The Good Government of an Empire

THE test of good or bad government in a self - governing nation lies in its power of forming citizens with “self-reliance, self-respect, and a sense of duty.” The success of a democracy is shown by the formation of the individual characters of the native-born and the assimilation of extraneous elements so that they come to be good citizens. But the criterion for empires is different, since they embrace so many and such varied elements that it is impossible for any one type to be universally adopted. Imperial government may be said to be good if it is conducted so as not merely to protect persons and property, but in such a manner that it also gives free scope for the maintenance and perpetuation of the various social elements which it covers with its shield. I can illustrate what I mean by reference to the Roman Empire. In many ways this polity was badly governed, and exhausted the resources of its immense territory, so that it gradually lost its military strength; but yet it served to maintain and to transmit to posterity a great deal of the best of the civilized life that came under its guardianship. The best of Greek learning was cherished in such Greek cities as Alexandria and Marseilles ; Judaism survived under Roman protection, until it was superseded by Christianity ; and the virtues of the barbarian were consciously utilized when the tribes were set to defend the empire. As the Roman Republic expanded, and province after province was added, there was no effort whatever at general assimilation. The rights of citizenship were carefully guarded, and therefore, for the most part, the local customs and habits and languages were carefully respected ; disdainfully, perhaps, but still with considerable appreciation of the diverse merits both of the Greeks and of the Gauls. The Roman Empire was oppressive in many ways: its fiscal system was bad ; it was a military despotism, and gave no encouragement to the development of political capacity among its subjects. But it did preserve the best that men of different peoples and languages had yet attained in literature and art and science ; it gave conditions for diffusing them at the time, and for perpetuating them for all time. It was in this that the greatness of the Roman Empire really lay.

We live in a period when England has come to be an empire as well as a nation, — has become such in name as well as in fact, since the Queen assumed the imperial title to India. Of course, its success in its double capacity, like that of all other governments, is to be gauged by its power of maintaining law and order, repressing crime, and developing the material resources of the lands under its sway. As a democratic national government it is to be judged by its ability to develop good citizens and men of political capacity : this is of the highest importance, since the citizens must also furnish the chiefs of the administration in many areas of the territory of the British Empire. But as an empire it is to be judged by its success in maintaining the best of all the culture and civilization and political life that have come under its protection. Nothing is more interesting than the changes that have occurred in the English political system, as the rôle of imperial has been gradually added to that of national government.

The principal change has been in regard to assimilation. For centuries there was an eager effort to attract the men of other countries to England and to absorb them. Normans and Danes were successfully introduced, and lost in the common stock. Edward I. found that the Jews could not be brought into line, and so he expelled them; whether through their misfortune or their fault, they would not make good citizens according to the English standards at that day, and they had to go. In the time of Edward III. numbers of Flemings found a welcome in England, and were merged in the existing population. The great change came in the time of Elizabeth, when large numbers of Flemings or Walloons came to the country, and established themselves in colonies which desired to maintain their independent life. This question of assimilation was the fundamental issue in the great conflict of the seventeenth century. The Puritans would not conform to the existing system in church and state, and got their conée ; the Walloons succeeded in maintaining their right to live outside the ordinary conditions of English citizenship, — social, industrial, and religious; and from the time of the Revolution the policy of assimilating to one model all the people who are inhabitants of territory under English control has been abandoned.

In this matter the contrast between the action of England toward Scotland and toward Ireland and Wales is instructive. Ireland had no effective government of its own, and repeated experiments were made in assimilating it to English custom and law. In the time of Charles I. there was a genuine effort to deal thoroughly with the matter once for all, and to reduce the native Irish to the conditions of civilized political life. That attempt was arrested when it was just beginning to succeed : we see the results of carrying it out in Ulster, and the monument of its failure in other parts of Ireland. Since that time English statesmen have been confronted with the problem of how to govern a population that is only partially assimilated.

