OUR PERSONAL GOVERNMENT. T HMIE is a story going about, founded,
we believe, on good authority, that when some one quoted " Tancred," two or three months ago, in Lord Beaconsfield's presence, the Prime Minister remarked, " Ah ! I perceive you have been reading ' Tailored.' That is a work to which I refer more and more every year,—not for amusement, but for instruction." And if any one will take the trouble just now to refresh his memory of " Tancred," he will see how much Lord Beaconsfield has borrowed from it in relation to the policy of the day. Turn, for instance, to this passage :—" ' If I were an Arab in race as well as in religion,' said Tancred, would not pass my life in schemes to govern mere mountain tribes.' I'll tell you,' said the Emir, springing from his divan, and flinging the tube of his nargilly to the other end of the tent, 'the game is in our hands, if we have energy. There is a combination which would entirely change the whole face of the world, and bring back empire to the East. Though you are not the brother of the Queen of the English, you are nevertheless a great English Prince, and the Queen will listen to what you say, especially if you talk to her as you talk to me, and say such fine things in such a beautiful voice. Nobody ever opened my mind like you. You will magnetise the Queen as you have magnetised me. Go back to England and arrange this. You see, gloze it over as they may, one thing is clear, it is finished with England. Let the Queen of the English collect a great fleet,let her stow away all her treasure,bullion,gold plate,and precious arms ; be accompanied by all her Court and chief people, and transfer the seat of her empire from London to Delhi. There she will find an immense empire ready-made, a first-rate army, and a large revenue. In the meantime, I will arrange with Mehemet Ali. He shall have Bagdad and Mesopotamia, and pour the Bodoueen cavalry into Persia. I will take care of Syria and Asia Minor. The only way to manage the Affghans is by Persia and by the Arabs. We will acknowledge the Empress of India as our suzerain, and secure for her the Levantine coast. If she like, she shall have Alexandria, as she now has Malta. It could be arranged. Your Queen is young. She has an avenir. Aberdeen and Sir Peel will never give ' her this advice ; their habit% are formed. They are too old, too ruse's. But you see the greatest empire that ever existed ; besides which she gets rid of the embarrassment' of her Chambers ! And quite practicable ! For the only difficult part, the conquest of India, which baffled Alexander, is all done.'" Who can avoid seeing that Lord Beaconsfield has been quite recently referring to-this passage,—" not," as he said, "for amusement, but for instruction ? " These are 011ie ideas of his recent polity in germ,—especially the treatment of the British Empire as having its true centre of gravity in the far East,—the use of the Indian Army for conquests to be made in Western Asia,— the acquisition of the Levantine coast for Great Britain,—the active alliance between the British power and the Mahomedan Power,—and last, not least, the getting rid, to a great ex- tent at least, by the help of Indian leverage, of " the embar- rassment of the Chambers." For the last eight months at least, our policy has evidently been borrowed from " Tancred." The monarch, for anything we know, has been "magne- tised." The Cabinet assuredly have been magnetised. Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon have been treated much as the Emir in "Tancred'" would have treated "Aber- deen and Sir Peel,"—thrown aside as too " ruses." An Oriental policy has been inaugurated. The possession of India has been made the origin of a new start in British history. From first to last, Parliament' as been completely ignored, and the fame determined for us without even sounding its wishes; much less asking its will. How this marvellous vision has been translated from the dream of the wildest of rhodo- m'ontad'erand roinante-writers into the accepted policy of the stolidest and most practical-minded of all European States, is a question, to our minds, rather for the philosophy of mag- netism to determine, than for any strictly political explanation: But so translated it clearly has been, and for the present, at least, this is the significant feature in the matter,—that Lord Beaconsfield has not even attempted to set about the matter in the constitutional way, by magnetising the multitude. He has,' as military men say, "turned" that difficulty, instead of con- ! quering it. He has seized on the one prerogative still remain- ling to the Crown, by which vast changes can be made in the historical conditions of this country without attempting to convince the people. By the use of the Treaty-making power, he has brought about a great historic transformation scene.' He and his party taunted his opponent seven years ago with the use of the Royal prerogative to accomplish a purpose—the