκ ἐνδέχεται), but this is
generally because the genius of one language lends itself with special
ease to some singularly felicitous and often epigrammatic form of
expression which is almost or sometimes even quite untranslatable. Who,
for instance, would dare to translate into English the following
description which the Duchesse de Dino[29] gave of a lady of her
acquaintance: "Elle n'a jamais été jolie, mais elle était blanche et
fraîche, _avec quelques jolis détails"_? On the whole, however, it may
be said that if the prose translator is thoroughly well acquainted with
both of the languages which he has to handle, he ought to be able to pay
adequate homage to the genius of the one without offering undue violence
to that of the other.
The case of the translator of poetry, which Coleridge defined as "the
best words in the best order," is manifestly very different. A phrase
which is harmonious or pregnant with fire in one language may become
discordant, flat, and vapid when translated into another. Shelley spoke
of "the vanity of translation." "It were as wise (he said) to cast a
violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of
its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into
another the creations of a poet."
Longinus has told us[30] that "beautiful words are the very light of
thought" (φῶς γὰρ τῷ ὄντι ἴδιον τοῦ νοῦ τὰ καλὰ ὀνόματα), but it will
often happen, in reading a fine passage, that on analysing the
sentiments evoked, it is difficult to decide whether they are due to
the thought or to the beauty of the words. A mere word, as in the case
of Edgar Poe's "Nevermore," has at times inspired a poet. When Keats,
speaking of Melancholy, says:
She lives with Beauty--Beauty that must die--
And Joy, whose hand is ever on his lips,
Bidding adieu,
or when Mrs. Browning writes:
... Young
As Eve with Nature's daybreak on her face,
the pleasure, both of sense and sentiment, is in each case derived alike
from the music of the language and the beauty of the ideas. But in such
lines as
Arethusa arose from her couch of snows, etc.,
or Coleridge's description of the river Alph running
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea,
it is the language rather than the idea which fascinates. Professor
Walker, speaking of the most exquisitely harmonious lyric ever written
in English, or perhaps in any other language,[31] says with great truth:
"The reader of _Lycidas_ rises from it ready to grasp the 'two-handed
engine' and smite; though he may be doubtful what the engine is, and
what is to be smitten."
It may be observed, moreover, that one of the main difficulties to be
encountered in translating some of the masterpieces of ancient
literature arises from their exquisite simplicity. Although the
indulgence in glaring improprieties of language in the pursuit of
novelty of thought was not altogether unknown to the ancients, and was,
indeed, stigmatised by Longinus with the epithet of "corybantising,"[32]
the full development of this pernicious practice has been reserved for
the modern world. Dryden made himself indirectly responsible for a good
deal of bad poetry when he said that great wits were allied to madness.
The late Professor Butcher,[33] as also Lamb in his essay on "The Sanity
of True Genius," have both pointed out that genius and high ability are
eminently sane.
In some respects it may be said that didactic poetry affords special
facilities to the translator, inasmuch as it bears a more close relation
to prose than verse of other descriptions. Didactic poets, such as
Lucretius and Pope, are almost forced by the inexorable necessities of
their subjects to think in prose. However much we may admire their
verse, it is impossible not to perceive that, in dealing with subjects
that require great precision of thought, they have felt themselves
hampered by the necessities of metre and rhythm. They may, indeed,
resort to blank verse, which is a sort of half-way house between prose
and rhyme, as was done by Mr. Leonard in his excellent translation of
Empedocles, of which the following specimen may be given:
οὐκ ἔστιν πελάσασθαι ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἐφεκτὸν
ἡμετέροις ἢ χερσὶ λαβεῖν, ᾗπερ τε μεγίστη
πειθοῦς ἀνθρώποισιν ἁμαξιτὸς εἰς φρένα πίπτει.
We may not bring It near us with our eyes,
We may not grasp It with our human hands.
With neither hands nor eyes, those highways twain,
Whereby Belief drops into the minds of men.
But Dr. Symmons, one of the numerous translators of Virgil, said, with
some truth, that the adoption of blank verse only involves "a laborious
and doubtful struggle to escape from the fangs of prose."[34]
A good example of what can be done in this branch of literature is
furnished by Dryden. Lucretius[35] wrote:
Tu vero dubitabis et indignabere obire?
Mortua cui vita est prope iam vivo atque videnti,
Qui somno partem maiorem conteris aevi,
Et vigilans stertis nec somnia cernere cessas
Sollicitamque geris cassa formidine mentem
Nec reperire potes tibi quid sit saepe mali, cum
Ebrius urgeris multis miser undique curis,
Atque animi incerto fluitans errore vagaris.
Dryden's translation departs but slightly from the original text and at
the same time presents the ideas of Lucretius in rhythmical and
melodious English:
And thou, dost thou disdain to yield thy breath,
Whose very life is little more than death?
More than one-half by lazy sleep possest,
And when awake, thy soul but nods at best,
Day-dreams and sickly thoughts revolving in thy breast.
Eternal troubles haunt thy anxious mind,
Whose cause and case thou never hopest to find,
But still uncertain, with thyself at strife,
Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life.
Descriptive poetry also lends itself with comparative ease to
translation. Nothing can be better than the translation made by Mr.
Gladstone[36] of _Iliad_ iv. 422-32. The original Greek runs thus:
ὡς δ' ὅτ' ἐν αἰγιαλῷ πολυηχέι· κῦμα θαλάσσης
ὄρνυτ' ἐπασσύτερον Ζεφύρου ὕπο κινήσαντος·
πόντῳ μέν τε πρῶτα κορύσσεται, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα
χέρσῳ ῥηγνύμενον μεγάλα βρέμει, ἀμφὶ δέ τ' ἄκρας
κυρτὸν ἐὸν κορυφοῦται, ἀποπτύει δ' ἁλὸς ἄχνην·
ὧς τότ' ἐπασσύτεραι Δαναῶν κίνυντο φάλαγγες
νωλεμέως πόλεμόνδε. κέλευε δὲ οἷσιν ἕκαστος
ἡγεμόνων· οἱ δ' ἄλλοι ἀκὴν ἴσαν, οὐδέ κε φαίης
τόσσον λαὸν ἕπεσθαι ἔχοντ' ἐν στήθεσιν αὐδήν,
σιγῇ, δειδιότες σημάντορας· ἀμφὶ δὲ πᾶσι
τεύχεα ποικίλ' ἔλαμπε, τὰ εἱμένοι ἐστιχόωντο.
Mr. Gladstone, who evidently drew his inspiration from the author of
"Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake," translated as follows:
As when the billow gathers fast
With slow and sullen roar,
Beneath the keen north-western blast,
Against the sounding shore.
First far at sea it rears its crest,
Then bursts upon the beach;
Or with proud arch and swelling breast,
Where headlands outward reach,
It smites their strength, and bellowing flings
Its silver foam afar--
So stern and thick the Danaan kings
And soldiers marched to war.
Each leader gave his men the word,
Each warrior deep in silence heard,
So mute they marched, them couldst not ken
They were a mass of speaking men;
And as they strode in martial might
Their flickering arms shot back the light.
It is, however, in dealing with poetry which is neither didactic nor
descriptive that the difficulty--indeed often the impossibility--of
reconciling the genius of the two languages becomes most apparent. It
may be said with truth that the best way of ascertaining how a fine or
luminous idea can be presented in any particular language is to set
aside altogether the idea of translation, and to inquire how some master
in the particular language has presented the case without reference to
the utterances of his predecessors in other languages. A good example of
this process may be found in comparing the language in which others have
treated Vauvenargues' well-known saying: "Pour exécuter de grandes
choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir."
Bacchylides[37] put the same idea in the following words:
θνατὸν εὖντα χρὴ διδύμους ἀέξειν
γνώμας, ὅτι τ' αὔριον ὄψεαι
μοῦνον ἁλίου φάος,
χὥτι πεντήκοντ' ἔτεα
ζωὰν βαθύπλουτον τελεῖς.[38]
And the great Arab poet Abu'l'Ala, whose verse has been admirably
translated by Mr. Baerlein, wrote:
If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.
Another instance of the same kind, which may be cited without in any way
wishing to advance what Professor Courthope[39] very justly calls "the
mean charge of plagiarism," is Tennyson's line, "His honour rooted in
dishonour stood." Euripides[40] expressed the same idea in the following
words:
ἐκ τῶν γὰρ αἰσχρῶν ἐσθλὰ μηχανώμεθα.
To cite another case, the following lines of _Paradise Lost_ may be
compared with the treatment accorded by Euripides to the same subject:
Oh, why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With spirits masculine, create at last
This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
With men as Angels, without feminine;
Or find some other way to generate
Mankind?
Euripides wrote:
ὦ Ζεῦ, τί δὴ κίβδηλον ἀνθρώποις κακόν,
γυναῖκας ἐς φῶς ἡλίου κατῴκισας;
εἰ γὰρ βρότειον ἤθελες σπεῖραι γένος,
οὐκ ἐκ γυναικῶν χρῆν παρασχέσθαι τόδε.[41]
Apart, however, from the process to which allusion is made above, very
many instances may, of course, be cited, of translations properly so
called which have reproduced not merely the exact sense but the vigour
of the original idea in a foreign language with little or no resort to
paraphrase. What can be better than Cowley's translation of Claudian's
lines?--
Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum
Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus.
A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees,
thus, as Gibbon says,[42] improving on the original, inasmuch as, being
a good botanist, Cowley "concealed the oaks under a more general
expression."
Take also the case of the well-known Latin epigram:
Omne epigramma sit instar apis: sit aculeus illi;
Sint sua mella; sit et corporis exigui.
It has frequently been translated, but never more felicitously or
accurately than by the late Lord Wensleydale:
Be epigrams like bees; let them have stings;
And Honey too, and let them be small things.
On the other hand, the attempt to adhere too closely to the text of the
original and to reject paraphrase sometimes leads to results which can
scarcely be described as other than the reverse of felicitous. An
instance in point is Sappho's lines:
καὶ γὰρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέως διώξει,
αἰ δὲ δῶρα μὴ δέκετ', ἄλλα δώσει,
αἰ δὲ μὴ φίλει, ταχέως φιλήσει
κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα.
So great a master of verse as Mr. Headlam translated thus:
The pursued shall soon be the pursuer!
Gifts, though now refusing, yet shall bring
Love the lover yet, and woo the wooer,
Though heart it wring!
Many of Mr. Headlam's translations are, however, excellent, more
especially those from English into Greek. He says in his preface:
"Greek, in my experience, is easier to write than English." He has
admirably reproduced the pathetic simplicity of Herrick's lines:
Here a pretty baby lies,
Sung to sleep with Lullabies;
Pray be silent and not stir
The easy earth that covers her.
μήτηρ βαυκαλόωσά μ' ἐκοίμισεν· ἀτρέμα βαῖνε
μὴ 'γείρῃς κούφην γῆν μ' ἐπιεσσόμενον.
Many singularly happy attempts to render English into Latin or Greek
verse are given in Mr. Kennedy's fascinating little volume _Between
Whiles_, of which the following example may be quoted:
Few the words that I have spoken;
True love's words are ever few;
Yet by many a speechless token
Hath my heart discoursed to you.
οἶδα παῦρ' ἔπη λαλήσας· παῦρ' ἔρως λαλεῖν φιλεῖ·
ξυμβόλοις δ' ὅμως ἀναύδοις σοὶ τὸ πᾶν ᾐνιξάμην.
The extent to which it is necessary to resort to paraphrase will, of
course, vary greatly, and will largely depend upon whether the language
into which the translation is made happens to furnish epithets and
expressions which are rhythmical and at the same time correspond
accurately to those of the original. Take, for instance, a case such as
the following fragment of Euripides:
τὰ μὲν διδακτὰ μανθάνω, τὰ δ' εὑρετὰ
ζητῶ, τὰ δ' εὐκτὰ παρὰ θεῶν ᾐτησάμην.
There is but little difficulty in turning this into English verse with
but slight resort to paraphrase:
I learn what may be taught;
I seek what may be sought;
My other wants I dare
To ask from Heaven in prayer,
But in a large majority of cases paraphrase is almost imposed on the
translator by the necessities of the case. Mr. William Cory's rendering
of the famous verses of Callimachus on his friend Heraclitus, which is
too well known to need quotation, has been justly admired as one of the
best and most poetic translations ever made from Greek, but it can
scarcely be called a translation in the sense in which that term is
employed by purists. It is a paraphrase.
