THE CHARACTER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE - Part 4

The second great group of British dominions consists of those ancient and populous lands, notably India and Egypt, which, though they have been able to develop remarkable civilisations, have never in all their history succeeded in establishing the rule of a just and equal law, or known any form of government save arbitrary despotism. It is impossible to trace here, even in the baldest out-line, the steps by which Britain acquired the sovereignty over India and Egypt.[1] They form two of the most curious and romantic episodes in history, for the strange thing is that in both cases British intervention was begun with no thought of conquest, and in both cases the responsibility of political control was assumed by Britain with very great reluctance. This may sound incredible, but it is an indisputable historical fact. We must content ourselves with a very brief analysis of the character and results of the British dominion. What, then, has the establishment of British power meant in India? Until the British power was established, India had in all her long history never known political unity. She had seen nothing but an almost uninterrupted succession of wars, an endless series of conquests and evanescent dominions. Always Might had been Right; Law had represented only the will of the master, and the law courts only the instruments of his arbitrary authority, so that the lover of righteousness could only pursue it by cutting himself off from all the ties of society and living the life of the ascetic. India was the most deeply divided land in the world—divided not only by differences of race and tongue (there are 38 distinct languages in India to-day, and some of them differ more widely than Russian and Spanish), but divided still more deeply by bitter conflicts of creed and, most sharply of all, by the unchanging, impermeable barriers of caste, which had arisen in the first instance from the determination of conquering peoples to keep themselves free from any intermixture with their subjects. Nowhere in the world are there to be seen, cheek by jowl, such profound contrasts between distinct grades of civilisation as are represented by the difference between (say) the almost savage Bhils or the out-caste sweepers, and the high-bred Brahmin, Rajput or Mahomedan chiefs. One result of these time-worn distinctions is that through all the ages the ruling castes and races have been accustomed to expect, and the mass of humble men to offer, the most abject submission; so that British administrators have often had to complain that the chief difficulty was, not to make laws for the protection of the humble, but rather to persuade those for whose benefit they were made to take advantage of them. To this divided land the British rule has brought three inestimable boons: a firmly organised political unity; the impartial administration of a just and equal system of law, based on a codification of Indian usages; and the maintenance of a long, unbroken peace. To this may be added the introduction not only of the material boons of western civilisation—railways, roads, irrigation, postal facilities, and so forth—but of western learning. This has had to be conveyed through the vehicle of English, because it was impossible to create, in all the 38 vernaculars, a whole literature of modern knowledge. And the consequence is, that all the members of the large and growing class of University-trained students, whose existence for the first time creates an instructed public opinion in India, are able freely to communicate with one another, and to share a common body of ideas, to an extent that has never before been possible in all the earlier history of India. Out of all these causes, due to the British rule, there has begun to arise in this deeply divided land a sentiment of national unity, and an aspiration after self-government. This sentiment and this aspiration are in themselves excellent things; their danger is that they may lead to a demand for a too rapid advance. For national unity cannot be created by merely asserting that it exists. It will not be fully established until the deeply-rooted differences which are only beginning to be obliterated have largely ceased to determine men's thoughts and actions, as they still do in India. And self-government, on the amplest scale of modern democracy, cannot be achieved until the traditionally ascendant classes, and the traditionally subject classes, have alike learned to recognise the equality of their rights before the law. But the foundations have been made of advance towards both of these aims; they are the result of British rule. There are discontents in India; there is much sharp criticism of the methods of the supreme Government, especially—almost exclusively—among the new class of western-educated men. But the criticism has not gone so far, except with a very few fanatics, as to assert that British rule is itself unjust or evil; on the contrary, all the best opinion in India desires to see that great land steadily progressing towards greater national unity and greater political liberty under the guidance and protection of British rule; all the best opinion in India recognises that the progress already made has been due to British rule, and that its continuance depends upon the