In Scotland, on the other hand, the case was entirely different. The government of Scotland had not been particularly effective, but the south of the country was so far consolidated that it could claim to have a custom and tradition — legal and ecclesiastical — which it would not sacrifice. The Stuarts endeavored to carry through the work of assimilation, and roused a storm which cost Charles I. his throne and his life; and at the union of the kingdoms, in 1707, the law and custom of Scotland were carefully preserved. A barrier was reared against any further attempts at merging the two kingdoms into one ; and from that date onward English statesmen have ceased to take much pains about assimilating the inhabitants of any territory that passes under our control. If any individuals like to adopt our ways, good and well. — we recognize them readily as our own kith and kin, and speak of them as English ; but if they prefer to hold aloof, we really do not care. If they wish to speak Welsh and to hold noisy political meetings in places of worship, we have no objections ; it is not our way, but that is no reason why they should not do it. We now regard it as oppressive to aim at assimilation, though we used to do it in the times of the great Eliza.

Two centuries make a long period in the history of any nation ; and the fact that we have discarded the attempt to assimilate during all that time has had much to do with the present condition of English political life, and with bringing out what is most distinctive of Englishmen. All other nations are busy trying to assimilate populations of sorts to a given model. France is trying to force men of royalist traditions to become good citizens in a republic. Bismarck used all the power at his command to Germanize the population of the Polish provinces, and later of Elsass and Lothringen ; and the difficulty of assimilation is constantly mooted when discussion turns on the future of Cuba or the Philippines. For Englishmen it has ceased to be a political question for the last two hundred years. We are not indifferent to our own system, — we are proud of it; but we no longer regard it as a model for other people, or expect anybody to imitate it; we feel that it is unique; and while we are well content to live under it, and eager to improve it when occasion arises, we have no longer any desire to impose it on other people, or to force them to adapt themselves to it.

This indifference to assimilation, and willingness to accept different types of custom and habit and social life, has had remarkable effects, even within the bounds of Great Britain. Life and opinion have been insular, perhaps, but they have never been stereotyped by being reduced to one dead level. Scotland, with its differences of disposition and education and government, has contributed not a little to the progress of English thought and the building up of the English Empire. Ireland, with a less distinctive character, because a less homogeneous population, has furnished models of English eloquence and numbers of military heroes. England has been the gainer in her own life by the variety which she has admitted in her political system during the last two hundred years.

The most remarkable feature, however, is her treatment of the countries that have come under her control since she discarded the policy of assimilation.

There is a striking example in the Province of Quebec. In 1759 the most successful of all the French colonies was brought under English rule ; but there was no insistence on stamping out what was characteristically French. The language and religion were carefully maintained ; there is no place on the globe where the more wholesome elements of the life of Old World France have been so effectually preserved as in Canada; while the French population are thoroughly loyal to the English rule, just because they are confident that there is no danger of attempts at assimilating them to customs and institutions they dislike. It may be that we do not think the habitant a very high intellectual type, and believe he might be improved. But that is not the question so far as empire is concerned : he has been free to retain his own institutions and his own ways, and he values that freedom.

In exactly the same way, as the administration of India has come more and more under English authority, there has been a scrupulous effort to understand native custom and law, to take account of them and to respect them. Englishmen have not always found them easy to grasp, and we have made many mistakes in the effort; but there has been so far as possible careful regard for native institutions and prejudices. The very exceptions, in such things as the abolition of Sati, prove the rule. There are many enthusiasts who are prepared to criticise the British government for having done so little to break down the power of the Brahmins or level the distinctions of caste. But that is not the business of imperial government as we conceive it. We want to supply such law and order that the people of India shall be free to lead their lives in their own way, according to their own institutions. If they prefer, as individuals, to adopt our habits, we are ready to welcome them and generous in appreciating them. There probably never has been an athlete, in the whole history of the world, whose feats of strength and dexterity have moved the wondering admiration of so many hundreds of thousands of critical spectators as Ranjitsinghi. But though there is compulsory cricket in many English schools, we do not impose it on Rajputs and Hindus. If they like to assimilate themselves to English athleticism, good and well, but manly sports are not forced upon them.