It is needless to dwell on the difficulty of finding any suitable words
capable of being adapted to the necessities of English metre and rhythm
for the numerous and highly poetic adjectives in which the Greek
language abounds. It would tax the ingenuity of any translator to weave
into his verse expressions corresponding to the ἁλιερκέες ὄχθαι
(sea-constraining cliffs) or the Μναμοσύνας λιπαράμπυκος (Mnemosyne of
the shining fillet) of Pindar. Neither is the difficulty wholly confined
to poetry. A good many epithets have from time to time been applied to
the Nile, but none so graphic or so perfectly accurate as that employed
by Herodotus,[43] who uses the phrase ὑπὸ τοσούτου τε ποταμοῦ καὶ οὕτω
ἐργατικοῦ. The English translation "that vast river, so constantly at
work" is a poor equivalent for the original Greek. German possesses to a
greater degree than any other modern language the word-coining power
which was such a marked characteristic of Greek, with the result that it
offers special difficulties to the translator of verse. Mr. Brandes[44]
quotes the following lines of the German poet Bücher:
Welche Heldenfreudigkeit der Liebe,
Welche Stärke muthigen Entsagens,
Welche himmlisch erdentschwungene Triebe,
Welche Gottbegeistrung des Ertragens!
Welche Sich-Erhebung, Sich-Erwiedrung,
Sich-Entäussrung, völl'ge Hin-sich-gebung,
Seelenaustausch, Ineinanderlebung!
It is probable that these lines have never been translated into English
verse, and it is obvious that no translation, which did not largely
consist of paraphrase, would be possible.
Alliteration, which is a powerful literary instrument in the hands of a
skilful writer, but which may easily be allowed to degenerate into a
mere jingle, is of less common occurrence in Greek than in English,
notably early English, literature. It was, however, occasionally
employed by both poets and dramatists. Euripides, for instance, in the
_Cyclops_ (l. 120) makes use of the following expression, which would
serve as a good motto for an Anarchist club, ἀκούει δ' οὐδὲν οὐδεὶς
οὐδενός. Clytemnestra, also, in speaking of the murder of her husband
(_Ag._ 1551-52) says:
πρὸς ἡμῶν
κάππεσε, κάτθανε, καὶ καταθάψομεν.[45]
That Greek alliteration is capable of imitation is shown by Pope's
translation of the well-known line[46]:
πολλὰ δ' ἄναντα κάταντα πάραντά τε δόχμιὰ τ' ἦλθον·
O'er hills, o'er dales, o'er crags, o'er rocks, they go.
Pope at times brought alliteration to his aid in cases where no such
device had been adopted by Homer, as when, in describing the labours of
Sisyphus,[47] he wrote:
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone.
On the whole, although a good deal more than is contained in this
article may be said on either side, it would appear that, broadly
speaking, Dryden's principle holds good for prose translations, and that
experience has shown, in respect to translations in verse, that, save in
rare instances, a resort to paraphrase is necessary.
The writer ventures, in conclusion, to give two instances, in one of
which there has been comparatively but slight departure from the text of
the original Greek, whilst in the other there has been greater
indulgence in paraphrase. Both are taken from the Anthology. The first
is an epitaph on a shipwrecked sailor by an unknown author:
Ναυτίλε, μὴ πεύθου τίνος ἐνθάδε τύμβος ὅδ' εἰμί,
ἀλλ' αὐτὸς πόντου τύγχανε χρηστοτέρου.
No matter who I was; but may the sea
To you prove kindlier than it was to me.
The other is by Macedonius:
Αὔριον ἀθρήσω σε· τὸ δ' οὔ ποτε γίνεται ἡμῖν
ἠθάδος ἀμβολίης αἰὲν ἀεξομένης·
ταῦτά μοι ἱμείροντι χαρίζεαι, ἄλλα δ' ἐς ἄλλους
δῶρα φέρεις, ἐμεθέν πίστιν ἀπειπαμένη.
ὄψομαι ἑσπερίη σε. τί δ' ἕσπερός έστι γυναικῶν;
γῆρας ἀμετρήτῳ πληθόμενον ῥυτίδι.
Ever "To-morrow" thou dost say;
When will to-morrow's sun arise?
Thus custom ratifies delay;
My faithfulness thou dost despise.
Others are welcomed, whilst to me
"At even come," thou say'st, "not now."
What will life's evening bring to thee?
Old age--a many-wrinkled brow.
Dryden's well-known lines in _Aurengzebe_ embody the idea of Macedonius
in epigrammatic and felicitous verse:
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay,
To-morrow's falser than the former day.
[Footnote 24: Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii. p. 467.]
[Footnote 25: Weise, 1841, vol. ii. p. 303.]
[Footnote 26: _Loci Critici_, p. 40.]
[Footnote 27: _History of Greece_, vol. ii. p. 326.]
[Footnote 28: The use by Pericles of this metaphor rests on the
authority of Aristotle (_Rhet._ i. 7. 34). Herodotus (vii. 162) ascribes
almost the identical words to Gelo, and a similar idea is given by
Euripides in _Supp._ 447-49.]
[Footnote 29: _Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 328.]
[Footnote 30: _On the Sublime_, xxx.]
[Footnote 31: _Literature of the Victorian Era_, p. 382.]
[Footnote 32: _On the Sublime_, c. v.]
[Footnote 33: Aristotle's _Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, p. 398.]
[Footnote 34: _Miscellaneous Writings_, Conington, vol. i. p. 162.]
[Footnote 35: iii. 1045 ff.]
[Footnote 36: Mr. Gladstone's merits as a translator were great. His
Latin translation of Toplady's hymn "Rock of Ages," beginning "Jesus,
pro me perforatus," is altogether admirable.]
[Footnote 37: _Od._ iii. 78-82.]
[Footnote 38: "As a mortal, thou must nourish each of two
forebodings--that to-morrow's sunlight will be the last that thou shalt
see: and that for fifty years thou wilt live out thy life in ample
wealth."]
[Footnote 39: _History of English Poetry_, iii., 394.]
[Footnote 40: _Hipp._ 331.]
[Footnote 41: "Great Zeus, why didst thou, to man's sorrow, put woman,
evil counterfeit, to dwell where shines the sun? If thou wert minded
that the human race should multiply, it was not from women they should
have drawn their stock."--_Hipp._ 616-19.]
[Footnote 42: _Decline and Fall_, v. 185.]
[Footnote 43: Book ii. c. 11.]
[Footnote 44: _Eighteenth Century Literature_, vol. vi. p. 331.]
[Footnote 45: "By us he fell, he died, and we will bury him."]
[Footnote 46: _Il._ xxiii. 116.]
[Footnote 47: _Od._ xi. 733.]
"THE QUARTERLY REVIEW"
III
SIR ALFRED LYALL
_"Quarterly Review," July 1913_
After reading and admiring Sir Mortimer Durand's life of Alfred Lyall, I
am tempted to exclaim in the words of Shenstone's exquisite inscription,
which has always seemed to me about the best thing that Shenstone ever
wrote, "Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!"
He was one of my oldest and best of friends. More than this, although
our characters differed widely, and although I should never for a moment
think of rating my intellectual attainments on a par with his, at the
same time I may say that in the course of a long life I do not think
that I have ever been brought in contact with any one with whom I found
myself in more thorough community of opinion and sentiment upon the
sundry and manifold questions which excited our common interest. He was
a strong Unionist, a strong Free Trader, and a strong anti-suffragist.
I am, for good or evil, all these things. He was a sincere Liberal in
the non-party sense of that very elastic word. So was I. That is to say,
there was a time when we both thought ourselves good mid-Victorian
Liberals--a school of politicians whose ideas have now been swept into
the limbo of forgotten things, the only surviving principles of that age
being apparently those associated with a faint and somewhat fantastic
cult of the primrose. In 1866 he wrote to his sister--and I cannot but
smile on reading the letter--"I am more and more Radical every year";
and he expressed regret that circumstances did not permit of his setting
up as "a fierce demagogue" in England. I could have conscientiously
written in much the same spirit at the same period, but it has not taken
me nearly half a century to discover that two persons more unfitted by
nature and temperament to be "fierce demagogues" than Alfred Lyall and
myself were probably never born. In respect to the Indian political
questions which were current during his day--such as the controversy
between the Lawrentian and "Forward" schools of frontier policy, the
Curzon-Kitchener episode, and the adaptation of Western reforms to meet
the growing requirements to which education has given birth--his views,
although perhaps rather in my opinion unduly pessimistic and
desponding, were generally identical with my own.
Albeit he was an earnest reformer, he was a warm advocate of strong and
capable government, and, in writing to our common friend, Lord Morley,
in 1882, he anathematised what he considered the weakness shown by the
Gladstone Government in dealing with disorder in Ireland. Himself not
only the kindest, but also the most just and judicially-minded of men,
he feared that a maudlin and misplaced sentimentalism would destroy the
more virile elements in the national character. "I should like," he
said, in words which must not, of course, be taken too literally, "a
little more fierceness and honest brutality in the national
temperament." His heart went out, in a manner which is only possible to
those who have watched them closely at work, to those Englishmen,
whether soldiers or civilians, who, but little known and even at times
depreciated by their own countrymen, are carrying the fame, the glory,
the justice and humanity of England to the four quarters of the globe.
The roving Englishman (he said) is the salt of English land....
Only those who go out of this civilised country, to see the rough
work on the frontiers and in the far lands, properly understand
what our men are like and can do.... They cannot manage a
steam-engine, but they can drive restive and ill-trained horses
over rough roads.
He felt--and as one who has humbly dabbled in literature at the close of
an active political life, I can fully sympathise with him--that "when
one has once taken a hand in the world's affairs, literature is like
rowing in a picturesque reach of the Thames after a bout in the open
sea." Yet, in the case of Lyall, literature was not a matter of mere
academic interest. "His incessant study was history." He thought, with
Lord Acton, that an historical student should be "a politician with his
face turned backwards." His mind was eminently objective. He was for
ever seeking to know the causes of things; and though far too observant
to push to extreme lengths analogies between the past and the present,
he nevertheless sought, notably in the history of Imperial Rome, for any
facts or commentaries gleaned from ancient times which might be of
service to the modern empire of which he was so justly proud, and in the
foundation of which the splendid service of which he was an illustrious
member had played so conspicuous a part. "I wonder," he wrote in 1901,
"how far the Roman Empire profited by high education."
Lyall was by nature a poet. Sir Mortimer Durand says, truly enough, that
his volume of verses, "if not great poetry, as some hold, was yet true
poetry." Poetic expressions, in fact, bubbled up in his mind almost
unconsciously in dealing with every incident of his life. Lord Tennyson
tells us in his _Memoir_ that one evening, when his father and mother
were rowing across the Solent, they saw a heron. His father described
this incident in the following language: "One dark heron flew over the
sea, backed by a daffodil sky." Similarly, Lyall, writing with the
enthusiasm of a young father for his firstborn, said: "The child has
eyes like the fish-pools of Heshbon, with wondrous depth of intelligent
gaze." But, though a poet, it would be a great error to suppose that
Lyall was an idealist, if by that term is meant one who, after a
platonic fashion, indulges in ideas which are wholly visionary and
unpractical. He had, indeed, ideals. No man of his imagination and
mental calibre could be without them. But they were ideals based on a
solid foundation of facts. It was here that, in spite of some sympathy
based on common literary tastes, he altogether parted company from a
brother poet, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, who has invariably left his facts to
take care of themselves. Though eminently meditative and reflective,
Lyall's mind, his biographer says, "seemed always hungry for facts."
