Harriet Martineau's Writing on the British Empire, Vol 5

Deborah Logan, Antoinette Burton, Kitty Sklar, Patrick Brantlinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000558890
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria

The literary presence of Harriet Martineau pervades 19th-century English and American culture. This edition makes her work available, and focuses on her writings on imperialism. It should be of interest to scholars of colonialism, women's writing, Victorian studies, sociology and journalism.

PART I. THE CONDITIONS

DOI: 10.4324/9781003113553-3

Desiderata.

- Before we can judge of, or even ascertain, the conditions of the case of India, we must know what it is that we want. We want good government for India, no doubt: but what do we mean by good government? What is our aim? What is the first object we must keep in view? That settled, what is the next?

We have learned so much, we may hope, from our colonial and other political experience as to be ready with the first answer. Our chief aim is the welfare of the people of India. That welfare comprehends our own under the great natural laws of society: but if it were otherwise, the answer must still be the same. Whether the tributary population be the remnants of the Red Indian tribe on a Canadian plain, or a hundred millions of people of various races, languages, and manners, the answer must, in all rectitude, be the same. The welfare of the little remnant of aborigines cannot interfere materially with that of the new comers; and the welfare of the hundred millions of old residents has an imperative claim to consideration over that of any kind or number of invaders. The conditions of the India case must be studied with a steady reference to the welfare of the people of India in the first place.

The next aim is the welfare of the people of England: the people at large, and not any section or clique who may conceive that they have a hereditary or other special claim to enjoy the patronage or other good things of India. Under this head is comprehended the welfare of British settlers in Hindostan, who are simply Englishmen choosing to live there.

It is hardly necessary to consider, as a third head, the interests of the world, as they are involved in the growth of civilization; because this could not be an aim separately pursued, as either of the others can be conceived to be. Suffice it that as the welfare of the people of India involves that of the British nation, so do both involve the general human interest in the rise and spread of civilization.

Conditions of the Indian Case

Desiring, then, the welfare of the people of India, from Thibet to Ceylon, and from Burmah to the Punjaub, what are the conditions of the case, now that we must decide how to govern them for the future? What are their conditions?

1. Dimensions Involved. –

Let us try to conceive of a territory of 837 square miles; and of a population of 132,000,000. This is the estimate of our own States alone; but, in contemplating the case of India, we must include the Native States, whose fortunes are implicated with the welfare of the British possessions which surround them. We may better understand the vastness of the area by looking across from north to south and from east to west. From the Himalaya to Ceylon the distance is nearly 2,000 miles; and from the Burrampooter to the Indus it is 1,500 or more. Leaving out the French and Portuguese settlements, the inhabitants of this area are more than 180,000,000. Those who profess to have an opinion as to how we should govern India, should attend to these dimensions, and not merely let the estimate pass before their eyes. They should remember that the area is as large as the whole of Europe, with the exception of Russia (larger, indeed, to the amount of 144,150 square miles), and that the population of India is within 19,000,000 of that of all Europe, exclusive of Russia.

The population lives in a country the resources of which are practically unbounded. Already, under all the disadvantages of thousands of years of misgovernment, followed by foreign invasion, and above a century of almost incessant warfare, the land in British possession pays above £13,000,000 a year; nearly £2,000,000 from salt; and nearly £4,000,000 from opium. While cultivation is perpetually on the increase, there are wide tracts remaining to be brought under tillage. Though there is yet not a railway of any considerable length in the country, and only one great and well-made road; and though ancient waterworks have lapsed into ruin, there is trade enough to support many millions of people on the spot, and many hundreds of thousands in England. The natives of India take from us goods to the amount of less than one shilling a head per annum, while the most backward of other countries, as South America, take nine times as much per head: but, at the low rate of Indian commerce, the resources of the country are still enormous. With good government it would be easy to raise the amount of production and exchange to that of our best customers; for nowhere is there a region more splendidly wealthy by nature; and the main hindrance, the want of roads and canals, is in course of removal, as we all know. In considering the conditions of the case of India from the Indian point of view, it is necessary to include that of the natural wealth of the country, in that accessible state which our public works will soon realize. We cannot compute it; and the most moderate estimate would look like statistics from the desk of Baron Munchausen:³ but such natural wealth is assuredly one of the features of the question which must not be overlooked. As Macaulay⁴ has observed, the people of India were clothed in fine muslins and shawls of Epicurean beauty when our ancestors dyed their skins with woad;⁵ and their great men lived in the splendour of a fairy tale before our kings lived in palaces: and yet the resources of their territory had scarcely begun to be attended to. The inhabitants have now more natural wealth than ever - more than speculation itself attempts to estimate; while they are just entering upon that application of the arts of life which will practically increase their resources beyond all computation. If well governed, India must yield occupation and subsistence to hundreds of millions of human beings, at home and abroad. Such a case is not one to be dealt with hastily, or on a rash application of principles and methods, because they may be the best for other races in other latitudes.

