SIR SALAR JUNG.
WE wonder if it would be possible to induce Sir Salar Jung, the Nizam's Vizier, now in England endeavouring to obtain the restoration of some pawned districts of Berar, to de- liver one frank speech before he returns home. It would be listened to and read, if he would, with the deepest interest by millions of people, and might exercise a most important influence upon the future of Indian affairs. His is, perhaps, the strongest mind in India, he ia the native who has in him the mostoriginal states- manship, the man who best understands the enormous difficulties of managing subordinate sovereignty in India; he knows his fellow- Premiers and their opinions most thoroughly, and he can speak, if not with all the fire of an orator, at least with all the art of the practised diplomatist. His speech in the Guildhall of Tuesday, with its quiet assumption that the child whom he represents, and who occupies in India much the position of the King of Saxony in Germany, except that he is by pedigree a new man, is a power- ful Sovereign, who grants his alliance voluntarily to the British Government, was a masterpiece of art, as noteworthy as his reticence in avoiding the smallest explanation of his reasons for adhering to the fareigner during the Mutiny of 1857. He could give us a speech, if he liked, which all England would enjoy, and which would yield him a reputation such as no native of India has ever obtained at home. He would have to say many things which we should not like, and he probably fears that those things would prejudice Englishmen against the dynasty which he wishes to protect and the claims which he is here to urge, but his appre- hension is based on a mistake. The cultivated English, who alone are of importance to him, for the householders do not govern India, in its foreign affairs at all events, would be too glad to be enlightened as he could enlighten them, and too convinced of their own strength in India to be irritated even at a frank out- burst of dislike, if only they were compensated by hearing the causes of that dislike plainly and truthfully expressed. They would stand a good deal, much more than Sir Salar Jung is likely to give them, without any permanent irritation, and would give him thenceforward the kind of confidence accorded in this country to the statesman who has instructed the people till they are conscious of instruction, even though they do not like his ideas.
We fear that Sir Salar, who has to think of opinion in Calcutta as well as in Hydrabad and London, and who is an Indian after all—that is, a man incapable of being unpleasant before the use of pleasantness has disappeared—will not give us our desire, and tell us what a great Mussulman noble, bred up in a native principality, really thinks about our rule ; and we have ventured, therefore, lacking that aid, to put together some of the thoughts which a man of his position, if he spoke out his inmost mind, might be supposed to desire to express. He would put them with far more art and grace, but, we suspect, he would put them
substantially in the same way You have intended, gentlemen, to do me honour, and I am grateful, first, because you honour me, and honour from the masters of India soothes a pride of which they are too often forgetful ; and secondly, because honour in England smooths my_path in Hydrabad, where my sway needs English support ; but you do not comprehend exactly my poli- tical position. I am your friend, as you say, for the time at all events ; but I am not your friend for the precise reasons, the very English reasons, you assign. I do not care par- ticularly for the alliance you speak of, which is not old, as we reckon time, but very new ; which is not an alli- ance on honorific terms, but an alliance dictated by the sword, and maintained by extremely rough pressure ; which was imposed on us at the moment when independent sovereignty was in our grasp, which makes us appear even less independent than we are, and which presses on us now, when but for it we might be masters of Southern India. Hydrabad is stronger than it ever was ; its sway is in strong hands, and were you out of the Peninsula, I should rule from the Nerbudda to Comorin, setting up my master's throne and a prosperous Mahommedan civilisa- tion. As it is, I govern, and as you say, govern well, a secluded kingdom, which you prohibit me from making bigger, or from involving in adventures which I could make successful, or which, at all events, would make life much less insipid. Do you think I, with my powers, like to feel that I may do nothing great, may earn no name in history, may found no Empire, may acquire none of that rapture of devotion which accrues in India to a conqueror, even when he is not a king? I know that your rule is strong, that it secures peace, and that the peasant flourishes under it. I have not the honour to be a peasant. I know that, in a fashion, you can govern, and that without any qualification, you can conquer ; but does Europe love people who can govern hardly and conquer terribly ? I must not war, must not intrigue ; must not even obtain from your- selves more territory, because that is "contrary to your policy,"— policy made for your ends, not ours ; but must devote myself to finance, as you understand it ; and the order which you like, and which seems to me somewhat tedious ; and to making roads and tanks, and other devices for securing the peasants' wealth. I do not object to those things, they are all excellent, and I am secur- ing all, so that my master, when he is a man, will have endless resources to use or waste ; but I should prefer something more, the opportunity of a career such as I should have had, had you never blundered into the secluded land,—the chance of acquiring at all events the delegated