TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SUMMONS TO THE SEPOYS.
No such alteration in the position of this country as a fighting Power has occurred since she substituted Regular regiments for train-bands and feudal retainers, and it is one which imperatively demands the grave consideration of Parlia- ment, as the deliberative body of the kingdom, and altogether irrespective of party quarrels. A change in the national position so vast is not to be estimated by its effect on this single struggle with Russia, or by its results on the fortunes of any Minister or any Cabinet. Those most opposed to the war will not deny that if we are to fight, we should be strong ; nor shall we, who detest Lord Beaconsfield's policy, attempt to question that in this great step be has displayed that kind of insight before which experience is almost valueless. Admitting the evidence to be true, he has seen what no Anglo-Indian saw,—that the thirst for action would with native, as with every other soldiery, overcome every other feeling, and is entitled to the utmost credit due to audacious statesmanship. The point at issue is more important than any reputation or any momentary policy, and involves the entire future relation of the English people to themselves and to the world.
We are constrained to believe, and we would gladly believe the contrary, that it will affect those relations for evil. We cannot think it well for any nation to be able to fight by deputy, to be able to wage war without making sacrifices, to be able to win territories for themselves through the aid of men who have no control over their policy, and who are not to be responsible for the successes they achieve,—and we believe such a position especially bad for the English people. Already the worst tendency of that people is the one we may call the Carthaginian,—the desire for empire to be created by mer- cenary swords. They have fought their greatest campaigns by the aid of subsidised allies. They have resolutely rejected a. conscription, so resolutely that, by a strange perversion of ideas, they have boasted of their freedom from it as if it were a proof of superior virtue. They have refused even to submit to the universal military training which every statesman among them of both parties would, if it were politically safe to speak out, tell them was directly for their good,—would make them. healthier men, more active men, and men with more capacity for command, for obedience, and for organisation. They have not only adhered determinately to their resolve to purchase soldiers, but have of late years become almost cynical in their habit of proclaiming their resolution, till at this moment their most popular songs boast of English wealth as the resource on which they rely to defeat the world in arms. The deep, inner vulgarity of soul, in fact, which is the defect of the Englishman, the foul spot among his splendid qualities, has infected the nation, until it makes matter of pride of its one serious cause for political shame. It is pleased when it thinks it can fight by wasting only some silver from its over- flowing till. This bad spirit will be gratified to the utmost by the employment of the Indian soldiery, men whom the nation can always obtain, to whom it need give no explanations, and for whom, except as human beings, it does not care,—or at all events, does not care with that personal and, as it were, family feeling which makes it feel the loss of a British regiment as a. calamity, which induces it to disorganise a Service rather than a non-commissioned officer shall suffer unjustly, and which compels it to arrange even its campaigns upon this first principle—that men's lives must not be wasted. With the employment of the natives of India as Imperial troops, the grand restraints on the English haughtiness and disposition to- crush down instead of conciliating opposition will be removed. By an expenditure scarcely felt, without asking for more Englishmen, without calling on the people for a sacrifice, without feeling the infinite value of the lives they are expend- ing, the British Government can in every colony throughout the world crush out resistance. The "hereditary nobility of mankind," as Macaulay called them, can reign, at the- cost only of plebeian lives. Why govern Maories well, when- Maories can be exterminated in a month, and no English- household mourn ? Why reform Jamaica, when Sikhs can put down Negroes, and no Englishman be missed Why turn- South Africa into an India, that is, a great dependency governed in the interest of all races of its inhabitants, when its. dark populations must, even if misgoverned, submit to Madrassee bayonets ? We cannot believe that a power so terrible, and to be used with so little responsibility to its sub- jects, can be trusted to any government or any nation without moral and political deterioration. The single check on the military governments of the Continent, the one barrier against grand wars of aggrandisement, is that the Army is the nation, that if Prince Bismarck, or Prince Gortschakoff, or M. Gambetta engage in wars of conquest, they must conquer by expending those who ultimately rule them. The English people are about to throw. even that check away, and embark on huge enterprises in the security, or at least in the belief, that they have behind them the soldiers of a continent whom they rule, but who are not themselves, to whom they need only give pay and honours. That the men come voluntarily, willingly, even delightedly to the work does not alter the case, which is this,— that they are not us, that the burden of the sadness of their loss does not fall on English homes. Take them in the very best point of view, a true point, it would seem, for the hour, as our willing allies, and still they relieve us of a strain which, if it ought to be borne, ought to be borne alone by the nation which decides that it has to be endured. There are no allies on earth to whom a people like the English, with their secular history of effort and of freedom, ought to entrust their work. There is in the whole arrangement a shifting of the burden from the rulers on to their dependants, a reliance on expense as an equivalent for self-sacrifice, a post- ponement of national duty for the sake of national ease, which can produce no good. Look at this very quarrel now on hand. The English people, or their ruling classes—for as yet there is no final evidence of the decision of the nation, as apart from the decision of its capital—are wild with suspicion and hatred of Russia, eager, they say, for war, and determined to
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