"Though he had an unusual degree of imagination, he never allowed
himself to be tempted too far from the region of the known or the
knowable." The reason why he at times appeared to vacillate was that he
did not consider he sufficiently understood all the facts to justify his
forming an opinion capable of satisfying his somewhat hypercritical
judgment. He was, in fact, very difficult to convince of the truth of an
opinion, not because of his prejudices, for he had none, but by reason
of his constitutional scepticism. He acted throughout life on the
principle laid down by the Greek philosopher Epicharmus: "Be sober, and
remember to disbelieve. These are the sinews of the mind." I have been
informed on unimpeachable authority that when he was a member of the
Treasury Committee which sat on the question of providing facilities for
the study of Oriental languages in this country, he constantly asked the
witnesses whom he examined leading questions from which it might rather
be inferred that he held opinions diametrically opposed to those which
in reality he entertained. His sole object was to arrive at a sound
conclusion. He wished to elicit all possible objections to any views to
which he was personally inclined. It is very probable that his Oriental
experience led him to adopt this procedure; for, as any one who has
lived much in the East will recognise, it is the only possible safeguard
against the illusions which may arise from the common Oriental habit of
endeavouring to say what is pleasant to the interrogator, especially if
he occupies some position of authority.
Only half-reconciled, in the first instance, to Indian exile, and, when
once he had taken the final step of departure, constantly brooding over
the intellectual attractions rather than the material comforts of
European life, Lyall speedily came to the conclusion that, if he was to
bear a hand in governing India, the first thing he had to do was to
understand Indians. He therefore brought his acutely analytical
intellect to the task of comprehending the Indian habit of thought. In
the course of his researches he displayed that thoroughness and
passionate love of truth which was the distinguishing feature of his
character throughout life. That he succeeded in a manner which has been
surpassed by none, and only faintly rivalled by a very few, is now
generally recognised both by his own countrymen and also--which is far
more remarkable--by the inhabitants of the country which formed the
subject of his study. So far as it is possible for any Western to
achieve that very difficult task, he may be said to have got to the back
of the Oriental mind. He embodied the results of his long experience at
times in sweeping and profound generalisations, which covered the whole
field of Oriental thought and action, and at others in pithy
epigrammatic sayings in which the racy humour, sometimes tinged with a
shade of cynical irony, never obscured the deep feeling of sympathy he
entertained for everything that was worthy of respect and admiration.
Lyall had read history to some purpose. He knew, in the words which
Gregorovius applied to the rule of Theodosius in Italy, that "not even
the wisest and most humane of princes, if he be an alien in race, in
customs and religion, can ever win the hearts of the people." He had
read De Tocqueville, and from the pages of an author whose habit of
thought must have been most congenial to him, he drew the conclusion
that "it was the increased prosperity and enlightenment of the French
people which produced the grand crash." He therefore thought that "the
wildest, as well as the shallowest notion of all is that universally
prevalent belief that education, civilisation and increased material
prosperity will reconcile the people of India eventually to our rule."
Hence he was prepared to accept--perhaps rather more entirely than it
deserved to be accepted--the statement of that very astute Brahmin, Sir
Dinkur Rao, himself the minister of an important native State, that "the
natives prefer a bad native Government to our best patent institutions."
These, and similar oracular statements, have now become the commonplaces
of all who deal with questions affecting India. That there is much
truth in them cannot be gainsaid, but they are still often too much
ignored by one section of the British public, who, carried away by
home-made sentiment, forget that of all national virtues gratitude for
favours received is the most rare, while by another section they are
applied to the advocacy of a degree of autonomous rule which would be
disastrous to the interests, not only of India itself, but also to the
cause of all real civilised progress.
The point, however, on which in conversation Lyall was wont to insist
most strongly was that the West was almost incomprehensible to the East,
and, _vice versa_, that the Western could never thoroughly understand
the Oriental. In point of fact, when we talk of progress, it is
necessary to fix some standard by which progress may be measured. We
know our Western standard; we endeavour to enforce it; and we are so
convinced that it gives an accurate measure of human moral and material
advancement that we experience a shock on hearing that there are large
numbers of even highly educated human beings who hold that the standard
is altogether false. Yet that, Lyall would argue, is generally the
Oriental frame of mind. Fatalism, natural conservatism and ignorance
lead the uneducated to reject our ideas, while the highly educated often
hold that our standard of progress is too material to be a true
measure, and that consequently, far from advancing, we are standing
still or even retrograding. Lyall, personifying a Brahmin, said,
"Politics I cannot help regarding as the superficial aspect of deeper
problems; and for progress, the latest incarnation of European
materialism, I have an incurable distrust." These subtle intellectuals,
in fact, as Surendranath Banerjee, one of the leaders of the Swadeshi
movement, told Dr. Wegener,[48] hold that the English are "stupid and
ignorant," and, therefore, wholly unfit to govern India.
I remember Lyall, who, as Sir Mortimer Durand says, had a very keen
sense of humour, telling me an anecdote which is what Bacon would have
called "luciferous," as an illustration of the views held by the
uneducated classes in India on the subject of Western reforms. The
officer in charge of a district either in Bengal or the North-West
Provinces got up a cattle-show, with a view to improving the breed of
cattle. Shortly afterwards, an Englishman, whilst out shooting, entered
into conversation with a peasant who happened to be passing by. He asked
the man what he thought of the cattle-show, and added that he supposed
it had done a great deal of good. "Yes," the native, who was probably a
Moslem, replied after some reflection, "last year there was cholera.
This year there was Cattle Show. We have to bear these afflictions with
what patience we may. Are they not all sent by God?"
But it was naturally the opinions entertained by the intellectual
classes which most interested Lyall, and which he endeavoured to
interpret to his countrymen. The East is asymmetrical in all things. I
remember Lyall saying to me, "Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental
mind." The West, on the other hand, delights beyond all things in
symmetry and accuracy. Moreover, it would almost seem as if in the most
trivial incidents in life some unseen influence generally impels the
Eastern to do the exact opposite to the Western--a point, I may observe,
which Lyall was never tired of illustrating by all kinds of quaint
examples. A shepherd in Perthshire will walk behind his sheep and drive
them. In the Deccan he will walk in front of his flock. A European will
generally place his umbrella point downwards against the wall. An
Oriental will, with far greater reason, do exactly the reverse.
But, in respect to the main question of mutual comprehension, there are,
at all events in so far as the European is concerned, degrees of
difficulty--degrees which depend very largely on religious differences,
for in the theocratic East religion covers the whole social and
political field to a far greater extent than in the West. Now, the
religion of the Moslem is, comparatively speaking, very easy to
understand. There are, indeed, a few ritualistic and other minor points
as to which a Western may at times have some difficulty in grasping the
Oriental point of view. But the foundations of monotheistic Islam are
simplicity itself; indeed, it may be said that they are far more simple
than those of Christianity. The case of the Hindu religion is very
different. Dr. Barth in his _Religions of India_ says:
Already in the Veda, Hindu thought is profoundly tainted with the
malady, of which it will never be able to get rid, of affecting a
greater air of mystery the less there is to conceal, of making a
parade of symbols which at bottom signify nothing, and of playing
with enigmas which are not worth the trouble of trying to
unriddle.... At the present time it is next to impossible to say
exactly what Hinduism is, where it begins, and where it ends.
I cannot profess to express any valuable opinion on a subject on which I
am very imperfectly informed, and which, save as a matter of political
necessity, fails to interest me--for, personally, I think that a book of
the _Iliad_ or a play of Aristophanes is far more valuable than all the
lucubrations that have ever been spun by the subtle minds of learned
Hindu Pundits--but, so far as I am able to judge, Dr. Barth's
description is quite accurate. None the less, the importance to the
Indian politician of gaining some insight into the inner recesses of the
Hindu mind cannot for a moment be doubted. Lyall said, "I fancy that the
Hindu philosophy, which teaches that everything we see or feel is a vast
cosmic illusion, projected into space by that which is the manifestation
of the infinite and unconscious spirit, has an unsettling effect on
their political beliefs." Lyall, therefore, rendered a very great
political service to his countrymen when he took in hand the duty of
expounding to them the true nature of Hindu religious belief. He did the
work very thoroughly. Passing lightly by the "windy moralities" of
Brahmo Somaj teachers of the type of Keshub Chunder Sen, whom he left to
"drifting Deans such as Stanley and Alford," he grasped the full
significance of true orthodox Brahmanism, and under the pseudonym of
Vamadeo Shastri wrote an essay which has "become a classic for the
student of comparative religion, and for all who desire to know, in
particular, the religious mind of the Hindu." In the course of his
enquiries Lyall incidentally performed the useful historical service of
showing that Euhemerism is, or very recently was, a living force in
India,[49] and that the solar myth theory supported by Max Müller and
others had, to say the least, been pushed much too far.
I turn to another point. All who were brought in contact with Lyall
speedily recognised his social charm and high intellectual gifts, but
was he a man of action? Did he possess the qualifications necessary to
those who take part in the government of the outlying dominions of the
Empire? I have often been asked that question. It is one to which Sir
Mortimer Durand frequently reverts, his general conclusion being that
Lyall was "a man of action with literary tastes." I will endeavour
briefly to express my own opinion on this subject.
There have been many cases of notable men of action who were also
students. Napier said that no example can be shown in history of a great
general who was not also a well-read man. But Lyall was more than a mere
student. He was a thinker, and a very deep thinker, not merely on
political but also on social and religious subjects. There may be some
parallel in the history of our own or of other countries to the peculiar
combination of thought and action which characterised Lyall's career,
but for the moment none which meets all the necessary requirements
occurs to me. The case is, I think, almost if not quite unique. That
Lyall had a warm admiration for men of action is abundantly clear. His
enthusiasm on their behalf comes out in every stanza of his poetry, and,
when any suitable occasion offered, in every line of his prose. He
eulogised the strong man who ruled and acted, and he reserved a very
special note of sympathy for those who sacrificed their lives for their
country. Shortly before his own death he spoke in terms of warm
admiration of Mr. Newbolt's fine lines:
Qui procul hinc--the legend's writ,
The frontier grave is far away--
Qui ante diem periit
Sed miles, sed pro patriâ.
But he shared these views with many thinkers who, like Carlyle, have
formed their opinions in their studies. The fact that he entertained
them does not help us to answer the question whether he can or cannot be
himself classed in the category of men of action.
As a young man he took a distinguished part in the suppression of the
Mutiny, and showed courage and decision of character in all his acts. He
was a good, though not perhaps an exceptionally good administrator. His
horror of disorder in any form led him to approve without hesitation the
adoption of strong measures for its suppression. On the occasion of the
punishment administered to those guilty of the Manipur massacres in
1891, he wrote to Sir Mortimer Durand, "I do most heartily admire the
justice and firmness of purpose displayed in executing the Senapati. I
hope there will be no interference, in my absence, from the India
Office." On the whole, the verdict passed by Lord George Hamilton is, I
believe, eminently correct, and is entirely in accordance with my own
experience. Lord George, who had excellent opportunities for forming a
sound opinion on the subject, wrote:
Great as were Lyall's literary attributes and powers of initiation
and construction, his critical faculties were even more fully
developed. This made him at times somewhat difficult to deal with,
for he was very critical and cautious in the tendering of advice as
regards any new policy or any suggested change. When once he could
see his way through difficulties, or came to the conclusion that
those difficulties must be faced, then his caution and critical
instincts disappeared, and he was prepared to be as bold in the
prosecution of what he advocated as he had previously been
reluctant to start.
The mental attitude which Lord George Hamilton thus describes is by no
means uncommon in the case of very conscientious and brilliantly
intellectual men, such, for instance, as the late Lord Goschen, who
possessed many characteristics in common with Lyall. They can cite, in
justification of their procedure, the authority of one who was probably
the greatest man of action that the world has ever produced. Roederer
relates in his journal that on one occasion Napoleon said to him:
Il n'y a pas un homme plus pusillanime que moi quand je fais un
plan militaire; je me grossis tous les dangers et tous les maux
possibles dans les circonstances; je suis dans une agitation tout à
fait pénible; je suis comme une fille qui accouche. Et quand ma
résolution est prise, tout est oublié, hors ce qui peut la faire
réussir.
