Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 29

The drought last summer was bad. No _warm rain_ in spring last year.

"Ever yours heartily,

"F. W. Newman."

The following is quoted from the second letter I mentioned:--

"I send to you a Penny Vegetarian Cookery Book herewith. Surely I was a Vegetarian when I last was with you? I began the practice in 1867. But let me recite: (1) At breakfast and the third meal I need nothing but what all fleshmeaters provide. (2) At dinner the utmost that I need is _one_ Vegetarian dish, which may be a soup. (3) If it so happen that you have any _really solid_ sweet puddings that alone will suffice. (4) For the _one_ Vegetarian dish good _brown_ bread and b.u.t.ter is an acceptable subst.i.tute, or rather fulfilment. But I confess I am desirous of propagating everywhere a knowledge of our peculiar dishes, which teach how to turn to best account the manifold and abundant store of leaves, roots, and grains, besides pulse.

"My wife is fully able to impart practical knowledge: to please me, and see that others please me, she has given great attention to Vegetarian cookery for many years back...."

CHAPTER XVI

NATIVE REPRESENTATION IN INDIAN GOVERNMENT

It is rare indeed that an Englishman looks at India as Francis Newman looked at it. Fifty years ago--probably longer--he put his finger on exactly the spot which to-day is the crux which most puzzles and baffles politicians. In social and intellectual questions his were the clear- sighted, far-focussed eyes that reached beyond the measures of most men's minds. He saw clearly, fifty years ago, that India was drawing ever closer and closer to an inevitable terminus. That she was beginning to recognize --every year more definitely--her ultimate destination: was beginning to realize, too, that her foreign rulers were aware also of that terminus, but were not very anxious that she should reach it. Nay, were practically rather jogging her elbow to prevent her becoming so conscious of the direction in which the tide of affairs was drifting.

Nevertheless it is becoming more and more patent to everyone who really studies the question impartially that things are not what they were fifty or sixty years ago; that a critical juncture is drawing ever nearer and nearer--a juncture which inevitably will mean great changes for the governed and the governors.

Even the slow-moving East does move appreciably in half a century, when centres of education are doing their best to train Indians in European ideas of civilization, in European ideas of government, and of the authority which learning gives. We cannot expect to educate and yet leave those we educate exactly where we find them; for with education comes invariably, inevitably, the growth of ideas planted by it--their growth, and no less invariable fruition. To show someone all that is to be gained by reaching forward, and then to expect him not to reach, but to remain quiescent, is the act of a fool.

We have, as a nation, so taken it for granted that India is our own to do as we like with, that it is perhaps not a pleasant reminder which faces us as we cast our thoughts back to the initial steps taken by ourselves in the days which preceded the formation of the Honourable East India Company. It bids us realize that at first, as Francis Newman says in his _Dangerous Glory of India_, "neither king, statesmen, nor people ever deliberately planned from the beginning or desired such an empire. It began as a set of mercantile establishments which took up private arms for mere self-defence.... The Honourable East India Company was glad to legitimate its position by accepting from the Grand Mogul the subordinate position of a rent-collector; indeed, from the beginning to the end of its political career it was animated by a consistent and unswerving disapproval of aggression and fresh conquest."

Since that time, however, the English dominion spread rapidly. Since that time we became more and more aware of what a splendid field lay ready for occupation by our surplus population. Since that time we have moved forward through a vast country that formerly, through lack of European ways of civilization and co-operation, practically lay at our feet. It is true that we have done much--very much for India. It is impossible for anyone to deny that. We have brought to her doors European civilization; modern points of view; the miracles of new discoveries in science; inventions for making the wheels of life move easier; opportunities for cultivating and selling her land's produce, and for its quick transport.

We have lifted her up--yes, but here is where the mental shoe pinches--we have insisted on preventing her from reaching her full stature. We have trained her sons to be able to work side by side with ourselves in various official duties; and then when they are desirous--as is indeed only the inevitable consequence of their education--of entering the lists side by side with Englishmen, they find there is no crossing the rubicon which officially divides the two nations.

It is true that many Anglo-Indians stand aghast at this idea that they should cross it, but it is only those who are unaware that, as a general rule, education and environment combined come out as top dog over heredity in most instances in which it plays a part. It is only those who, when they go out to India, take, as it were, England with them, and fail to recognize how far Indian points of view and power of dealing with things have progressed. It is only those who have forgotten--if indeed they ever truly realized it--that it is a point of honour that such a proceeding should be carried out, if we, as Englishmen, remember all that the notable charter of 1833 bound us to do.

For the charter of 1833 [Footnote: During Lord Grey's ministry.]

definitely promised that native Indian subjects of the English Government were to be admitted on equal terms with English subjects _to every office of State_, except that of governor-general or commander-in-chief. Not only that, but the solemn proclamation of the late Queen was issued in 1858, pledging the word of Sovereign and Parliament that the "sole aim of British rule in India was the welfare of the Indian people, and that no distinction would be made between Indians and Europeans in the government of the country, on the grounds of race, or creed, or colour."

