IMPERIAL ENGLAND FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.* IN his

American Four-in-Hand in Britain, Mr. Carnegie showed us to ourselves at home from the point of view of the friendly American, in a book which was a welcome set-off to the cynical unfriendliness of the envious foreigner who "showed us up" in John Bull et Son Ile. In the present book, which was written in 1879, Mr. Carnegie shows us to ourselves as we are abroad, in that larger half of the world we call the East. For though his work is fully entitled to its title, Round the TVorld, yet from reading it, it would appear that "the round world" is, in fact, British. With the exception of a short stay in Japan, which is a sent ma gentian' where the Yankee flourishes as abundantly, if not more, than the Britisher, the author was rarely out of sight of the Union Jack. China was inspected from the Anglicised Shanghai and the British Hong Kong ; while the minor stages of his journey,—the Straits Settlements, Ceylon, India, Aden, and even Egypt,—are but so many resting-places for the paws of the British lion.

We are thus enabled to see how the Eilishman abroad strikes the outsider. As an independent American citizen, Mr. Carnegie brings to bear on the question a mind emancipated from insular optimism and insular pessimism, and can express his views of the Union Jack and those who work under it, in a way which no Briton can do without the imputation of party spirit. As this seems to be the most valuable office of -the book, we shall not linger with Mr. Carnegie in his journey overland from Pittsburg to Fr'isco, only noticing with a sigh that, even over the city which looks on the Golden Gate, there hangs a canopy which, though according to the natives "mostly fogs and a pecu- liar wind," the ironmaster's experienced eye recognised as smoke which even his own smoky Pittsburg would not beat in dense- ness. This is a terrible blow to a long-cherished illusion due to that charming novel, Dear Lady Disdain. It is no compensation for a smoke-canopy to know that the place whips all creation by having the biggest monster hotel in the world. If the Golden Gate is sooty, no amount of golden ceilings can restore its charm to San Francisco.

Nor shall we stay with Mr. Carnegie on board ship, because it must be confessed that the life on the ocean wave tends to reduce him to a state of unmitigated gush. Indeed, through- out the book, we could wish that . we had a little less of that easiest and dullest form of writing, filled out with quotations from the poets. If we might venture a suggestion to Mr. Carnegie, it is that his forte lies in his own power of obser- vation and shrewdness of reflection, and that less than most men he stands in need of the extraneous assistance of quotations and " gush." To our prosaic minds, he is much fresher when he remarks on the cheapness of the Chinese Im- perial Government, —only £25,000,000 a year for four hundred million people,—or on the admirable extent to which " home- rule " is carried there, than when we are treated to the usual "Garden of the Hesperides " sunsets. In his more prosaic and interesting moments we have only noticed one aberration of intellect on the part of the author, and that is when, comment- ing on the mode of administering justice in China by the torture, he implies approval of the torture as a means of extract- ing evidence and procuring confessions. "No skilful lawyer here to defend and throw around the prisoners the safeguards of the law ; but neither is there on the side of the prosecution. The accused has only to satisfy the judge, by giving a true account of himself and his doings. I should say an innocent man would prefer this mode, a guilty man detest it,—and this seems a strong argument in its favour." But does it not occur to Mr. Carnegie that as a rule it is easy to prove guilt by independent and unforced witnesses, and that in a large num- ber of cases the result is the same whether you have torture or not ? But in the large number where circumstances are of ambiguous import, and the judge, from prejudice or error, forma a view adverse to the accused, there is little hope for him, however innocent, if torture is employed ; while, if torture is employed, as a matter of course the inducements to false accusations are multiplied a thousandfold. In fact, in a country where torture is employed, and a man is tried before a single judge, justice can hardly be said to exist. Life and pro-

Bound the World. By Andrew Carnegie. London : Sampson Low and Co. perty are at the mercy of the false witness and the unjust judge. It is the more remarkable that Mr. Carnegie should have for a moment yielded to this delusion, as he is never tired of saying that the great good which the Orientals get at Hong Kong and Aden, in Ceylon and. India, is justice; but if the Chinese method of administering justice is the best calculated to put down crime and ensure justice, then the natives of Hong Kong, and Aden, and India, stiffer gross wrongs at our hands.