Here, then, we see one analogy between the English and the Roman Empire. Just as Rome rescued the best of Greek literature and art and institutions when Greek political life was perishing, so English influence is helping to preserve for the world the great heritage of Eastern civilization and thought and art. English-speaking people are finding a new interest in the Sacred Books of the East or the Light of Asia ; while the contact with the West is doing something to purify, without destroying, the ancient systems by such movements as that headed by Keshub Chunder Sen. The man of progress might wish to sweep this culture away ; but it is the glory of the British rule that it is being retained as a living thing, and that the best of it is being rendered available for the whole world.

While there is this resemblance, there are also striking differences between the English and the Roman Empire. These lie on the surface, but it is just worth while to enumerate them. The Roman Empire was chiefly territorial, and was held together by military power. The English Empire is chiefly maritime, and in so far as it depends on force at all — the loyalty of the French Canadians does not rest on the presence of English soldiers — it is mainly dependent on the navy. The pressure of military expenditure is very much greater than that of naval; for the English navy, by the protection it gives to commerce and the encouragement it offers to maritime pursuits, has, as it were, helped to call English commerce into being, and thus to open up a vast field of national resources. It serves in a fashion to pay its own way; while military expenditure and military service are generally undertaken at the expense of industrial pursuits. It is commonly alleged that the desirability of disarmament has been pressed upon the attention of the Czar by the strain which is involved in the maintenance of Russia’s military establishments ; at all events, this opinion serves to illustrate the kind of pressure under which the resources of the Roman Empire were gradually exhausted. But English shipping and the English food supply demand the maintenance of a navy, even if there were no colonies and dependencies at all. The utilization of natives as soldiers has not involved any severe pressure on the natives of India; it has rendered it possible to make the most of the energies of some of the least tamable of the border tribes who lived by plundering their neighbors, and to raise such regiments as the Goorkhas for the defense of the empire. England has been able to provide an army capable of effecting her purposes by merely voluntary enlistment, and has not been compelled to increase it proportionately as her territory has expanded.

Again, the provinces of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire were deliberately exploited in the interests of the people of Rome. In so far as anything similar ever occurred, it has long ceased to be the case in the countries under English control. The policy of England has never been to derive revenue from dependencies for public purposes : she did not do so in the very beginnings of her colonial empire, for the single attempt to impose taxation for revenue was regarded as unprecedented by the men of Boston. Observe the contrast. The mob of Rome were fed on tribute procured from the provinces, and syndicates of Roman millionaires exploited the richest lands and left them a desert. But English rule does not thus drain any land : it establishes orderly government, and arranges that the expense shall be locally defrayed ; while, by developing resources and opening up the country, it seeks to provide the means for defraying this cost. When the expense to India of the British rule is counted up, the effects of the work of the Public Works Department in making roads and irrigating, and the new sources of revenue that these improvements have rendered possible, should be taken into account as an offset. But the contrast between the Roman and the English rule can be put in a nutshell : the effect of the Roman rule was to exhaust the provinces; the effect of the English rule is to develop them.

There is undoubtedly a price which the varied social elements of India have to pay for protection under the English shield : they have to abdicate their civil independence and to accept an alien rule. The order which Englishmen establish is not always the order their subjects desire : it protects the lives and property of the Mohammedans, whom the Hindus hate ; it restrains the plundering habits of the Pindaris ; it involves elements of submission. The people of India have no political freedom : they have no right of selecting Lord Curzon as successor to Lord Elgin, at the end of a term of office. What such an elective voice may be worth as a badge of freedom I do not know ; I have heard that similar rights are sometimes sold for comparatively small sums of money ; but at any rate, the Hindus have no political rights of the representative, self-governing sort. And it is a loss.

Yet two things are to be taken into account, — apart altogether from the question of the fitness of the people of India for self-government, if they had it: —

(1.) They have never enjoyed such political rights, and therefore do not feel the want of them. They have lived under one master or another time out of mind, and longer than that.