Within reasonable limits, caution is, indeed, altogether commendable. On
the other hand, it cannot be doubted that, carried to excess, it is at
times apt to paralyse all effective and timely action, to disqualify
those who exercise it from being pilots possessed of sufficient daring
to steer the ship of state in troublous times, and to exclude them from
the category of men of action in the sense in which that term is
generally used. In spite of my great affection for Alfred Lyall, I am
forced to admit that, in his case, caution was, I think, at times
carried to excess. He never appeared to me to realise sufficiently that
the conduct of public affairs, notably in this democratic age, is at
best a very rough unscientific process; that it is occasionally
necessary to make a choice of evils or to act on imperfect evidence; and
that at times, to quote the words which I remember Lord Northbrook once
used to me, it is even better to have a wrong opinion than to have no
definite opinion at all. So early as 1868, he wrote to his mother,
"There are many topics on which I have not definitely discovered what I
do think"; and to the day of his death he very generally maintained in
respect to current politics the frame of mind set forth in this very
characteristic utterance. Every general has to risk the loss of a
battle, and every active politician has at times to run the risk of
making a wrong forecast. Before running that risk, Lyall was generally
inclined to exhaust the chances of error to an extent which was often
impossible, or at all events hurtful.
Sir Mortimer Durand refers to the history of the Ilbert Bill, a measure
under which Lord Ripon's Government proposed to give native magistrates
jurisdiction over Europeans in certain circumstances. I was at the time
(1882-83) Financial Member of the Viceroy's Council. After a lapse of
thirty years, there can, I think, be no objection to my stating my
recollections of what occurred in connexion with this subject. I should,
in the first instance, mention that the association of Mr. (now Sir
Courtenay) Ilbert's name with this measure was purely accidental. He had
nothing to do with its initiation. The proposals, which were eventually
embodied in the Bill, originated with Sir Ashley Eden, who was
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and who certainly could not be accused of
any wish to neglect European opinion, or of any desire to push forward
extreme liberal measures conceived in native interests. The measure had
been under the consideration of the Legislative Department in the time
of Mr. Ilbert's predecessor in the office of Legal Member of Council,
and it was only the accident that he vacated his office before it was
introduced into the Legislative Council that associated Mr. Ilbert's
name with the Bill.
As was customary in such cases, all the local Governments had been
consulted; and they again consulted the Commissioners,
Deputy-Commissioners, Collectors, etc., within their respective
provinces. The result was that Lord Ripon had before him the opinions of
practically the whole Civil Service of India. Divers views were held as
to the actual extent to which the law should be altered, but, in the
words of a despatch addressed by the Government of India to the
Secretary of State on September 9, 1882, the local reports showed "an
overwhelming consensus of opinion that the time had come for modifying
the existing law and removing the present absolute bar upon the
investment of native magistrates in the interior with powers over
European British subjects." Not one single official gave anything
approaching an indication of the storm of opposition that this ill-fated
measure was about to raise. I do not think that this is very
surprising, for the opposition came almost exclusively from the
unofficial Europeans, who for the most part congregate in a few large
commercial centres, with the result that the majority of the civilians,
who are scattered throughout the country, are not much brought in
contact with them. Nevertheless, the fact that so great a miscalculation
of the state of public opinion could be made left a deep impression on
my mind. The main lesson which I carried away from the Ilbert Bill
controversy was, indeed, that in spite of their great merits, which no
one recognises more fully than myself, it is possible at times for the
whole body of Indian civilians, taken collectively, to be somewhat
unsafe guides in matters of state policy. Curiously enough, the only
danger-signal which was raised was hoisted by Sir Henry Maine, who had
been in India as Legal Member of Council, but who did not belong to the
Indian Civil Service. He was at the time a member of the India Council.
When the despatch of the Government of India on the subject reached
London, Sir Henry Maine was travelling on the Continent. The papers were
sent to him. He called to mind the bitter controversy which arose over
what was known as "the Black Act" in Lord William Bentinck's time, and
wrote privately a few words of warning to Lord Hartington, who was at
the time Secretary of State for India. Lord Hartington put the letter
in his great-coat pocket, went to Newmarket, and forgot all about it,
with the result that Sir Henry Maine's warning never reached Lord Ripon.
I well remember being present when Mr. Ilbert introduced the measure
into the Legislative Council. It attracted but little attention and led
to only a very brief discussion, in which I took no part. The papers had
been circulated to all Members of Council, including myself. When I
received them I saw at a glance that the subject was not one that
concerned my own department, or one as to which my opinion could be of
any value. I, therefore, merely endorsed the papers with my initials and
sent them on, without having given the subject much attention. In common
with all my colleagues, I was soon to learn the gravity of the step
which had been taken. A furious storm of opposition, which profoundly
shook the prestige and authority of the Government of India, and notably
of the Viceroy, arose. It was clear that a mistake had been made. The
measure was in itself not very important. It was obviously undesirable,
as Lyall remarked, to "set fire to an important wing of the house in
order to roast a healthy but small pig." The best plan, had it been
possible, would have been to admit the mistake and to withdraw the
measure; and this would certainly have been done had it not been for the
unseemly and extravagant violence of the European unofficial community,
notably that of Calcutta. It should, however, in fairness be stated that
they were irritated and alarmed, not so much at the acts of Lord Ripon's
Government, but at some rather indiscreet language which had at times
been used, and which led them, quite erroneously, to suspect that
extreme measures were in contemplation, of a nature calculated to shake
the foundations of British supremacy in India. This violent attitude
naturally led to reprisals and bitter recriminations from the native
press, with the result that the total withdrawal of the measure would
have been construed as a decisive defeat to the adoption of even the
most moderate measures of liberal reform in India. The project of total
withdrawal could not, therefore, be entertained.
In these circumstances, the duty of a practical rough-and-ready
politician was very clearly indicated. However little he might care for
the measure on its own merits, political instinct pointed unmistakably
to the absolute necessity of affording strong support to the Viceroy.
Lyall failed to realise this fully. He admired Lord Ripon's courage. "We
must," he said, "all do our best to pull the Viceroy through." But
withal it is clear, by his own admission, that he only gave the Viceroy
"rather lukewarm support." "I have intrenched myself," he wrote in a
characteristic letter, "behind cautious proposals, and am quoted on both
sides." This attitude was not due to any want of moral courage, for a
more courageous man, both physically and morally, than Lyall never
lived. It was simply the result of what Lord Lytton called "the Lyall
habit of seeing both sides of a question," and not being able to decide
betimes which side to support. That a man of Lyall's philosophical and
reflective turn of mind should see both sides of a question is not only
natural but commendable, but this frame of mind is not one that can be
adopted without hazard by a man of action at the head of affairs at a
time of acute crisis.
There is, however, a reverse side to this picture. The same mental
attributes which rendered Lyall somewhat unfit, in my opinion, to deal
with an incident such as the Ilbert Bill episode, enabled him to come
with credit and distinction out of a situation of extreme difficulty in
which the reputation of many another man would have foundered. I have no
wish or intention to stir up again the embers of past Afghan
controversies. It will be sufficient for my purpose to say that Lord
Lytton, immensely to his credit, recognised Lyall's abilities and
appointed him Foreign Secretary, in spite of the fact that he was
associated with the execution of a policy to which Lord Lytton himself
was strongly opposed, and which he had decided to reverse. Lyall did not
conceal his opinions, but, as always, he was open to conviction, and saw
both sides of a difficult question. In 1878, he was "quite in favour of
vigorous action to counteract the Russians"; but two years later, in
1880, after the Cavagnari murder, he records in a characteristic letter
that he "was mentally edging back towards old John Lawrence's counsel
never to embark on the shoreless sea of Afghan politics." On the whole,
it may be said that Lyall passed through this supreme test in a manner
which would not have been possible to any man unless endowed not merely
with great abilities, but with the highest degree of moral courage and
honesty of purpose. He preserved his own self-esteem, and by his
unswerving honesty and loyalty gained that of the partisans on both
sides of the controversy.
It is pleasant to turn from these episodes to other features in Lyall's
career and character, in respect to which unstinted eulogy, without the
qualification of a shade of criticism, may be recorded. It was more
especially in dealing with the larger and more general aspects of
Eastern affairs that Lyall's genius shone most brightly. He had what
the French call a _flair_ in dealing with the main issues of Oriental
politics such as, so far as my experience goes, is possessed by few. It
was very similar to the qualities displayed by the late Lord Salisbury
in dealing with foreign affairs generally. I give an instance in point.
In 1884, almost every newspaper in England was declaiming loudly about
the dangers to be apprehended if the rebellion excited by the Mahdi in
the Soudan was not promptly crushed. It was thought that this rebellion
was but the precursor of a general and formidable offensive movement
throughout the Islamic world. "What," General Gordon, whose opinion at
the time carried great weight, had asked, "is to prevent the Mahdi's
adherents gaining Mecca? Once at Mecca we may look out for squalls in
Turkey," etc. He, as also Lord Wolseley, insisted on the absolute
necessity of "smashing the Mahdi." We now know that these fears were
exaggerated, and that the Mahdist movement was of purely local
importance. Lyall had no special acquaintance with Egyptian or Soudanese
affairs, but his general knowledge of the East and of Easterns enabled
him at once to gauge correctly the true nature of the danger.
Undisturbed by the clamour which prevailed around him, he wrote to Mr.
Henry Reeve on March 21, 1884: "The Mahdi's fortunes do not interest
India. The talk in some of the papers about the necessity of smashing
him, in order to avert the risk of some general Mahomedan uprising, is
futile and imaginative."[50]
I need say no more. I am glad, for the sake of Lyall's own reputation,
that the offer of the Viceroyalty was never made to him. Apart from the
question of his age, which, in 1894, was somewhat too advanced to admit
of his undertaking such onerous duties, I doubt if he possessed
sufficient experience of English public life--a qualification which is
yearly becoming of greater importance--to enable him to fill the post in
a satisfactory manner. In spite, moreover, of his splendid intellectual
gifts and moral elevation of thought, it is very questionable whether on
the whole he would have been the right man in the right place.
Lyall's name will not, like those of some other Indian notabilities, go
down to posterity as having been specially connected with any one
episode or event of supreme historical importance; but, when those of
the present generation who regarded him with esteem and affection have
passed away, he will still deserve an important niche in the Temple of
Fame as a thinker who thoroughly understood the East, and who probably
did more than any of his contemporaries or predecessors to make his
countrymen understand and sympathise with the views held by the many
millions in India whose destinies are committed to their charge. His
experience and special mental equipment eminently fitted him to perform
the task he took in hand. England, albeit a prolific mother of great men
in every department of thought and action, has not produced many Lyalls.
[Footnote 48: _Nineteenth Century_, May 1913, p. 972.]
[Footnote 49: When I was at Delhi in 1881, a Nikolsaini, _i.e._ a
worshipper of John Nicholson, came to see me. He showed me a miniature
of Nicholson with his head surrounded by an aureole.]
[Footnote 50: _Memoirs of Henry Reeve_, ii. 329.]
"THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER"
IV
ARMY REFORM
_"The Nineteenth Century and After," February 1904_
The autobiography[51] of my old and highly esteemed friend, Lord
Wolseley, constitutes an honourable record of a well-spent life. Lord
Wolseley may justifiably be proud of the services which he has rendered
to his country. The British nation, and its principal executive
officials in the past, may also be proud of having quickly discovered
Lord Wolseley's talents and merits, and of having advanced him to high
position.
Obviously, certain conclusions of public interest may be drawn from the
career of this very distinguished soldier. Sir George Arthur, in the
December number of the _Fortnightly Review_, has stated what are the
special lessons which, in his opinion, are to be derived from a
consideration of that career.
Those lessons are, indeed, sufficiently numerous. I propose, however, to
deal with only two of them. They are those which, apparently, Lord
Wolseley himself wishes to be inculcated. Both involve questions of
principle of no little importance.
In the first place, Lord Wolseley, if I understand rightly, considers
that the army has suffered greatly from civilian interference. He
appears to think that it should be more exclusively than heretofore
under military control.
In the second place, he thinks that, in certain cases, the political and
diplomatic negotiations, which generally follow on a war, should be
conducted, not by a diplomatist or politician, but by the officer who
has conducted the previous military operations.
As regards the first point, I am not now dealing with Lord Wolseley's
remarks in connection with our general unpreparedness for war, nor with
those on the various defects, past or present, of our military
organisation. In a great deal that he has said on these subjects, Lord
Wolseley carries me heartily with him. I confine myself strictly to the
issue as I have defined it above.