Mr. Carnegie's remarks are more to the point when, d propos of the fact that the Mikado of Japan is having a yacht built for him at the State expense, he remarks that,— " However poor a nation may be, or however depreciated its currency, if it set up an Emperor, King, or Queen, improper personal expenditure inevitably follows. Even as good a woman as Queen Victoria, probably the most respectable woman who ever occupied a throne—such a character as one would not hesitate to introduce to one's family circle, which is saying much for a monarch—will squander £30,000 per annum of the people's money upon a private yacht which she has used but a few times, and which is one of those which She insists upon keeping at the State's expense. It is the old story : make any human being believe he is born to position and he becomes arbitrary and inconsiderate of those who have exalted him."

The most noticeable thing in Japan was the extent to which la

petite culture is carried. "I counted upon one hillside 47 terraces from the bottom to the top. These are divided vertically, so that

I think twenty-five feet square would be about the average size of each patch ; and as the division of terraces is made to suit the ground, and hence very irregularly, the appearance of a hillside in Japan is something like that of a bed-quilt of irregular pieces. The terrace walls are overgrown with vines, ferns, &c., so that they appear like low green hedges. No wonder the cultivators of these lovely spots never dream of leaving them." Of China Mr. Carnegie has nothing much that is new to say ; bat he gives an interestingly exact description of the mode of life of one of the numerous richer families on board a small passenger yawl, twenty feet long by four and a half wide, which is complete even down to the possession of its private " Jossee," or little god and chapel, behind a sliding panel in the stern; and he made the discovery that "my uncle" exists in China as elsewhere,—as a gong, which he wanted to buy at an old curiosity shop, was not to be had because it was only in pawn, having been pawned by the priest of the temple. Sad to relate, however, this very gong was afterwards delivered to the would-bepurchaser with its pawn-ticket effaced, so that there was great reason to fear that the god had been robbed of his gong. The great obstacle to the progress of the Chinese appears to be "the graves of their ancestors," who are buried all over the place; and as it would be sacrilege to disturb their bones, railways are impossible, unless Mr. Carnegie's ingenious way out of the difficulty by an elevated railway be adopted. Of Saigon and Cochin China it is sufficient to say that he deseribes them as "a God-forsaken looking region," while the " Saigonites are the lowest specimens of humanity we have yet seen" :—

"The importance even of Saigon is so small that it offers no in- ducement to any of the regular steamers to call as they pass. The French line alone visits it, under a subvention from the home govern- ment. A. few poor French people manage to exist after a fashion by trading with the ignorant natives, and a few soldiers and a ship-of- war give some semblance of French authority."

In the face of this, and the fact that at a ball given by the Governor, to which he went, there were thirty-five ladies, "mammas and grandmammas " included, out of five hundred

people asked, he concludes that " any power .acquired by France over this portion of the world can be but illusory." Even in Singa- pore, of which be speaks most favourably, where "the survival of

the fittest" is being fought out under the protection of the British flag, which ensures peace and order wherever it floats, he has

no hesitation in backing the Heathen Chinee against the field. An Englishman would inevitably cease to be an Englishman in a few, very few generation s; and it is therefore only a question of time when the Chinese will drive every other race to the wall." In a place where the very heroes " are unable togo more than ten miles in twenty-four hours, and where yonr carriage and pair are hired with the understanding that this is not to be exceeded," he is probably right; and the less either France or England annexes of the mainlands of those countries, the better for them.