As Francis Newman says very clearly, it is a "task which we have voluntarily a.s.sumed-to rule India, which means" (the italics are his) "_to defend it from itself in infancy, to train it into manhood_.... It presupposes that the people gradually get more and more power until, like a son who comes of age, the parental control is discontinued.... We cannot take the last steps first, nor can we abruptly and recklessly resign our post...."

The Hon. M. G. K. Gokhale, in a keenly interesting paper read before the East India a.s.sociation in the summer of 1906, states very definitely the point of view of educated Indians as regards our unfulfilled pledges of nearly eighty years since. He says: "Until a few years ago, whatever might have been thought of the pace at which we were going, there was no general disposition to doubt the intention of the rulers to redeem their plighted word. To-day, however, the position is no longer the same.... There is no doubt that the old faith of the people in the character and ideals of British rule has been more than shaken.... Half a century of Western education, and a century of common laws, common administration, common grievances, common disabilities, have not failed to produce their natural effect even in India.... Whatever a certain school of officials in India may say, the bulk of educated Indians have never in the past desired a severance of the British connection.... "But, he adds: "It is a critical juncture in the relations between England and India.... The educated cla.s.ses in India ... want their country to be a prosperous, self- governing, integral part of the Empire, like the colonies, and not a mere poverty-stricken bureaucratically-held possession of that Empire."

Fifty years ago Francis Newman was urging with all the force in his power --and no one in his day was more farsighted in detecting just that social reform which would make more and more insistent demand for a hearing, as decade followed decade--that it was to our own interest as a nation, as well as the only honourable course open to us, to open up public offices in India to the educated native. It need not, he showed, be done otherwise than with caution, and gradually "many variations" were "imaginable; many different ways might succeed, if only the _right end in view_" was "steadily held up, namely, to introduce, fully and frankly, _into true equality with ourselves_" [Footnote: To "exclude natives from all high office," Sir Charles Napier said once emphatically, "is what debases a nation."] (again the italics are his) "as quickly as possible, and as many as possible, of the native Indians whose loyalty could be counted on....

Lord Grey and his coadjutors, in renewing the charter of 1833, understood most clearly that nothing but an abundance of black faces in the highest judicature, and intelligent Indians of good station in the high police, could administer India uprightly.... Every year that we delay evils become more inveterate and hatred acc.u.mulates. To train India into governing herself, until English advice is superfluous, would be to both countries a lasting benefit, to us a lasting glory."

Now, what are the "evils" which "every year become more inveterate" in our method of government in India? Perhaps one of the most palpable is the strongly centralized bureaucracy. Another, is the constant change of men in chief office every five years. Another, is that all compet.i.tive examinations are held in London. Mr. Gokhale very rightly urges that it is a great deal to require of an Indian that he should have to come all the way to England for these examinations _on the chance_ of pa.s.sing, and suggests their being held simultaneously in India and in England. Another, is that the field of law is the only officialdom open to the Indian, yet that there he is found capable of rising to the highest post. Another, that we have not pushed forward the education of the ma.s.ses as far as we reasonably might if we had worked hand in hand with the educated cla.s.ses.

Mr. Gokhale tells us that to-day seven children out of eight are growing up in ignorance, and four villages out of five are as yet without a school-house.

There are other drawbacks to this system of foreign bureaucracy, which can only be briefly touched on here, but certainly Newman was right when he condemned that mistaken, high-handed measure of the autocratic East India Company--their destruction of all the local treasuries, and the manner in which these funds were diverted into the central treasury. Thus, as he pointed out very clearly, no moneys were left for the repair of roads, bridges, and tanks, etc. As he remarks, "In comparison with this monster evil, all other delinquencies seem to fade away."

As everyone probably is aware, Newman lost no opportunity in pressing home on the minds of his countrymen that it is decentralization that is so urgently needed; and that not alone in India, but in our own country as well. Repeatedly he urged that if Government is administered from one central bureaucracy, it follows inevitably that the business to be dealt with bulks so enormously that it is literally impossible to deal, in detail and with complete understanding, with the rights and wrongs of citizens at a distance in the provinces and remote parts of a big empire.

Consequently, he was always trying to show how far more successfully local self-government--a local ward-mote, for instance--would deal with provincial matters in England. That every town should be, as it were, a little State, with all cla.s.ses represented in it, and matters dealt with locally should only come up to the Central Parliament for veto or for sanction. In the same way he recommended strongly that in India every facility should be given to "voluntary (limited liability) companies to execute roads, works of irrigation, etc...." That country districts should be given local treasuries, as well as towns.