Possibly, I have mistaken the significance of Lord Wolseley's words. If
so, my error is shared by Sir George Arthur, who, in dealing with the
War Office, dwells with emphasis on the occasions when "this great war
expert was thwarted in respect of his best considered plans by the
civilian element in that citadel of inefficiency,"[52] and speaks with
approval of Lord Wolseley's "severe strictures on blundering civilian
interference with the army," as also of the "censure reserved for the
criminal negligence and miserable cowardice of successive Cabinets."
It seems to me that Lord Wolseley is rather hard on civilians in
general--those "iconoclastic civilian officials who meddle and muddle in
army matters"[53]--on politicians in particular, who, I cannot but
think, are not quite so black as he has painted them; and most of all on
Secretaries of State, with the single exception of Lord Cardwell, to
whom generous and very well deserved praise is accorded.
It is not quite clear, from a perusal of these volumes, what is the
precise nature of the change which Lord Wolseley wishes to advocate,
although in one passage a specific proposal is made. It is that "a
certificate should be annually laid before Parliament by the
non-political Commander-in-Chief, that the whole of the military forces
of the Empire can be completely and effectively equipped for war in a
fortnight." The general tendency of the reform which commends itself to
Lord Wolseley may, however, readily be inferred. He complains that the
soldiers, "though in office, are never in power." Nevertheless, as he
explains with military frankness, "the cunning politician," when
anything goes wrong, is able "to turn the wrath of a deceived people
upon the military authorities, and those who are exclusively to blame
are too often allowed to sneak off unhurt in the turmoil of execration
they have raised against the soldiers." I may remark incidentally that
exception might perhaps reasonably be taken to the use of the word
"exclusively" in this passage; but the main point to which I wish to
draw attention is that clearly, in Lord Wolseley's opinion, the
soldiers, under the existing system, have not sufficient power, and that
it would be advisable that they should, under a reformed system, be
invested with more ample power. I dare say Lord Wolseley is quite right,
at all events to this extent, that it is desirable that the power, as
also the responsibility, of the highest military authorities should be
as clearly defined as is possible under our peculiar system of
government. But it is essential to ascertain more accurately in what
manner Lord Wolseley, speaking with all the high authority which
deservedly attaches itself to his name, thinks that effect should be
given to the principle which he advocates. In order to obtain this
information, I turn to vol. i. p. 92, where I find the following
passage: "A man who is not a soldier, and who is entirely ignorant of
war, is selected solely for political reasons to be Secretary of State
for War. I might with quite as great propriety be selected to be the
chief surgeon in a hospital."
I would here digress for a moment to deal with the argument advanced in
the latter part of this sentence. It is very plausible, and, at first
sight, appears convincing. It is also very commonly used. Over and over
again, I have heard the presumed analogy between the surgeon and the
soldier advanced as a proof of the absurdity of the English system. I
believe that no such analogy exists. Surgery is an exact science. To
perform even the most trifling surgical operation requires careful
technical training and experience. It is far otherwise with the case of
the soldier. I do not suppose that any civilian in his senses would
presume, on a purely technical matter, to weigh his own opinion against
that of a trained soldier, like Lord Wolseley, who is thoroughly versed
in the theory of his profession, and who has been through the school of
actual war. But a large number of the most important questions affecting
military organisation and the conduct of military affairs, require for
their solution little or no technical knowledge. Any man of ordinary
common sense can form an opinion on them, and any man of good business
habits may readily become a capable agent for giving effect to the
opinions which he, or which others have formed.
I may here perhaps give a page from my own personal experience bearing
on the point under discussion.
The Soudan campaign of 1896-98 was, in official circles, dubbed a
"Foreign Office war." For a variety of reasons, to which it is
unnecessary to allude in detail, the Sirdar was, from the commencement
of the operations, placed exclusively under my orders in all matters.
The War Office assumed no responsibility, and issued no orders.[54] A
corresponding position was occupied by the Headquarters Staff of the
Army of Occupation in Cairo. The result was that I found myself in the
somewhat singular position of a civilian, who had had some little
military training in his youth, but who had had no experience of
war,[55] whose proper functions were diplomacy and administration, but
who, under the stress of circumstances in the Land of Paradox, had to be
ultimately responsible for the maintenance, and even, to some extent,
for the movements of an army of some 25,000 men in the field.
That good results were obtained under this system cannot be doubted. It
will not, therefore, be devoid of interest to explain how it worked in
practice, and what were the main reasons which contributed towards
success.
I have no wish to disparage the strategical and tactical ability which
were displayed in the conduct of the campaign. It is, however, a fact
that no occasion arose for the display of any great skill in these
branches of military knowledge. When once the British and Egyptian
troops were brought face to face with the enemy, there could--unless
the conditions under which they fought were altogether extraordinary--be
little doubt of the result. The speedy and successful issue of the
campaign depended, in fact, almost entirely upon the methods adopted for
overcoming the very exceptional difficulties connected with the supply
and transport of the troops. The main quality required to meet these
difficulties was a good head for business. By one of those fortunate
accidents which have been frequent in the history of Anglo-Saxon
enterprise, a man was found equal to the occasion. Lord Kitchener of
Khartoum won his well-deserved peerage because he was a good man of
business; he looked carefully after all important detail, and he
enforced economy.
My own merits, such as they were, were of a purely negative character.
They may be summed up in a single phrase. I abstained from mischievous
activity, and I acted as a check on the interference of others. I had
full confidence in the abilities of the commander, whom I had
practically myself chosen, and, except when he asked for my assistance,
I left him entirely alone. I encouraged him to pay no attention to those
vexatious bureaucratic formalities with which, under the slang phrase of
"red tape" our military system is overburdened. I exercised some little
control over the demands for stores which were sent to the London War
Office; and the mere fact that these demands passed through my hands,
and that I declined to forward any request unless, besides being in
accordance with existing regulations--a point to which I attached but
slight importance--it had been authorised by the Sirdar, probably tended
to check wastefulness in that quarter where it was most to be feared.
Beyond this I did nothing, and I found--somewhat to my own
astonishment--that, with my ordinary staff of four diplomatic
secretaries, the general direction of a war of no inconsiderable
dimensions added but little to my ordinary labours.
I do not say that this system would always work as successfully as was
the case during the Khartoum campaign. The facts, as I have already
said, were peculiar. The commander, on whom everything practically
depended, was a man of marked military and administrative ability.
Nevertheless, I feel certain that Lord Kitchener would bear me out in
saying that here was a case in which general civilian control, far from
exercising any detrimental effect, was on the whole beneficial.
To return to the main thread of my argument. The passage which I have
quoted from Lord Wolseley's book would certainly appear to point to the
conclusion that, in his opinion, the Secretary of State for War should
be a soldier unconnected with politics. Even although Lord Wolseley does
not state this conclusion in so many words, it is notorious to any one
who is familiar with the views current in army circles that the adoption
of this plan is considered by many to be the best, if it be not the
only, solution of all our military difficulties.
I am not concerned with the constitutional objections which may be urged
against the change of system now under discussion. Neither need I dwell
on the difficulty of making it harmonise with our system of party
government, for which it is quite possible to entertain a certain
feeling of respect and admiration without being in any degree a
political partisan. I approach the question exclusively from the point
of view of its effects on the army. From that point of view, I venture
to think that the change is to be deprecated.
In dealing with Lord Cardwell's attitude in respect to army reform, Lord
Wolseley says: "Never was Minister in my time more generally hated by
the army." He points out how this hatred was extended to all who
supported Lord Cardwell's views. His own conduct was "looked upon as a
species of high treason." I was at the time employed in a subordinate
position at the War Office. I can testify that this language is by no
means exaggerated. Nevertheless, after events showed clearly enough
that, in resisting the abolition of purchase, the formation of a
reserve, and the other admirable reforms with which Lord Cardwell's
name, equally with that of Lord Wolseley, is now honourably associated,
the bulk of army opinion was wholly in the wrong. I believe such army
opinion as now objects to a civilian being Secretary of State for War to
be equally in the wrong.
There would appear, indeed, to be some inconsistency between Lord
Wolseley's unstinted praise of Lord Cardwell--that "greatest" of War
Ministers, who, "though absolutely ignorant of our army and of war,"
responded so "readily to the demands made on him by his military
advisers," and "gave new life to our old army"--and his depreciation of
the system which gave official birth to Lord Cardwell. There would be no
contradiction in the two positions if the civilian Minister, in 1871,
had been obliged to use his position in Parliament and his influence on
public opinion to force on an unwilling nation reforms which were
generally advocated by the army. But the very contrary of this was the
case. What Lord Cardwell had principally to encounter was "the fierce
hatred" of the old school of soldiers, and Lord Wolseley tells us
clearly enough what would have happened to the small band of army
reformers within the army, if they had been unable to rely on civilian
support.
"Had it not been," he says, "for Mr. Cardwell's and Lord
Northbrook's constant support and encouragement, those of us who
were bold enough to advocate a thorough reorganisation of our
military system, would have been 'provided for' in distant quarters
of the British world, 'where no mention of us more should be
heard.'"
There can be no such thing as finality in army reform. There will be
reformers in the future, as there have been in the past. There will,
without doubt, be vested interests and conservative instincts to be
overcome in the future, as there were at the time when Lord Wolseley so
gallantly fought the battle of army reform. What guarantee can Lord
Wolseley afford that a soldier at the head of the army will always be a
reformer, and that he will not "provide for" those of his subordinates
who have the courage to raise their voices in favour of reform, even as
Lord Wolseley thinks he would himself have been "provided for" had it
not been for the sturdy support he received from his civilian superiors?
I greatly doubt the possibility of giving any such guarantee.
But I go further than this. It is now more than thirty years since I
served under the War Office. I am, therefore, less intimately acquainted
with the present than with the past. But, during those thirty years, I
have been constantly brought in contact with the War Office, and I have
seen no reason whatever to change the opinion I formed in Lord
Cardwell's time, namely, that it will be an evil day for the army when
it is laid down, as a system, that no civilian should be Secretary of
State for War. My belief is that, if ever the history of our military
administration of recent years comes to be impartially written, it will
be found that most of the large reforms, which have beneficially
affected the army, have been warmly supported, and sometimes initiated,
by the superior civilian element in the War Office. Who, indeed, ever
heard of a profession being reformed from within? One of the greatest
law reformers of the last century was the author of _Bleak House_.
It may, indeed, be urged--perhaps Lord Wolseley would himself urge--that
it is no defence of a bad system to say that under one man (Lord
Cardwell), whom Lord Wolseley describes as "a clear-headed,
logical-minded lawyer," it worked very well. To this I reply that I
cannot believe that the race of clear-headed, logical-minded individuals
of Cabinet rank, belonging to either great party of the State, is
extinct.
I have been induced to make these remarks because, in past years, I was
a good deal associated with army reform, and because, since then, I have
continued to take an interest in the matter. Also because I am convinced
that those officers in the army who, with the best intentions, advocate
the particular change now under discussion, are making a mistake in army
interests. They may depend upon it that the cause they have at heart
will best be furthered by maintaining at the head of the army a civilian
of intelligence and of good business habits, who, although, equally with
a soldier, he may sometimes make mistakes, will give an impartial
hearing to army reformers, and will probably be more alive than any one
belonging to their own profession to all that is best in the outside and
parliamentary pressure to which he is exposed.
I turn to the second point to which allusion was made at the
commencement of this article.
Speaking of the Chinese war in 1860, Lord Wolseley says: "In treating
with barbarian nations during a war ... the general to command the army
and the ambassador to make peace should be one and the same man. To
separate the two functions is, according to my experience, folly gone
mad." Lord Wolseley reverts to this subject in describing the Ashantee
war of 1873-74. I gather from his allusions to Sir John Moore's
campaign in Spain, and to the fact that evil results ensued from
allowing Dutch deputies to accompany Marlborough's army, that he is in
favour of extending the principle which he advocates to wars other than
those waged against "barbarian nations."