continuance of British rule; all the best opinion in India desires that India, even when she becomes, as she will steadily become, more fully self-governing, should remain a partner in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It was a real satisfaction of one of the aspirations of India when three representatives of the Indian Government, an Indian prince, an Indian lawyer, and an Anglo-Indian administrator, came to London in the spring of 1917 to take part in the councils of the Empire during the crisis of its destiny. Criticism and discontent exist. But their existence is a sign of life; and the freedom with which they are expressed is a proof that the Government of India does not follow a merely repressive policy, and that the peoples of India have at last been helped to escape, in a large degree, from that complete docility and submissiveness which are the unhappy signs that a people is enslaved body and soul. India does not pay one penny of tribute to Britain. She pays the cost of the small, efficient army which guards her frontiers, but if any part of it is borrowed for service elsewhere, the cost falls upon the British Treasury. This rule was, indeed, broken in regard to the first Indian contingents in the present war, but only at the request of the Indian members of the Viceroy's Legislative Council. India contributes not a penny towards the upkeep of the British fleet, which guards her shores; nor does she defray any part of the cost of the consuls and ambassadors in all parts of the world who protect the interests of her travelling citizens. She is a self-dependent state, all of whose resources are expended on the development of her own prosperity, and expended with the most scrupulous honesty and economy. Her ports are open, of course, to British traders, but they are open on precisely the same terms to the traders of all other countries; there is no special privilege for the British merchant. Recently she has entered upon a policy of fiscal protection, with a view to the development of cotton manufactures. This policy was directed primarily against Lancashire. But because Indian opinion demanded it, it has not been resisted, in spite of the fact that the bulk of British opinion holds such a policy to be economically unsound. Nor have British citizens any special privileges in other respects. It was laid down as long ago as 1833, as an "indisputable principle," that "the interests of the native subjects are to be consulted in preference to those of Europeans, wherever the two come in competition." Where will you find a parallel to that statement of policy by the supreme government of a ruling race? India, in short, is governed, under the terms of a code of law based upon Indian custom, by a small number of picked British officials, only about 3,000 in all, among whom highly-trained Indians are increasingly taking their place, and who work in detail through an army of minor officials, nearly all Indians, and selected without respect to race, caste, or creed. She is a self-contained country, whose resources are devoted to her own needs. She is prospering to a degree unexampled in history. She has achieved a political unity never before known to her. She has been given the supreme gift of a just and impartial law, administered without fear or favour. She has enjoyed a long period of peace, unbroken by any attack from external foes. Here, as fully as in the self-governing Colonies, membership of the British Empire does not mean subjection to the selfish dominion of a master, or the subordination to that master's interests of the vital interests of the community. It means the establishment among a vast population of the essential gifts of western civilisation—rational law, and the liberty which exists under its shelter. What has been said of India might equally be said of Egypt, mutatis mutandis, but space does not permit of any detail on this theme. Enough to say that the achievements of the short period since 1882, when the British occupation began, in the rescuing of the country from bankruptcy, in the abolition of the hideous tyranny under which the mass of the peasantry had long groaned, in the development of the natural resources of the country, in the introduction of western methods of government and education, in the removal of the peril of returning barbarism which threatened from the Soudan, and in the establishment of a just and equal system of law, is something which it would be hard to match in the records of history.[2] Both in India and in Egypt lands of ancient civilisation have been rescued from a state of chaos and set upon the path which leads to unity and freedom. And in both countries, if the kind of political liberty which consists in the universal diffusion of a share in the control of government has not yet been established, it is because the peoples of these countries are not yet ready for that, and because the premature establishment of it, by enthroning afresh the old ruling castes, would endanger the far more real gifts of liberty which have been secured—liberty of thought and speech, liberty to enjoy the fruits of a man's own labour, freedom from subjection to merely arbitrary superiors, and the establishment of the elementary rights of the poor as securely as those of the powerful. Empires, like men, are to be judged by their fruits.