Ceylon strikes him as quite a different place. The Ceylonese guide thought that the writer of the "spicy breezes" was "a loot" for saying that the Cingalese "bowed down to wood and stone ;" and "asked if anyone in my country believed that there was a man, woman, or child in

Ceylon who did not know better than to bow down to any power but God ?" The English planters he met "declared that a European can live there and enjoy as good health as at home." The coffee business was then rapidly extending, together with the prosperity and population of the isle, in spite of the taxation, as to which he was not unnaturally "surprised to find that one-fifth of the total revenue of the Island is derived from taxes upon the daily food of the people, two-thirds of this from a tax upon imported rice, and the other one-third from native grain." In Ceylon, caste prevails as much as in India, so much so, that "the wealthiest native in Ceylon to-day is a fisherman, and yet he cannot gain admittance to the society of poorer natives about him of higher caste," but curiously enough, "of all the castes the tiller of the soil stands at the head." But as "within forty miles" the writer "counted eleven schools filled with young Cingalese " who are being taught English, and there were in 1874,1,468 of these schools in the island to a population of three millions, it is obvious that considerable inroads are being made on native ideas. Of Ceylon, as a whole, Mr. Car- negie says that he is "prepared to put it forth as the best ex- ample of English government in the world, England herself not excepted."

In India, the two things which appear to have most evoked his admiration were the Taj Mahal and the jail at Agra ; and those which most provoked his horror were the worship of Kali and the'dismal plain through which the Great India Peninsular Railway passes. Over the Taj Mr. Carnegie gushes, but for once his gush is perhaps justified, and is good of its kind.

As regards India as a whole, Mr. Carnegie can only say :—

"As a lover of England, would she were safely and honourably out of it She, the mother of nations and champion of oppressed nationalities, necessarily assumed a false position in India ; there she must assume the role of the conqueror. The pole-star of Indian policy is to bend every energy to the sowing of seed which will produce a native class capable at first of participating in the Government, and which will eventually become such as can be trusted with entire control. Travelling as I did, an American, and not as one of the usurpers, I had many opportunities of hearing educated natives speak the thoughts of their hearts, vrhieh to an Englishman's ear would have been treason. While they give assent to the claims made for English rule that it keeps order and enforces justice as far as its Courts can reach, they are yet antagonistic to it. It is the old story ; you have taught people to read, and placed before them as types of the highest excellence our rebels, Cromwell, Hampden,

Sidney, Russell, Washington, Franklin Meanwhile, surely no further rash responsibilities should be taken upon herself by England. She can do most good by example. The little islands of Bong Kong and Singapore, and even Ceylon, which is not too big,— these teach the races of the East what civilisation means, and serve as models."

Rut, as he points out, at Aden the people have flocked under the British flag of their own free will, and there is no coercion. "All that I urge against conquest is inapplicable here ;" but "a nation should have much to offer in exchange, more than I see that any nation has, which stifles in the breast of the most ignorant nation in the world the sacred germ of self-develop- ment." He thinks the Anglo-Indian the worst possible guide to the solution of the question when reforms in the direction of local self-government in India can be made :—

"The Englishman in India sits on the safety-valve of the

terrible boiler. He bears every now and then the sharp rush of the confined steam, which startles the ear as it passes. When it is proposed to relieve the pressure, and allow more steam to escape, he is frightened: But we who stand afar off, and know the play of force in that boiler, as I know them from sources sealed to him, see that the steam must be allowed vent in constantly increasing volume, if a terrible catastrophe is to be avoided. The Anglo-Indian authorities protested against railway travelling being conducted without special reference to caste, and were overruled by the Home Government. The result is that more impression upon caste is made daily and hourly by the rush of every grade to get the beat seats in the same carriage, than by all other influences combined."

It is in spite, therefore, of the Anglo-Indians that, in Mr. Carnegie's opinion, reforms must be made. Nevertheless, with- out the hearty co-operation of Anglo-Indians they cannot be made.

We have already quoted too much, and have barely space to refer to what Mr. Carnegie felt to be the three things lacking in the East—women, a Sunday or regular day of rest, and music.

"To see a wealthy Chinaman driving along in his carriage alone was pitiable. His efforts had been successful, but for what ?

There was no joy in his world !" Woman was absent, and to her absence he attributed the absence of music. We have no space for more. But nearly every page of the book is worth reading, for the new way of putting facts—even when the facts them- selves are not new, and also for the shrewdness and freshness of the reflections which they suggest.