The objections to anything in the nature of a division of
responsibility, at all events so long as military operations are in
actual progress, are, indeed, obvious, and are now very generally
recognised. Those who are familiar with the history of the revolutionary
war will remember the baneful influence exercised by the Aulic Council
over the actions of the Austrian commanders.[56] There can, in fact, be
little doubt that circumstances may occur when the principle advocated
by Lord Wolseley may most advantageously be adopted; but it is, I
venture to think, one which has to be applied with much caution,
especially when the question is not whether there should be a temporary
cessation of hostilities--a point on which the view of the officer in
command of the troops would naturally carry the greatest weight--but
also involves the larger issue of the terms on which peace should
finally be concluded. I am not at all sure that, in deciding on the
issues which, under the latter contingency, must necessarily come under
consideration, the employment of a soldier, in preference to a
politician or diplomatist, is always a wise proceeding. Soldiers,
equally with civilians, are liable to make erroneous forecasts of the
future, and to mistake the general situation with which they have to
deal. I can give a case in point.
When, in January 1885, Khartoum fell, the question whether the British
army should be withdrawn, or should advance and reconquer the Soudan,
had to be decided. Gordon, whose influence on public opinion, great
before, had been enhanced by his tragic death, had strongly recommended
the policy of "smashing the Mahdi." Lord Wolseley adopted Gordon's
opinion. "No frontier force," he said, "can keep Mahdiism out of Egypt,
and the Mahdi sooner or later must be smashed, or he will smash you."
These views were shared by Lord Kitchener, Sir Redvers Buller, Sir
Charles Wilson, and by the military authorities generally.[57] Further,
the alleged necessity of "smashing the Mahdi," on the ground that his
success in the Soudan would be productive of serious results elsewhere,
exercised a powerful influence on British public opinion at this period,
although the best authorities on Eastern politics were at the time aware
that the fears so generally entertained in this connection were either
groundless or, at all events, greatly exaggerated.[58] Under these
circumstances, it was decided to "smash the Mahdi," and accordingly a
proclamation, giving effect to the declared policy of the British
Government, was issued. Shortly afterwards, the Penjdeh incident
occurred. Public opinion in England somewhat calmed down, having found
its natural safety-valve in an acrimonious parliamentary debate, in
which the Government narrowly escaped defeat. The voices of politicians
and diplomatists, which had been to some degree hushed by the din of
arms, began to be heard. The proclamation was cancelled. The project of
reconquering the Soudan was postponed to a more convenient period. It
was, in fact, accomplished thirteen years later, under circumstances
which differed very materially from those which prevailed in 1885. In
June 1885, the Government of Lord Salisbury succeeded to that of Mr.
Gladstone, and, though strongly urged to undertake the reconquest of the
Soudan, confirmed the decision of its predecessors.
Sir George Arthur, writing in the _Fortnightly Review_, strongly
condemns this "cynical disavowal" of Lord Wolseley's proclamation. I
have nothing to say in favour of the issue of that proclamation. I am
very clearly of opinion that, as it was issued, it was wise that it
should be cancelled. For, in truth, subsequent events showed that the
forecast made by Lord Wolseley and by Gordon was erroneous, in that it
credited the Mahdi with a power of offence which he was far from
possessing. No serious difficulty arose in defending the frontier of
Egypt from Dervish attack. The overthrow of the Mahdi's power, though
eminently desirable, was very far from constituting an imperious
necessity such as was commonly supposed to exist in 1885. In this
instance, therefore, it appears to me that the diplomatists and
politicians gauged the true nature of the situation somewhat more
accurately than the soldiers.
More than this, I conceive that, in all civilised countries, the theory
of government is that a question of peace or war is one to be decided by
politicians. The functions of the soldier are supposed to be confined,
in the first place, to advising on the purely military aspects of the
issue involved; and, in the second place, to giving effect to any
decisions at which the Government may arrive. The practice in this
matter not infrequently differs somewhat from the theory. The soldier,
who is generally prone to advocate vigorous action, is inclined to
encroach on the sphere which should properly be reserved for the
politician. The former is often masterful, and the latter may be dazzled
by the glitter of arms, or too readily lured onwards by the persuasive
voice of some strategist to acquire an almost endless succession of
what, in technical language, are called "keys" to some position, or--to
employ a metaphor of which the late Lord Salisbury once made use in
writing to me--"to try and annex the moon in order to prevent its being
appropriated by the planet Mars." When this happens, a risk is run that
the soldier, who is himself unconsciously influenced by a very laudable
desire to obtain personal distinction, may practically dictate the
policy of the nation without taking a sufficiently comprehensive view of
national interests. Considerations of this nature have more especially
been, from time to time, advanced in connection with the numerous
frontier wars which have occurred in India. That they contain a certain
element of truth can scarcely be doubted.
For these reasons, it appears to me that the application of the
principle advocated by Lord Wolseley requires much care and
watchfulness. Probably, the wisest plan will be that each case should be
decided on its own merits with reference to the special circumstances
of the situation, which may sometimes demand the fusion, and sometimes
the separation, of military and political functions.
I was talking, a short time ago, to a very intelligent, and also
Anglophile, French friend of mine. He knew England well, but, until
quite recently, had not visited the country for a few years. He told me
that what struck him most was the profound change which had come over
British opinion since the occasion of his last visit. We had been
invaded, he said, by _le militarisme continental_. In common with the
vast majority of my countrymen, I am earnestly desirous of seeing our
military organisation and military establishments placed on a thoroughly
sound footing, but I have no wish whatever to see any portion of our
institutions overwhelmed by a wave of _militarisme continental_. It is
because I think that the views advocated by Lord Wolseley
tend--although, I do not doubt, unconsciously to their distinguished
author--in the direction of a somewhat too pronounced _militarisme_,
that I venture in some degree to differ from one for whom I have for
many years entertained the highest admiration and the most cordial
personal esteem.
[Footnote 51: _The Story of a Soldier's Life_. Field-Marshal Viscount
Wolseley. Constable.]
[Footnote 52: After carefully reading the book, I am in doubt as to the
specific occasions to which allusion is here made.]
[Footnote 53: This expression is used with reference to a warning to
civilians that they should "keep their hands off the regiment." I do not
know if any recent instances have occurred when civilians have wished to
touch the essential portions of what is known as the "regimental
system," but I have a very distinct recollection of the fact that this
accusation was very freely, and very unjustly, brought against the army
reformers in Lord Cardwell's time. Of these, Lord Wolseley was certainly
the most distinguished. I think he will bear me out in the assertion
that it was only by civilian support that, in the special instances to
which I allude, the opposition was overcome.]
[Footnote 54: Much the same proceeding appears to have been adopted in
the Red River expedition, which was conducted with such eminent success
by Lord Wolseley in 1870. But there was a difference. Lord Wolseley, in
describing that expedition, says: "The Cabinet and parliamentary element
in the War Office, that has marred so many a good military scheme, had,
I may say, little or nothing to do with it from first to last. When will
civilian Secretaries of State for War cease from troubling in war
affairs?" In the case of the Soudan campaigns, on the other hand, Lord
Kitchener and I had to rely--and our reliance was not misplaced--on the
Cabinet and on the parliamentary elements of the Government, to prevent
excessive interference from the London offices.]
[Footnote 55: I was present for a few weeks, as a spectator, with
Grant's army at the siege of Petersburg in 1864, but the experience was
too short to be of much value.]
[Footnote 56: _Art of War_, Jomini, p. 59.]
[Footnote 57: I think I am correct in saying that Sir Evelyn Wood was of
a contrary opinion, but I have been unable to verify this statement by
reference to any contemporaneous document.]
[Footnote 58: On the 21st of March 1884 Sir Alfred Lyall wrote to Mr.
Henry Reeve: "The Mahdi's fortunes do not interest India. The talk in
some of the papers about the necessity of smashing him, in order to
avert the risk of some general Mahomedan uprising, is futile and
imaginative."--_Memoirs of Henry Reeve_, vol. ii. p. 329.]
V
THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF FREE TRADE
PAPER READ AT THE INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE CONGRESS AT ANTWERP,
_August 9-21, 1910_[59]
I have been asked to state my opinion on the effect of Free Trade upon
the political relations between States. The subject is a very wide one.
I am fully aware that the brief remarks which I am about to make fail to
do justice to it.
A taunt very frequently levelled at modern Free Traders is that the
anticipations of their predecessors in respect to the influence which
Free Trade would be likely to exercise on international relations have
not been realised. A single extract from Mr. Cobden's writings will
suffice to show the nature of those anticipations. In 1842, he described
Free Trade "as the best human means for securing universal and permanent
peace."[60] Inasmuch as numerous wars have occurred since this opinion
was expressed, it is often held that events have falsified Mr. Cobden's
prediction.
In dealing with this argument, I have, in the first place, to remark
that modern Free Traders are under no sort of obligation to be
"Cobdenite" to the extent of adopting or defending the whole of the
teaching of the so-called Manchester School. It may readily be admitted
that the programme of that school is, in many respects, inadequate to
deal with modern problems.
In the second place, I wish to point out that Mr. Cobden and his
associates, whilst rightly holding that trade was to some extent the
natural foe to war, appear to me to have pushed the consequences to be
derived from that argument much too far. They allowed too little for
other causes which tend to subvert peace, such as racial and religious
differences, dynastic considerations, the wish to acquire national
unity, which tends to the agglomeration of small States, and the
ambition which excites the desire of hegemony.
In the third place, I have to observe that the world has not as yet had
any adequate opportunity for judging of the accuracy or inaccuracy of
Mr. Cobden's prediction, for only one great commercial nation has, up to
the present time, adopted a policy of Free Trade. It was, indeed, here
more than in any other direction that some of the early British Free
Traders erred on the side of excessive optimism.[61] They thought, and
rightly thought, that Free Trade would confer enormous benefits on their
own country; and they held that the object-lesson thus afforded might
very probably induce other nations speedily to follow the example of
England. They forgot that the special conditions which existed at the
time their noble aspirations were conceived were liable to change; that
the extraordinary advantages which Free Trade for a time secured were
largely due to the fact that seventy years ago England possessed a far
larger supply of mechanical aptitude than any other country; that her
marked commercial supremacy, which was then practically undisputed,
could not be fully maintained in the face of the advance likely to be
made by other nations; that if those nations persisted in adhering to
Protection, their progress--which has really been achieved, not by
reason of, but in spite of Protection--would almost inevitably be
mainly attributed to their fiscal policy to the exclusion of other
contributory causes, such as education; and that thus a revived demand
for protective measures would not improbably arise, even in England
itself. These are, in fact, the results which have accrued. Without
doubt, it was difficult to foresee them, but it is worthy of note that,
in spite of all adverse and possibly ephemeral appearances, symptoms are
not wanting which encourage the belief that the prescience of the early
Free Traders may, in the end, be tardily vindicated. It is the irony of
current politics that at a time when England is meditating a return to
Protection--but is as yet, I am glad to say, very far from being
persuaded that the adoption of such a policy would be wise--the most
advanced thinkers in some Protectionist states are beginning to turn
their eyes towards the possibility and desirability of casting aside
those swaddling-clothes which were originally assumed in order to foster
their budding industries. Many of the most competent German economists,
whilst advocating Protection as a temporary measure, have for many years
fully recognised that, when once a country has firmly established its
industrial and commercial status in the markets of the world, it can
best maintain and extend its acquired position by permitting the freest
possible trade. Even Friedrich List, though an ardent Protectionist,
"always had before him universal Free Trade as the goal of his
endeavours."[62] Before long, Germany will have well-nigh completed the
transition from agriculture to manufactures in which she has been
engaged for the last thirty or forty years; and when that transition is
fully accomplished, it may be predicted with some degree of confidence
that a nation so highly educated, and endowed with so keen a perception
of cause and effect, will begin to move in the direction of Free Trade.
Similarly, in the United States of America, the campaign which has
recently been waged against the huge Trusts, which are the offspring of
Protection, as well as the rising complaints of the dearness of living,
are so many indications that arguments, which must eventually lead to
the consideration--and probably to the ultimate adoption--if not of Free
Trade, at all events of Freer Trade than now prevails, are gradually
gaining ground. Much the same may be said of Canada. A Canadian
gentleman, who can speak with authority on the subject, recently wrote:
The feeling in favour of Free Trade is growing fast in Western
Canada, and I believe I am right in adding the United States.
We have our strong and rapidly growing farmers' organisations, such
as the United Farmers of Alberta, and of each Western province, so
that farmers are now making themselves heard and felt in politics,
and farmers realise that they are being exploited for the benefit
of the manufacturer. Excellent articles appear almost weekly in the
_Grain Growers' Guide_, published in Winnipeg, showing the curse of
Protection.
