ENGLAND AND RUSSIA. AMONG DARK MEN. T HERE is one link,
or shall we call it resemblance, between the English and the Russians in their external action. Both can manage the dark races of mankind without the sense of exhausting effort, and both therefore tend towards a perpetual extension of their dominion over those races. Whatever happens to either of them, and whatever professions they may make, both are perpetually receiving the submission of new tribes, and neither, when once the submission has lasted a few years, are much troubled by insurrections. The curious amalgam of pity, contempt, physical dislike, and desire to see justice done which constitutes British feeling towards all but white men, produces a line of conduct which, when once fairly understood, seems to incline the dark masses of the world to acquiesce in British ascen- dency. They seldom or never like their rulers, whose coldly proud regard chills all enthusiasm for them, and they occasionally resent their industrial demands ; but they greatly respect the audacity which insists on their submission whatever the numerical odds may be; they are aware that justice is intended if it is not always done; and they are seldom, almost never, so provoked as to feel that emancipation would be worth the terrible struggle through which alone it could be obtained. The war of the dark peoples against the British is never, therefore, a war to the death, and of passive resistance there is exceedingly little. The truth of this statement has been manifested throughout British history in India, native leaders, however successful, never succeeding in rousing the real people, while province after province, often equal in area and population to a great State, after trying the ordeal by battle once, or in the cases of Mysore and the Sikh kingdom twice, has sunk back half-sullen, half-contented, but for all political and social purposes acquiescent. It has been shown in Egypt, where, if "Europe" would leave things alone, we could govern the Valley of the Nile from Alexandria to Khartoum with five thousand white regulars, a small force of mobile artillery, and twenty thousand black troops, who would be just as trustworthy as the soldiers from Great Britain. So strong is this dis- position among dark men that the greatest difficulty of the Khalifa arises from the fact that his subjects, as dis- tinguished from his followers, hail the British invaders as deliverers, and that Sir Herbert Kitchener is actually able to enlist the black "Dervish" soldiery, and use them, almost without a pause for drill, against their former masters. They enlist as readily as Pathans have always done after being beaten by the white invaders. A negro gentleman, whose experience in Africa has been of a most extensive and exceptional kind, tells us that everywhere in the East, West, and Centre he found among negroes, who to him talked confidentially, the same decision, that English rule was endurable, and that no other white rule was. It seems almost certain that, if Europe permitted, we could govern from Alexandria to the Lakes, and that, though our troubles might be various and great, insurrec- tion, even local and sporadic insurrection, would speedily cease to be one of them. It will be the same in South Africa as soon as the Colonists fall back on the permanent and sound British principles, that the only temptation to work shall be wages, and the only coercion the pressure of natural hunger and taxation. At present the Colonists procure labour, especially for mines, by pressure on native chiefs; that is, in fact, they impress labour by aid of the chiefs' authority at about half the rate which would bring volunteers. It is impossible to estimate the advantage which this readiness of black and brown peoples to obey them gives to the British people in their advance over the world. Not only does it act as a solvent to resistance, but it makes it easy for us to raise entire armies of auxiliaries, who are very nearly as good as our own troops, who are much less costly, who are up to a point as trustworthy as our own, and who if they rebel, as has happened once in our history on a, great scale, do not draw with them the elements of a popular revolt. In the great Mutiny of 1857 it repeatedly happened that with troops in full and successful revolt the peasantry ten miles off were paying their taxes and thronging the Courts as if nothing had occurred. If we would grant to the dark men even a decent chance of rising to a command, say even of cavalry only, so as to tempt their natural leaders to become soldiers, we might with ease form a Colonial Army of Indians, negroes, Soudanese, and Zulus of two hundred thousand men, the equal of any troops in the world, except perhaps a very few picked regiments of Pomeranians, Guardsmen, or Zouaves.
While, however, we exult in this power, which is partly moral, and of itself a high qualification for leadership in Asia and Africa, it is vain to deny that the Russians possess it too. Their conquered peoples submit as a rule quite as readily as ours do, become as "loy 4 and enlist even more readily because the Russians are less timid than ourselves about granting them commands. Order, especially commercial order, soon appears in a con- quered Russian province, and though it is less perfect and less free than with us, it is an enormous improvement upon any system which the conquered have previously known. Slavery, though it does not cease, is ameliorated, and the Russian officials, though oppressive on occasion and very often corrupt, strike the people as an immense improvement upon their former administrators. The Russians interfere with social life almost as little as we do, and confine their persecutions to Christian Dissenters, leaving both Mussulmans and Pagans to believe or dis- believe as seems to themselves most reasonable. It is vain to deny either that the Russians have a certain charm for the races they conquer. Whether it is the childlike element in the Slays, or their tolerance for the intolerable, or as they themselves explain it, a certain "nearness" and power of mutual comprehension which exists between themselves and Asiatics, they do succeed more than we do in breaking down the invisible crystal wall which divides all Englishmen from all Asiatics and Africans. Of the Europeans in India, perhaps one in a thousand really understands Indians, while one in a hundred of Indians understands the Englishman with whom he is in contact—but if India belonged to Russia, one in ten officials would understand the people, while the Russian would be understood pretty thoroughly by a large majority. We do not mean that this " nearness " would pro- duce much good ; very often it would produce nothing but evil, as, for instance, in the matter of pecuniary corruption, but it greatly facilitates Russian rule, and would, if they were disposed that way, enable them to induce their sub- jects to modify their civilisation more rapidly than we can do. The English idea that the Russians govern in Northern Asia entirely by force is no more true than the same allegation about ourselves in India. Both the ruling races rely on force if seriously opposed, and both find it far too costly and irritating an instrument for use in every-day life. The Russians give more blows than we do, and are more accessible to bribes, but they draw distinctions between one man and another in a way we never attempt, and tleir taxation is not so inexorable or so heavy. Their rule in India or Persia would not be so vivifying as ours, and they would not bear for a moment so much discussion, but we question if they would be, on the whole, and taking other classes into consideration as well as the peasantry, more unpopular.
What is the political deduction from those facts? Our object in stating them is only to help to clear our readers' minds ; but there is a political lesson to be learned too. We dread a little too keenly the spread of Russian dominion as an injury to those over whom it is extended. It is not an injury until they have reached the point when almost unlimited freedom is beneficial to them ; it is not an injury, for example, in the Khanates, where the natives used to punish truancy in slaves with blind- ness. And we do not quite see sufficiently the expediency of avoiding contest with Russia for the same area of dominion, and of arriving at some territorial under- standing which would allow us both to expand without interference. We are the two peoples of the future, and no doubt may ultimately be forced to come to death- grips ; but meanwhile there is a vast amount of work which, if we could only agree together, we could accom- plish in comfort,—for instance we could turn Siberia into a Canada, could make of Thibet a comparatively civilised region, could turn Persia into a most profitable garden, and could rescue the Armenians, a people with a genius for the industrial life, once for all from their oppressors. None of those good things will be accomplished by spitting at each other in newspapers and protocols, the only positive result of that offensive proceeding being that we are both compelled to suspend the doing of goot: work in order to stand on guard.
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