In "English inst.i.tutions and their most necessary reforms," Newman declares and reiterates that this lack of local treasuries is a "hideous blunder," and adds, "every coin in every province is liable to be spent in some war." He urges other changes, which have come to pa.s.s in some measure, such as a Viceroy, a "prince of the blood royal," sent out to "receive their occasional homage." But there again lack of cooperation with the natives, lack of real understanding between us and them, have, as everyone is aware, worked havoc when a man [Footnote: It is impossible to forget in this connection what the _Tribune_ called our "Curzonian statescraft" in the recent past.] without the necessary insight and sympathy into the people's points of view and ways of thought has been sent to posts of supreme authority.

There have been men of splendid capabilities for understanding and sympathizing with these points of view, men such as Sir James Outram, the Bayard of India; Sir John Malcolm, Lord Elphinstone, Sir George Russell Clerk, Lord Lawrence, Ovans, and many others, who helped forward the better understanding between England and India very greatly; and of these, Outram suffered grievous misrepresentations at the hands of his Government, Clerk was put aside, and Ovans had to stand his trial in England for an absolutely unjustifiable charge.

Whenever the question of co-operation and sympathy comes up, as from time to time it does, between Englishmen and Indians, whether it is fifty or sixty years ago, in Newman's day or now in the year of grace 1909, with a few honourable exceptions, the answer is identically the same. It is practically an unknown quant.i.ty. The East and West have not really met.

Still the ranks of the service are absorbed by Englishmen; still, as all educated Indians protest, the "true centre of gravity for India is in London"; still India is unrepresented in the Viceroy's Executive Councils, and in Customs, Post, Survey, Telegraph, Excise, etc., and also in the Commissioned ranks of the Army; still, because district administration is to all intents and purposes not in existence, there is no compulsory education for boys _and_ girls, though most educated Indians are very strongly in favour of it.

It is not, it cannot be, because our eyes, as a nation, have been shut to the fact of what the faults of our own administration have been in years gone by. If no one else had trumpeted them abroad, at least one man spoke out the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it in the last century: Francis, the great Social Reformer--Francis Newman, who was no time-server, no prophesier of smooth things; but, as much as in him lay, desired more than anything else to lay the whole unvarnished truth before his fellow men, things that concerned the weaker members of the community.

In lecture after lecture he turned things to the "rightabout-face" which had hitherto been done _sub rosa_ in India. He did in effect pull down the very rose tree which had acted as such an efficient shelter. His bull's- eye lantern always cast an uncompromising glare upon those sometimes very "shady" doings of our countrymen which characterized their treatment of natives in the early Victorian era, and--occasionally perhaps, even since.

No one has forgotten, for instance, the words of Mr. Halliday, Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, when he described our police as a curse to India in 1854.

Newman reminded his countrymen that in 1852 a pet.i.tion had been sent to the House of Commons from Lower Bengal, "among other grievous complaints,"

which "stated that by reason of the hards.h.i.+ps inflicted on witnesses, the population" were averse from testifying to the ill-doings and tyranny of these police.

Again, as regarded the courts of law in India, Newman reminded us of the revelations contained in that volume by the Hon. Mr. Sh.o.r.e concerning our Government (the book which was withdrawn 1844).

It was there stated definitely that, until the days of Lord William Bentinck, Persian was the only language used in these courts.

Consequently, as neither judge, nor clerk, nor litigating party, nor person accused, nor his witnesses understood it, it constantly happened that the case was a veritable _reductio ad absurdum_. No one knew what was happening until at last the man--if it was a case of murder--was shown that the case had gone against him by being shown the gallows!

It is true _nous avons change tout cela_, in these days, and the vernacular tongue is used instead, but now it is the judge who doesn't always know accurately what is going on, for he cannot always understand what the witnesses are saying! As Newman says very shrewdly: "If self- confident, he trusts his own impressions; if timid, he leans on the judgment of his native clerk; if formal and pedantic, he believes all clear and coherent statements. His weaknesses are watched, and it is soon understood whether he is to be better managed by fees to the clerk, or by the forging of critical evidence, in cases for which it is worth while.

Very scandalous accounts have been printed in great detail ... and one thing is clear, that those Englishmen who have looked keenly into the matter and dare to speak freely, believe justice to have a far worse chance in such tribunals than before native judges."

Francis Newman tells us that his own eyes were opened to the prevailing state of things in those days, by "a very intelligent, and widely informed indigo-planter." He told him that when he first began indigo-planting, his partner had given this emphatic rule of conduct: "Never enter the Company's Courts!" And to his own amazed question as to what course of action was to be pursued when a difficulty arose, he clearly and openly explained. "If a native failed to pay us our dues, we never sued him, but simply publicly seized some of his goods, sold them by auction, deducted our claim from the proceeds, and handed over to him the balance." There is something almost humorous in this travesty of an _amende honorable_ for so highhanded a measure!