A Canadian Free Trade Union, affiliated with the International Free
Trade League, has just been formed in Winnipeg, and many prominent
business and professional men are connected with it.
It ought to be better known among the electors of Great Britain how
Free Trade is growing in Canada, that they may be less inclined to
commit the fatal mistake of changing England's policy. Canada is
often quoted in English politics now, and the real facts should be
known.
No experience has, therefore, as yet been acquired which would enable a
matured judgment to be formed as to the extent to which Free Trade may
be regarded as a preventive to war. The question remains substantially
much in the same condition as it was seventy years ago. In forming an
opinion upon it, we have still to rely largely on conjecture and on
academic considerations. All that has been proved is that numerous wars
have taken place during a period of history when Protection was the
rule, and Free Trade the exception; though the _post hoc ergo propter
hoc_ fallacy would, of course, be involved, if on that account it were
inferred that the protection of national industries has necessarily
been the chief cause of war.
Without indulging in any utopian dreams as to the possibility of
inaugurating an era of universal peace, it may, I think, be held that,
in spite of the wars which have occurred during the last half century,
not merely an ardent desire for peace, but also a dislike--I may almost
say a genuine horror--of war has grown apace amongst the civilised
nations of the world. The destructiveness of modern weapons of offence,
the fearful personal responsibility devolving on the individuals who
order the first shot to be fired, the complete uncertainty which
prevails as to the naval, military, and political results which will
ensue if the huge armaments of modern States are brought into collision,
the growth of a benevolent, if at times somewhat eccentric
humanitarianism, possibly also the advance of democracy--though it is at
times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be
peaceful--have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds
that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes.
This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as
compared to former times, is now made to arbitration in order to settle
international disputes. Nevertheless, so long as human nature remains
unchanged, and more especially so long as the huge armaments at present
existing are maintained, it is the imperative duty of every
self-respecting nation to provide adequately for its own defence. That
duty is more especially imposed on those nations who, for one reason or
another, have been driven into adopting that policy of expansion, which
is now almost universal. Within the last few years, the United States of
America have abandoned what has been aptly termed their former system of
"industrial monasticism,"[63] whilst in the Far East a new world-power
has suddenly sprung into existence. Speaking as one unit belonging to a
country whose dominions are more extensive and more widely dispersed
than those of any other nation, I entertain a strong opinion that if
Great Britain continues to maintain her present policy of Free Trade--as
I trust will be the case--her means of defence should, within the limits
of human foresight, be such as to render her empire impregnable; and,
further, that should that policy unfortunately be reversed, it will be a
wise precaution that those means of defence should, if possible, be
still further strengthened. But I also entertain an equally strong
opinion that an imperial nation should seek to fortify its position and
to provide guarantees for the durability of its empire, not merely by
rendering itself, so far as is possible, impregnable, but also by using
its vast world-power in such a manner as to secure in some degree the
moral acquiescence of other nations in its _imperium_, and thus provide
an antidote--albeit it may only be a partial antidote--against the
jealousy and emulation which its extensive dominions are calculated to
incite.
I am aware that an argument of this sort is singularly liable to
misrepresentation. Militant patriotism rejects it with scorn. It is said
to involve an ignoble degree of truckling to foreign nations. It
involves nothing of the kind. I should certainly be the last to
recommend anything approaching to pusillanimity in the conduct of the
foreign affairs of my country. If I thought that the introduction of a
policy of Protection was really demanded in the interests of the
inhabitants of the United Kingdom, I should warmly advocate it, whatever
might be the effect produced on the public opinion of other countries.
British Free Traders do not advocate the cause which they have at heart
in order to benefit the countries which send their goods to Great
Britain, but because they think it advantageous to their own country to
procure certain foreign products without any artificial enhancement of
price.[64] If they are right in coming to this conclusion, it is surely
an incidental advantage of much importance that a policy of Free Trade,
besides being advantageous to the United Kingdom, tends to give an
additional element of stability to the British Empire and to preserve
the peace of the world.
From the dawn of history, uncontrolled commercialism has been one of the
principal causes of misgovernment, and more especially of the
misgovernment of subject races. The early history of the Spaniards in
South and Central America, as well as the more recent history of other
States, testify to the truth of this generalisation. Similarly,
Trade--that is to say exclusive trade--far from tending to promote
peace, has not infrequently been accompanied by aggression, and has
rather tended to promote war. Tariff wars, which are the natural outcome
of the protective system, have been of frequent occurrence, and,
although I am not at all prepared to admit that under no circumstances
is a policy of retaliation justifiable, it is certain that that policy,
carried to excess, has at times endangered European peace. There is
ample proof that the Tariff war between Russia and Germany in 1893, "was
regarded by both responsible parties as likely to lead to a state of
things dangerous to the peace of Europe."[65] Professor Dietzel, in his
very remarkable and exhaustive work on _Retaliatory Duties_, shows very
clearly that the example of Tariff wars is highly contagious. Speaking
of the events which occurred in 1902 and subsequent years, he says:
"Germany set the bad example.... Russia, Austria-Hungary, Roumania,
Switzerland, Portugal, Holland, Servia, followed suit.... An
international arming epidemic broke out. Everywhere, indeed, it was
said: We are not at all desirous of a Tariff war. We are acting only on
the maxim so often proclaimed among us, _Si vis pacem, para bellum_."
Can it be doubted that there is a distinct connection between these
Tariff wars and the huge armaments which are now maintained by every
European state? The connection is, in fact, very close. Tariff wars
engender the belief that wars carried on by shot and shell may not
improbably follow. They thus encourage, and even necessitate, the costly
preparations for war which weigh so heavily, not only on the
industries, but also on the moral and intellectual progress of the
world.
Mr. Oliver, in his interesting biography of Alexander Hamilton, gives a
very remarkable instance of the menace to peace arising, even amongst a
wholly homogeneous community, from the creation of hostile tariffs. The
first step which the thirteen States of America took after they had
acquired their independence was "to indulge themselves in the costly
luxury of an internecine tariff war.... Pennsylvania attacked Delaware.
Connecticut was oppressed by Rhode Island and New York.... It was a
dangerous game, ruinous in itself, and, behind the Custom-House
officers, men were beginning to furbish up the locks of their
muskets.... At one time war between Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York
seemed all but inevitable."
To sum up all I have to say on this subject--I do not for a moment
suppose that Universal Free Trade--even if the adoption of such a policy
were conceivable--would inaugurate an era of universal and permanent
peace. Whatever fiscal policy be adopted by the great commercial nations
of the world, it is wholly illusory to suppose that the risk of war can
be altogether avoided in the future, any more than has been the case in
the past. But I am equally certain that, whereas exclusive trade tends
to exacerbate international relations, Free Trade, by mutually
enlisting a number of influential material interests in the cause of
peace, tends to ameliorate those relations and thus, _pro tanto_, to
diminish the probability of war. No nation has, of course, the least
right to dictate the fiscal policy of its neighbours, neither has it any
legitimate cause to complain when its neighbours exercise their
unquestionable right to make whatever fiscal arrangements they consider
conducive to their own interests. But the real and ostensible causes of
war are not always identical. When once irritation begins to rankle, and
rival interests clash to an excessive degree, the guns are apt to go off
by themselves, and an adroit diplomacy may confidently be trusted to
discover some plausible pretext for their explosion.
In a speech which I made in London some three years ago, I gave an
example, gathered from facts with which I was intimately acquainted, of
the pacifying influence exerted by adopting a policy of Free Trade in
the execution of a policy of expansion. I may as well repeat it now.
Some twelve years ago the British flag was hoisted in the Soudan side by
side with the Egyptian. Europe tacitly acquiesced. Why did it do so? It
was because a clause was introduced into the Anglo-Egyptian Convention
of 1899, under which no trade preference was to be accorded to any
nation. All were placed on a footing of perfect equality. Indeed, the
whole fiscal policy adopted in Egypt since the British occupation in
1883 has been based on distinctly Free Trade principles. Indirect taxes
have been, in some instances, reduced. Those that remain in force are
imposed, not for protective, but for revenue purposes, whilst in one
important instance--that of cotton goods--an excise duty has been
imposed, in order to avoid the risk of customs duties acting
protectively.
Free Trade mitigates, though it is powerless to remove, international
animosities. Exclusive trade stimulates and aggravates those
animosities. I do not by any means maintain that this argument is by
itself conclusive against the adoption of a policy of Protection, if, on
other grounds, the adoption of such a policy is deemed desirable; but it
is one aspect of the question which, when the whole issue is under
consideration, should not be left out of account.
[Footnote 59: Subsequently published in _The Nineteenth Century and
After_ for September 1910.]
[Footnote 60: _Life of Cobden_, Morley, vol. i. p. 231.]
[Footnote 61: Sir Robert Peel, as is well known, did not fall into this
error, and even Mr. Cobden appears to have recognised so early as 1849
that his original forecasts on this point were too optimistic. Speaking
on January 10, 1849, he said: "At the last stage of the Anti-Corn Law
Agitation, our opponents were driven to this position: 'Free Trade is a
very good thing, but you cannot have it until other countries adopt it
too.' And I used to say: 'If Free Trade be a good thing for us, we will
have it; let others take it if it be a good thing for them; if not, let
them do without it.'"]
[Footnote 62: Hirst, _Life of Friedrich List_, p. 134.]
[Footnote 63: Essay on the Influence of Commerce on International
Conflicts; F. Greenwood, _Ency. Brit._ (Tenth Edition).]
[Footnote 64: In connection with this branch of the question, I wish to
draw attention to the fact that Professor Shield Nicholson, in his
recent brilliant work, _A Project of Empire_, has conclusively shown
that it is a misapprehension to suppose that Adam Smith, in advocating
Free Trade, looked merely to the interests of the consumer, and
neglected altogether those of the producer. Mr. Gladstone's statement on
this subject, made in 1860, is well known.]
[Footnote 65: Reports on the Tariff wars between certain European
States, Parliamentary paper, Commercial, No. 1 (1904), p. 46.]
VI
CHINA
_"The Nineteenth Century and After," May 1913_
Mr. Bland's book, entitled _Recent Events and Present Policies in China_
(1912), is full of instruction not only for those who are specially
concerned in the affairs of China, but also for all who are interested
in watching the new developments which are constantly arising from the
ever-increasing contact between the East and the West.
The Eastern world is at present strewn with the _débris_ of paper
constitutions, which are, or are probably about to become, derelict. The
case of Egypt is somewhat special, and would require separate treatment.
But in Turkey, in Persia, and in China, the epidemic, which is of an
exotic character, appears to be following its normal course.
Constitutions when first promulgated are received with wild enthusiasm.
In Italy, during the most frenzied period of Garibaldian worship, my
old friend, Lear the artist, asked a patriotic inn-keeper, who was in a
wild state of excitement, to give him breakfast, to which the man
replied: "Colazione! Che colazione! Tutto è amore e libertà!" In the
Albanian village in which Miss Durham was residing when the Young Turks
proclaimed their constitution, the Moslem inhabitants expressed great
delight at the news, and forthwith asked when the massacre of the
Giaours--without which a constitution would wholly miss its mark--was to
begin.[66] Similarly, Mr. Bland says that throughout China, although
"the word 'Republic' meant no more to the people at large than the
blessed word 'Mesopotamia,' men embraced each other publicly and wept
for joy at the coming of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
These ebullitions provoke laughter.
Sed facilis cuivis rigidi censura cachinni.
We Europeans have ourselves passed through much the same phases. Vandal
and others have told us of the Utopia which was created in the minds of
the French when the old régime crashed to the ground. Sydney Smith
caricatured the delusive hopes excited by the passing of the Reform Bill
of 1832, when he said that all the unmarried young women thought that
they would at once get husbands, and that all the schoolboys expected a
heavy fall in the price of jam tarts. A process of disillusionment may
confidently be anticipated in Ireland if the Home Rule Bill becomes law,
and the fairy prospects held out to the Irish people by Mr. Redmond and
the other stage managers of the piece are chilled by the cold shade of
reality.