sovereignty of an Empire, of a realm stretching from sea to sea, of a power with alliances, reputa- tion, force, in our Asiatic world. As it is, I govern, like a mouse in a mouse's nest, administering a shut-up kingdom which most of you never heard of; and when I am in difficulty, your agent, not my equal in social rank, or in refinement, or in ability, comes and bullies me, as if he were an officer and I a corporal. He does not ask of me things you want, such as roads through Hydrabad, but assails me with demands which make my first task, the management of my own Court, nearly impossible. I did not want my master not to visit the Prince of Wales, but was I to break my own power by coercing the Queen- Mother, who thought unnumbered woes would fall upon her child if he quitted his own dominion ? Your agents do not know things. They talk to me, who am a ruler, as if I were a serf ; treat my master, who is sacred, as if he were an official ; and regard the harem influence as if it were not only noxious, which in politics it sometimes is, but contemptible. You praise me in despatches as a great man, and then send envoys to me whom I know I cannot resist, and who ought to be courteous.from the mere decency of superiority, but who bully me as if I were an offender. lam not fighting your right to control. While you are strongest of course you will control ; but why not control like gentlemen, hint commands instead of blustering, and interfere because you want an object, not merely because I tell you you cannot have something you do not care about. Do you think Bismarck is loved in German Courts, or would be loved more if he upset Queens' wishes on points that he did not care about and they did ? It is this brutality of yours which creates hatred, more even than your power. Here are these Districts I am asking for, and which by rights I ought to have, the time of redemption having arrived. I do not wonder at your keeping them. Everybody keeps what he can keep everywhere. But why insult me every day by telling me it is morally impossible to injure subjects who have enjoyed British rule, by passing them over to my rule, which, never- theless, in despatches you so praise. Will you let the people de- cide that ? Not a bit of it. You hold on as Germany holds to Sleswick, and then expect something more than loyal fidelity from Denmark.
'No, I do not like you, though I perceive you are mighty, and wish, in your way, to be just—being, however, yourself sole judge of justice—and have strength here in London which we cannot resist. I wish all my nobles and priests could see London, I should have much less trouble. Some day you will provoke us beyond bearing, and we shall have to fight, or be degraded in our own eyes, and then,—and then,—do you think I shall desert my master, whose hereditary adviser I am, and my people, and my faith, merely because I know that you will beat us in the end?
Does nobody fight without a chance ? Cannot you even conceive of a man waging a hopeless fight, and waging it hard, too ; or do you suppose that I, a Mnssulman noble, want to live degraded ?
What can you do to me except kill me ? Why, then, did I de- fend you in the Mutiny ? Because, in the first place, I knew you would win. I had seen England, and I did not believe in the Sepoys ; and because, in the second place, your defeat would not have benefited my master's dynasty. An Emperor of Delhi's first act would have been to dismiss the representative of his rebel- lious satrap. I could have fought the Emperor ? Yes, with every secret enemy hoping for the musnud, and every Mahom- medan pleading, as excuse for betrayal, the ancient rights of the Empire. The Satraps want to succeed you, who, after all, can be but mere passing phenomena in a history like that of India, not to be the lieutenants of an Emperor of Delhi, who would take all their surplus revenue, and expend their contingents, and dismiss them at the end to penal servitude.
You have forgotten history, and how we rose, and what came we have to dread the House of Timonr, but we have forgotten
nothing for a thousand years. Recollect, when the next struggle comes, the House of Timour is gone, and the throne of India open, but for your Viceroys. There is no certain alternative to the Empress of India, and all ambitions-are loose. Still, as we stood by you in the black hour, you should acknowledge it, and reward as an Emperor would. Aurungzebe would have hated the Nizam for his service in 1857, and have poisoned me for mine, but he would, until the opportunity of vengeance came, have doubled my master's territories. You give nothing except praises and per- sonal honours, for which I thank you heartily, because, from a strange conjuncture of circumstances, they assist my career; but if my master were grown, I should not dare accept them, lest he should grow jealous of his subject's reputation. I have the free- dom of the City of London and the D.C.L. from Oxford, and I am pleased with these things, but what has Hydrabad received? Nothing but a clear intimation that it is too wild a place for the Shahzada to be safe in, even as a guest ; while, as for me, if I were addressed here, where you could kill me at will, as I was addressed in my own cabinet of audience by Mr. Saunders, you would all cry out upon the addresser. You are all very grate- ful, but did your gratitude save me—me, who had saved you— from being told, almost in words, that I was lying, because I pleaded, in mere courtesy, that my master of ten was sick?'
There is another side to all that, of course, for we have in- tentionally only given one ; but we suspect Sir Solar could find it in his heart to say something like that,—and as a half-statement, it would be only too nearly true.
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