MR, GOLDWIN SMITH ON THE POLICY OF AGGRANDISEMENT:
THE end and the beginning of Mr. Goldwin Smith's article in the August number of the Fortnightly Review are curiously inconsistent with one another. The first two pages contain an excellent description of what the Ottoman Empire has always been, and a prophecy of its inevitable fall. Con- sidering that the inheritance thus left vacant must pass, either as a whole or in parts, into the possession of other Powers, it is only natural to speculate whether England will either accept or insist on any share in the inevitable division, and we cannot ourselves understand the dread with which this prospect afflicts Mr. Goldwin Smith. There are difficulties, it is true, in the way of our annexing Egypt, but we have hitherto supposed the only serious objection to such a step to be that it might impose on us an intolerable burden. England cannot, it has often been said, go on benefiting inferior races all over the world. She has herself and her own people to think of, and in their interest she must set bounds to the perpetual assumption of new responsibilities. That is a very arguable question, but it is not the question which Mr. Smith has specially singled out for discussion, He objects, no doubt, to the annexation of any more territory by England on this ground, but he objects to it still more strongly on quite dif- ferent grounds. His position, so far as we understand it, is this :—He maintains that the possession of India has been in- jurious to our own character, and that it has been on the balance injurious to the native population in India. At least, we think that we are not misrepresenting Mr. Smith in attributing this latter opinion to him, though there are passages which seem hardly to square with it. Our readers will now see why we said that the end. of Mr. Smith's article struck us as curiously inconsistent with the beginning. If the English rule in India is not a benefit to the subject races, how can it be expected that the subject races of Turkey will be any better off through the overthrow or decay of the Ottoman Empire ? The tyranny of the Indian Sovereigns was often not less bad than the tyranny of the Turks ; the rule of Russia or Austria over Bulgaria and Roumelia is not likely to be kinder or more enlightened than English rule in India, If we shared Mr. Smith's views, we should preach the maintenance of the existing order of things in Turkey, as at all events an evil that is known and can be measured, and preferable, for that very reason, to an evil of whose character and proportions we are necessarily ignorant. Or perhaps it is doing Mr. Smith an injustice to assume that he does desire the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire. At all events, he seems, perhaps from the nature of his subject, a great deal more concerned in preventing any portion of the Turkish dominions from passing into the hands of the English, than in rescuing it from the hands of its pre- sent masters.
Mr. Smith's contention that the possession of India is injurious to our own character chiefly rests on the incidents that followed upon the Mutiny. The reflex influence affects "not only those sentiments which lie at the root of political liberty, but those which lie at the root of
all civilisation." And then, as the sufficient and con- elusive example of this, there come certain
Lieutenant Majendie's "Up Among the Pandi extracts from es " and Lord Elgin's "Letters and Diary," They are terrible extracts, no doubt, and they tell of terrible scenes. Few, we should hope, will now deny that the manner in which the Mutiny was suppressed, and the vengeance that was taken on the mutineers, and on many who could not fairly or even plausibly be in- cluded among the mutineers, have left a stain on the English name in India. But is it just to treat the exception as though it were the rule, to pass over fifty years of strenuous and self-denying efforts to make the people of India happier, and to single out, as the one characteristic illustration of English dominion, the furious retaliations which marked a period when too many of our country- men had lost their reason, and were given up to vindictive feeling ? Mr. Smith compares the reign of terror which followed the Mutiny to the reign of terror in Ireland after the rebellion of 1798. We do not quarrel with the com- parison, but it would be as just to take 1798 as evidence of the effect which the possession of Ireland has had on the English character, as to use the suppression of the Mutiny for a similar purpose as regards the possession of India. Indeed, the English record in India is very much cleaner than their record in Ireland. In the latter case, the justice done by the Church Act and the Land Act did not come for more than two generations after the wrong-doing. In the former case, English administration has had a glorious history, both before and since the isolated and abnormal incident of the suppression of the Mutiny.
When Mr. Smith comes to speak of the effect of English rule on the subject populations, his selection of examples is equally arbitrary. He concedes that "to India, English rule has given peace, saving our own wars and mutinies ; a regular and equitable, though costly administration ; greatly increased security for life and property ; railroads ; the abolition of dark and cruel superstitions." Apparently, peace, justice, and security count for little in Mr. Smith's estimate, because natives are occasionally killed by Europeans in mere wanton recklessness. But if such incidents as the Fuller case are to be treated as the natural result of conquest, we have a right to claim the incidents that followed it as the actual result of Eng- lish conquest. Under any native rule that is or ever was likely to be set up in India, would the Government have taken up the dead man's cause with anything approaching the energy and persistence with which it was taken up, first by the Government of India, and then by the Home Government ? Or to take another recent case, which is the fairest illustration of English rule in India, the injudicious exhumation of a Brah- rain's body by order of a magistrate, or the severe censures passed on the magistrate's conduct by nearly every high official, whether in India or England ? The average English- man is very far from being a perfect being, and his relations with the people of India do undoubtedly bring the least attractive side of his nature to the surface. But the zeal and watchfulness with which every manifestation of this side of his nature is suppressed is quite as characteristic a feature of English dominion as the acts which this zeal and watchfulness are spent in checking and punishing. Even the recent famines, though Mr. Smith admits they have been met with groat administrative vigour, are still debited against England. They are the result of the "calm but enfeebling security created by our rule,"—a reflection which might have led Mr. Smith to take a more favourable view of those occasional homicides of natives by Europeans by which this calm and enfeebling security is from time to time qualified.
The difference between ourselves and Mr. Smith is clearly not one that can be touched by argument. It goes deeper than logic ; it is a difference founded on diversity of in- stincts. What impresses us as admirable moves him, at most, to a few carping concessions. What are to us as blots on the parchment on which the record of English rule in India is inscribed, is to him the writing itself. This is not the temper in which the policy of extending the Empire can be profitably discussed. Before we can argue with any hope of coining to an agreement on this point, we must have made some approach to agreement on the character and results of the Empire as it now stands.
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