We English are largely responsible for creating the frame of mind which
is even now luring Young Turks, Chinamen, and other Easterns into the
political wilderness by the display of false signals. We have, indeed,
our Blands in China, our Milners in Egypt, our Miss Durhams in the
Balkan Peninsula, and our Miss Bells in Mesopotamia, who wander far
afield, gleaning valuable facts and laying before their countrymen and
countrywomen conclusions based on acquired knowledge and wide
experience. But their efforts are only partially successful. They are
often shivered on the solid rock of preconceived prejudices, and genuine
but ill-informed sentimentalism. A large section of the English public
are, in fact, singularly wanting in political imagination. Although they
would not, in so many words, admit the truth of the statement, they none
the less act and speak as if sound national development in whatsoever
quarter of the world must of necessity proceed along their own
conventional, insular, and time-honoured lines, and along those lines
alone. There is a whole class of newspaper readers, and also of
newspaper writers, who resemble that eminent but now deceased Member of
Parliament, who told me that during the four hours' railway journey from
Port Said to Cairo he had come to the definite conclusion that Egypt
could not be prosperous because he had observed that there were no
stacks of corn standing in the fields; neither was this conclusion in
any way shaken when it was explained to him that the Egyptians were not
in the habit of erecting corn stacks after the English model. All these
classes readily lend an ear to quack, though often very well-intentioned
politicians, who go about the world preaching that countries can be
regenerated by shibboleths, and that the characters of nations can be
changed by Acts of Parliament. This frame of mind appeals with
irresistible force to the untrained Eastern habit of thought. T'ang--a
leading Chinese Republican--Mr. Bland says, "like all educated Chinese,
believes in the magic virtue of words and forms of government in making
a nation wise and strong by Acts of Parliament." And what poor,
self-deluded T'ang is saying and thinking in Canton is said and thought
daily by countless Ahmeds, Ibrahims, and Rizas in the bazaars of
Constantinople, Cairo, and Teheran.
What has Mr. Bland to tell us of all the welter of loan-mongering,
rococo constitution-tinkering, Confucianism, and genuine if at times
misdirected philanthropy, which is now seething in the Chinese
melting-pot?
In the first place, he has to say that the main obstacle to all real
progress in China is one that cannot be removed by any change in the
form of government, whether the ruling spirit be a full-fledged
Republican of the Sun Yat-Sen type, aided by a number of "imitation
foreigners," as they are termed by their countrymen, or a savage, albeit
statesmanlike "Old Buddha," who, at the close of a life stained by all
manner of blood-guiltiness, at last turned her weary face towards
Western reform as the only hope of saving her country and her dynasty.
The main disease is not political, and is incapable of being cured by
the most approved constitutional formulae. It is economic. Polygamy,
aided by excessive philo-progenitiveness, the result of
ancestor-worship, has produced a highly congested population. Vast
masses of people are living in normal times on the verge of starvation.
Hence come famines and savage revolts of the hungry. "Amidst all the
specifics of political leaders," Mr. Bland says, "there has been as yet
hardly a voice raised against marriages of minors or polygamy, and
reckless over-breeding, which are the basic causes of China's chronic
unrest."
The same difficulty, though perhaps in a less acute form, exists in
India. Not only cannot it be remedied by mere philanthropy, but it is
absolutely certain--cruel and paradoxical though it may appear to say
so--that philanthropy enhances the evil. In the days of Akhbar or Shah
Jehan, cholera, famine, and internal strife kept down the population.
Only the fittest survived. Now, internal strife is forbidden, and
philanthropy steps in and says that no single life shall be sacrificed
if science and Western energy or skill can save it. Hence the growth of
a highly congested population, vast numbers of whom are living on a bare
margin of subsistence. I need hardly say that I am not condemning
philanthropy. On the contrary, I hold strongly that an
anti-philanthropic basis of government is not merely degrading and
inhuman, but also fortunately nowadays impracticable. None the less, the
fact that one of the greatest difficulties of governing the teeming
masses in the East is caused by good and humane government should be
recognised. It is too often ignored.
A partial remedy to the state of things now existing in China would be
to encourage emigration; but a resort to this expedient is impossible,
for Europeans and Americans alike, being scared by the prospect of
competing with Chinese cheap labour, which is the only real Yellow
Peril,[67] as also by the demoralisation consequent on a large influx of
Chinamen into their dominions, close their ports to the emigrants. That
Young China should feel this as a gross injustice can be no matter for
surprise. The Chinaman may, with inexorable logic, state his case thus:
"You, Europeans and Americans, insist on my receiving and protecting
your missionaries. I do not want them. I have, in Confucianism, a system
of philosophy, which, whatever you may think of it, suits all my
spiritual requirements, and which has been sufficient to hold Chinese
society together for long centuries past. Nevertheless, I bow to your
wishes. But then surely you ought in justice to allow free entry into
your dominions to my carpenters and bricklayers, of whom I have a large
surplus, of which I should be glad to be rid. Is not your boasted
philanthropy somewhat vicarious, and does not your public morality
savour in some degree of mere opportunist cant?"
To all of which, Europeans and Americans can only reply that the
instinct of self-preservation, which is strong within them, points
clearly to the absolute necessity of excluding the Chinese carpenters
and bricklayers; and, further, as regards the missionaries, that there
can be but one answer, and that in a Christian sense, to the question
asked by jesting Pilate. In effect they say that circumstances alter
cases, and that might is right--a plea which may perhaps suffice to
salve the conscience of an opportunist politician, but ought to appeal
less forcibly to a stern moralist.
Foreign emigration, even if it were possible, would, however, be a mere
palliative. A more thorough and effective remedy would be to facilitate
the dispersion of the population in the congested districts over those
wide tracts of China itself which are suffering in a less degree from
congestion. I conceive that the execution of a policy of this nature
would not be altogether impossible. It could be carried into effect by
improving the means of locomotion, possibly by the construction of
irrigation works on a large scale, and by developing the resources of
the country, which are admittedly very great. But there is one condition
which is essential to the execution of this programme, and that is that
the financial administration of the country should be sufficiently
honest to inspire the confidence of those European investors who alone
can provide the necessary capital. Now, according to Mr. Bland, this
fundamental quality of honesty is not to be found throughout the length
and breadth of China, whether in the ranks of the old Mandarins or in
those of the young Republicans.
The essential virtue of personal integrity [he says], the capacity
to handle public funds with common honesty, has been conspicuously
lacking in Young China. The leopard has not changed his spots; the
sons and brothers of the classical Mandarin remain, in spite of
Western learning, Mandarins by instinct and in practice.
A very close observer of Eastern affairs--Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole--has
said that the East has an extraordinary facility for assimilating all
the worst features of any new civilisation with which it is brought in
contact. This is what has happened in India, in Turkey, in Egypt, and in
Persia. Even in Japan it has yet to be seen whether the old national
virtues will survive prolonged contact with the West. Hear now what Mr.
Bland has to say of China:
Where Young China has cast off the ethical restraints and patriotic
morality of Confucianism, it has failed to assimilate, or even to
understand, the moral foundations of Europe's civilisation. It has
exchanged its old lamp for a new, but it has not found the oil,
which the new vessel needs, to lighten the darkness withal.
In the opinion of so highly qualified an authority as Prince Ito, "the
sentiments of foreign educated Young China are hopelessly out of touch
with the masses." But while there has been alienation from the ideals of
the East, there has been no real approach to the ideals of the West.
Education at Harvard or Oxford may imbue the Chinese student with
ideas and social tendencies, apparently antagonistic to those of
the patriarchal system of his native land; but they do not, and
cannot, create in him (as some would have us believe) the
Anglo-Saxon outlook on life, the standards of conduct and the
beliefs which are the results of centuries of our process of
civilisation and structural character. Under his top dressing of
Western learning, the Chinese remains true to type, instinctively
detached from the practical and scientific attitude,
contemplatively philosophical, with the fatalistic philosophy of
the prophet Job, concerned rather with the causes than the results
of things. Your barrister at Lincoln's Inn, after ten years of
cosmopolitan experience in London or Washington, will revert in six
months to the ancestral type of morals and manners; the spectacle
is so common, even in the case of exceptionally assimilative men
like Wu Ting-fang, or the late Marquis Tseng, that it evokes little
or no comment amongst Europeans in China.
Notably from the point of view of financial honesty, which, as I have
already mentioned, is of cardinal importance if the regeneration of the
country is to be undertaken by other means than by mock constitutions,
the results of Western education are most disappointing.
The opinion [Mr. Bland says] is widely held amongst European
residents and traders that the section of Young China which has
received its education in Foreign Mission schools displays no more
honesty than the rest.
What is the conclusion to be drawn from these facts? It is that not only
in order to obtain adequate security for the bond-holders--in whom I am
not in any way personally interested, for I shall certainly not be one
of them--but also in the interests of the Chinese people, it is
essential, before any loan is contracted, to insist on a strict
supervision of the expenditure of the loan funds. That Young China,
partly on genuine patriotic grounds and also possibly in some cases on
grounds which are less worthy of respect and sympathy, should resent the
exercise of this supervision, is natural enough, but it can scarcely be
doubted that unless it be exercised a large portion of the money
advanced by European capitalists will be wasted, and that no really
effective step forward will be taken in the solution of the economic
problem which constitutes the main Chinese difficulty. The very
rudimentary ideas entertained by the Chinese themselves in the matter of
applying funds to productive works is sufficiently illustrated by the
episode mentioned by Mr. Bland, where he tells us that "the Szechuan
Railway Company directors made provision for the building of their line
by the appointment of station-masters"; while the fact that but a short
time ago 1400 German machine guns, costing £500 apiece, which had never
been used or paid for, were lying at Shanghai, indicates the manner in
which it is not only possible but highly probable that the loan funds
under exclusively Chinese supervision would be frittered away on
unproductive objects.
Those, indeed, who have had some practical experience of financial
administration in Eastern countries may well entertain some doubts as to
whether supervision which only embraces the expenditure, and does not
apply to the revenue, will be sufficient to meet all the requirements of
the case. The results so far attained by the more limited scheme of
supervision do not appear to have been satisfactory. Herr Rump was
appointed auditor to the German section of the Tientsin-P'ukou Railway,
but Mr. Bland tells us that "the auditorship on this railway has proved
worse than useless as a preventive of official peculation." On the other
hand, the system of collecting the revenue is in the highest degree
defective. It violates flagrantly a principle which, from the days of
Adam Smith downwards, has always been regarded as the corner-stone of
any sound financial administration. "For every tael officially accounted
for by the provincial authorities," Mr. Bland says, in words which
recall to my mind the Egyptian fiscal system under the régime of Ismail
Pasha, "at least five are actually collected from the taxpayers."
It is, therefore, earnestly to be hoped that the diplomatists and
capitalists of Europe will--both in the interests of the investing
public and in those of the Chinese people--stand firm and insist on
adequate financial control as a preliminary and essential condition to
the advance of funds.
As to whether the recently established Republic is destined to last or
whether it will prove a mere ephemeral episode in the life-history of
China, there seems to be much divergence of opinion among those
authorities who are most qualified to speak on the subject. Mr. Bland's
views on this point are, however, quite clear. He thinks that
Confucianism, and all the political and social habits of thought which
are the outcome of Confucianism, have "become ingrained in every fibre
of the national life," and that they constitute the "fundamental cause
of the longevity of China's social structure and of the innate strength
of her civilisation." He refuses to believe that Young China, which is
imbued with "a doctrinaire spirit of political speculation," though it
may tinker with the superstructure, will be able seriously to shake the
foundations of this hoary edifice. He has watched the opinions and
activities in every province from the beginning of the present
revolution, and he "is compelled to the conviction that salvation from
this quarter is impossible." He thinks that although in Canton and the
Kuang Provinces, which are the most intellectually advanced portions of
China, a system of popular representation may be introduced with some
hope of beneficial results,
... as regards the rest of China, as every educated Chinese knows
(unless, like Sun Yat-Sen, he has been brought up abroad), the idea
of rapidly transforming the masses of the population into an
intelligent electorate, and of making a Chinese Parliament the
expression of their collective political vitality, is a vain dream,
possible only for those who ignore the inherent character of the
Chinese people.
There is, however, one consideration set forth by Mr. Bland, which may
possibly prove, at all events for a time, the salvation, while it
assuredly connotes the condemnation of the present system
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