(2.) But besides all this, if they had political independence, they could not maintain it. Each territory in India is a little state, surrounded by hostile neighbors ; those principalities could not be at peace ; they could not preserve themselves through the miserable kaleidoscope of intrigue and murder and petty warfare which make up so much of the history of India. In the world of the present day, and on the scale on which warfare is now waged, it is becoming obvious that only the great and wealthy nations can hold their own, if they are forced into a struggle, and that the smaller polities have the best chance of preserving a real independence by commending themselves to the political protection of a powerful neighbor. In accepting British suzerainty, instead of having many petty governments of their own, the people of India have for the most part given up that which they never had, and sacrificed something they could never have kept.

And against this loss — I will venture to say this imaginary loss — which has come on the people of India as a whole we should set the gain in political opportunity which is now opened up to individual natives of India. The subordinate positions in the government service are open to them, and such of them as are qualified can enter into the highest ranks as well. Nor is it to India alone that their energies are confined : a seat in the British Parliament is an object of ambition to thousands of Englishmen who strive for it unsuccessfully; this coveted position is open to natives of India, and a seat has recently been held by one of them. Men of political capacity have more opportunity of employing their talents, and in far more important spheres, than they had before India was part of the empire.

Let me add but a few words in conclusion. The days in which we live are times when many established usages are questioned, and when all claims of title and exclusive privilege are narrowly scanned. There are frequent objections made to pretensions to the exclusive control of the opportunities for production, and to the claim to decide in what manner and at what rate the mining for coal, for example, shall be carried on. It is not easy for any one to justify the pretension to keep to himself some possession which the world values, and to prevent it from being rendered available for the world at large. Great economic forces are demanding that every part of the globe shall be utilized for its highest possible economic use, and they are not to be gainsaid. Native races and primitive peoples are being forced to define their position toward the inroads of modern civilization, and to come to terms with it or to pass away before it-

It is well that we should sometimes try to " clear our minds of cant,” as the first great literary exponent of antislavery sentiment put it. There is a great deal of cant, in the present day, about the mischief of civilization, and the superiority of noble savages and nomadic peoples ; it is an echo of the false sentiment of Rousseau and his like, caught up by decadent voices ; and it makes me tired. People speak at times as if the hurry of modern life and the rush of progress were crushing us all ; as if the struggle for existence and the greed of gain were grinding away all that is soundest and happiest in human nature. But there are some of us who do not mean to sit down and whine, but prefer to be up and doing. The forces of modern civilization are grand powers which may be used for the good of man ; they bring all the resources of the globe into circulation among all races, and they are not going to be held back. The only question is this: Are we going to let them run riot, or shall we master them? Are we going to let each adventurer do as he likes, wastefully and recklessly, or are we going to try to establish such orderly government that these forces shall be controlled and their power for mischief limited ?

Modern commerce and economic progress make great changes in the polity of every land that is brought under their influence ; it seems clear to the passing stranger that the trend of economic forces in America is such that certain classes are drifting away from the standpoint that was taken in Washington’s Farewell. And if this is so in the newest of all lands, it follows a fortiori that the contact of modern business methods and interests with primitive and half-civilized races must cause a sweeping change. But that contact has come, and is likely to continue, in India and Japan ; it is beginning in China. Wherever it occurs there is a measure of loss ; but there are also infinite possibilities of benefit, not only to the older countries, but to the newer lands. And that change will certainly proceed ; it cannot be restrained. No barriers can be erected now to hold back modern enterprise ; no title can be alleged by barbarous folk which the pioneers of modern civilization will respect; and wherever they force their way the existing society and institutions will be changed.

To men who are men these things come as a call of duty. Just because the forces of modern civilization are so great, we are bound not to let them be blind forces, but to try to keep them well in hand and direct them. There must be effective authority in all parts of the globe, such as white men will regard, to control their doings, wherever white men go. There must be wise control to save the waste of natural resources, and to give a chance of survival to ancient races and primitive institutions. There are always those who are ready to stay at home and sneer ; but there are also men who feel that the task of opening up the resources of the globe, yet with careful regard to the well-being of primitive peoples, is work that English hands have found to do, and who mean to do it with their might.

William Cunningham.