One may in very deed be thankful that since the day of all these happenings, Indians _have_, as Mr. Gokhale tells us, "climbed in the field of law, to the very top of the tree," and can now deal out first-hand justice to their fellow countrymen.

I think I cannot give a fitter close to this chapter than by quoting Newman's suggestions as to measures of urgent importance with regard to our Indian Empire, which were made a little over forty years ago.

"The establishment of an Imperial Court in India to judge all causes....

The mark of a 'tyrant' (according to the Old Greeks) was his defence by a foreign body-guard: _we_ bear that mark of illegitimate sway at present.

"To make India loyal, to save the yearly sacrifice of health or life to 10,000 young men, now the miserable victims of our army system, is so urgent an interest, that I put this topic foremost. Too much importance can hardly be given to it. Each soldier is said to cost us 100; hence the pecuniary expense also is vast. But until we restrain ourselves from aggression, all attempts permanently to improve our millions at home must be fruitless.... Our task is to rear India into political manhood, train it to English inst.i.tutions, and rejoice when it can govern itself without our aid."

CHAPTER XVII

VOTES FOR WOMEN

There is always a large percentage of people who range themselves on the side of the majority in regard to any question of the day. They range themselves there not because of any principle involved, but simply and solely because they consider this mode of action expedient. And they feel far safer, far happier, taking the flabby, muscleless arm of Expediency than in venturing into unknown difficulties behind the uncompromisingly stiff figure of Principle. But there are others-thank G.o.d for them!--who hate the s.h.i.+fty, cunning eye of Expediency far too much to have anything to do with him. These others would far rather be in the minority in championing some good cause than with the "expedient" majority.

These others are the pioneers of civilization. Sometimes--to-day we have many cases in point as regards the social crusade of brave women against taxation without representation--they are martyrs as well as pioneers. But the splendid spirit of knight-errantry, which shone so vividly with the fire of enthusiasm in medieval days, is still abroad in our midst to-day.

A few militant personalities fight for a great cause, a great principle-- the raising of a better moral tone amongst us, the betterment of the lives of their fellows. Newman was one of these. His sword was always in the thickest of the fight when it was a fight against some social injustice to his fellow citizens. Forty years ago and more he spoke out in champions.h.i.+p of woman's rights. So long ago as 1867 he led the movement which tilted at social wrongs, social injustices dealt out to the s.e.x. It is a movement which has taken, as I said, more than half a century to make its way to the position it holds to-day. It has been opposed bitterly almost every inch of the way by men who love expediency, and turn their backs on the principle of the thing; which is fair play for women. Nevertheless, England is a country which prides herself on her keen sense of justice and freedom.

If Newman had done nothing else, his work for this movement would be unforgettable; his words were so outspoken, his way of dealing with the subject so broad-minded. In one of his articles he urged the following on his fellow men:--"Readers of History, and Lawyers, are aware that women's wrongs are an ancient and terribly persistent fact.... Why has our law been so unjust to women?--Because women never had a voice in the making of it, and men as a cla.s.s _have not realized the oppression of women as a cla.s.s_" (the italics are my own). "Men have deep in their hearts the idea that women _ought_ to be their legal inferiors; that neither the persons of women nor their property ought to remain their own; that marriage is not a free union on equal terms; and that the law ought to favour the stronger s.e.x against the weaker. It is remarkable that our law is more unjust to women than that of the great historically despotic nations, and in some important respects less favourable than that of the Turks. All these things point out that _equality of the s.e.xes in respect to the Parliamentary Franchise_ is essential to justice. The conscience of men is opening to the truth...." "Readers of newspapers cannot be ignorant of the miseries endured by wives from brutal husbands. In ordinary decorous families, sons at lavish expense are trained to self-support. The _daughters_ in one cla.s.s have nothing spent on their education; in another, are educated as elegant ornaments of a drawing-room, where they live in luxury for a parent's delight; yet when he dies, and their youth is spent, they are often turned adrift into comparative poverty, incompetent for self-help. When complaint is made of this, the ascendant s.e.x graciously tells them, 'they ought to marry,' and this in a country where women are counted by the hundred thousand more numerous than men; where also men do not universally accept the state of marriage. Meanwhile, the law is made as if to dissuade the woman from such a remedy. If she dare to adopt it, it instantly strips her of all her property, great or little; [Footnote: Since then some amendment of the wrong has been done by the "Married Women's Property Act."] and if she earn anything, authorizes her husband to seize it by force. In the Marriage Service, the husband, as if in mockery, says, 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow': while the law allows him to gamble away her whole fortune the day after the marriage, or to live in riotous indulgence on _her_ money, and give to her the barest necessaries of life.... He may maliciously refuse her the sight of her own children.... And if to gain one sight of them she return to his house for two days, the law holds her to have 'condoned' all his offences however flagrant."