abolition of Purchase in the Army—on which the House of Commons had, by a large majority, determined, and which, by all the traditions of the country, as in the main a question of finance, it really was within the functions of the Commons to determine. But now we find the same Minister using another branch of the Royal prerogative for the accomplishment of a policy as much newer and more startling in its consequences than the other, as the deeds of Columbus were newer and more startling than the deeds of Captain Cook, not only without consulting either House of Parliament, but without even enough disclosure to prepare the country at large by a preliminary discussion for the new fate in store for it. It has been the custom for many years to give Parliament full information before any treaty of the slightest general im- portance has been ratified. In 1870, for instance, the policy of the new guarantee given to Belgium—which was in no re- spect a startling one, for it merely renewed and, so to say, modernised the provisions of the Treaty of 1839—was dis- cussed in both Houses, and the policy of the Government clearly declared, before it was ratified. But the tremendous Treaty of which we heard on Monday had been ratified before Parliament knew of its existence. Indeed, in the present case, where we are not so much turning over a new leaf, as commencing the history of a new Empire, both the great events by which that new history is to be determined, have been sprung upon us like mines, not only without declara- tions of policy calculated to test the view of Parliament, but in the most anxious and elaborate secrecy. The orders summoning India as a military power to the assistance of England, were issued and were partly executed, before any glimpse of the matter was obtained by the public. When that glimpse was obtained, the greatest care was taken to prevent the nation from seeing how large the issue really was. Sir Stafford Northcote minimised the meaning of the step taken to so great an extent, that the speeches on the other side pointing out the magnitude of the new policy, sounded to many of his fol- lowers mere imaginative alarm-notes, without any bearing■on what the Government were really doing. Lord Beaconsfield veiled the drift of the Government in mystery. There were secret reasons, he said, why the step could not have been announced and discussed. It would not have been for the advantage of the State that it should have been so announced and discussed. The pride of the people of Great Britain had been gratified, and their anxiety as to the mystery was soothed by Sir Stafford Northcote's strangely emphasised depreciation of the significance of the step taken. No one would have so much as surmised from his speeches that what had been said on the other side, as to the enormous importance of a policy which redressed the balance of power in the West by the use of the military reserves of the East, was a mere faint approximation towards an appreciation of the vast dangers in- volved in the Prime Minister's purpose. No one could have suspected that the Cabinet which seemed to be always asking what the fuss was about, what the Opposition meant by raising such large issues on such small mat- ters, had really decided on a policy which was far more like the policy which Alexander dreamt of when he reached the Indus, than the policy of Tudors, or Stuarts, or Princes of the House of Orange, or Princes of the House of Hanover,—a policy which, if it is effectually carried out, might even, as the Emir in " Tancred" says, restore empire to the East, while if it is merely flashed before the dazzled eyes of the British popu- lace, without the slightest intention of giving practical effect to it, may very well mark the point at which a very rapid decline and fall of the British empire is to commence. We should as soon have expected to hear that a British Princess had been, without her own consent or knowledge, promised to the harem of some great Mahommedan potentate, as to find that British power had been, without a word said to Parliament or the people, pledged to this tremendous task of revivifying Asia, of holding off Russia along a continental frontier of formidable length, and of transferring to a scene and stage of which we as a people know nothing, all the great issues of our national destiny. To speak of a people who are so treated as self-governed, is like speaking of a bride who finds herself pledged by others to a life she has never experienced, with a man she has never seen, as self-governed. If Lord Beaconsfield had really, by the use of the Prerogative, summoned Parlia- ment to meet at Delhi, instead of Westminster, he could hardly have inflicted a greater outrage on the spirit of the Constitu- tion than he has inflicted by this coup de main, which pro- mises to revolutionise from the foundation the very elements of British policy, without asking a word of sanction from the British people.
Previous page