2. Characteristics.

– This leads us to the second class of conditions. The native races of India, diverse as they are, all differ more from us than from each other. There is a tendency in us to make light of differences of race in questions of government; a tendency which is an error on the best side, since our race honestly claims to be the highest: but still an error. The American slaveholder exaggerates the differences of race, just as our first adventurers in India did, and the Spaniards in Mexico, to justify tyranny; and there is some generosity in the view that all races would be much like ourselves under the same training. But not only has this never been proved, but science and experience unite an opposite testimony. What concerns us in the present case is, not the argument about race, but the fact that India has always, within our experience, been occupied by nations and tribes of various races, whose bodily organization, mental condition, and moral characteristics differ exceedingly, while they are all so unlike ours that to this moment there is not one of them that we can understand. Englishmen who have passed their lives in India, in communication with the natives from day to day, give the most contradictory accounts of what they think, feel, and can do; and there seems to have been no single instance in which an Englishman could be, or ought to be, as soundly assured of understanding his native neighbour in India as he is in England. The mutual understanding has not improved with time. Lord Cornwallis might possibly enter more into the native mind than Warren Hastings did; but, then, he knew it also better than any of his latest successors. A Cornwallis, a Malcolm, a Lawrence, may now and then turn up who penetrates further than other men who, with the best desires, have not their peculiar gift of sympathy; but the very ablest of such men are the readiest to declare that, in a general way, the native mind is not accessible by the European, beyond a mere skin depth. Will those who demand a parliamentary government for India consider for a moment how far Parliament is fit to rule 150,000,000 of people with incomprehensible minds?⁶

In making a canal, or laying out railway works, we should consider it indispensable that the parties should have a knowledge of the terrain; and that they should not merely plan after the model of similar works at home. Yet, in the more important affair of laws, institutions, and social relations, it is proposed by some people to lay schemes which will probably turn out wholly inapplicable. One may cut through mountain ridges sooner than human prejudices. One may span defiles and torrents more easily than bridge over the chasms which yawn between races of men. One may repair the damage of mistaking bog for rock, and transposing elevations and depressions of surface; but there is no remedy for the mischief of treating all men alike, not only in regard to having a conscience, but supposing that virtues and vices hold the same relative places in the consciences of all races. Bad engineering from imperfect knowledge may be set right, at more or less cost: but bad government from the same cause must necessarily be fatal either to the rulers or the ruled; probably to both.

Not only are the people of India different in race from us and from each other, but they have other differences, political, religious, social and historical. How much we know of such matters at present late events have pointedly indicated. How many of us have learned within the last year whatever we know of the relations of the Sikhs, or the Ghoorkas, to the Bengalese, or even of the Mohammedans to the Hindoos? Are we so well versed in the history of Indian conquests as to be ready to make arrangements in Parliament for the people who have always lived in India, and held the primeval faith and customs; and for those who came at such a time, bringing a new faith and new ideas and modes; and then, for another race from another quarter, introducing a yet different theory and practice of life? Are we prepared to decree a method of treatment which shall suit the Sikhs? and another adapted to the Bengal Hindoos? and another for the Mussulmans in Oude? to say nothing of the Bheels, and the Ghoorkas, and the Burmese, and the Cingalese, and a dozen others?

Such diversities of race, faith, and date involve a good many more, we must remember; such as modes of rule and subjection; a military or pacific polity, in all degrees, and sanctions of religion and morals. The native life of India is chiefly moulded by tradition. The whole Hindoo polity springs immediately from tradition; and it is a great element in that of the Mogul empire. While some of us censure the East India Company for affording too much consideration to these old native bases of social life, and others will never let the Directors hear the last of it if they have unwittingly outraged native usages on any single point; how far is Parliament qualified – how far are the constituencies prepared to require Parliament – to undertake the government of all these strange Asiatics, who live and move and have their being in an atmosphere of tradition in which Anglo-Saxon Christians cannot draw a single breath of life?

3. History.

– A third condition of the native case is an Asiatic political experience. It may be conceivable that, in course of ages, all manner of men may become qualified for representative institutions; the best at present known for the foremost races of men: but the time is certainly very far off; and there is no reason to suppose that the people of India will be among the earlier applicants for constitutional government. They have such an immense deal to get over before they can form the idea, or conceive the wish, that we really have no concern with either at present. In the case of all the tribes, their respective polities are heaven-descended. Each holds by the system he was born into, as by the rest of his religion; and all political and social arrangements are as sacred to him as his devotional rites. There is, therefore, a bottomless gulf open between them and us, as to the whole subject of government; and to them the entire range of political good and evil lies between the government which oppresses least and that which oppresses most. From one generation to another, their forefathers bore with an occasional tyrant for as long as the gods let him live to impale his subjects by scores, and maim them by hundreds, and starve them by thousands: and from one century to another they have been blessed by some comparatively good prince, whose memory they praise. Beyond this range, they know and imagine nothing: and they must forget their traditions, and pass through a wholly new training before they can know or imagine anything different.

No doubt, the sooner they begin to forget on the one hand, and learn on the other, the better. But the present question is of the conditions of their actual state. It being what it is, Parliamentary Government, which can conceive of none but representative institutions, seems to be precisely the most inappropriate that could be proposed.

So much for the conditions of the Native case. What are the conditions of ours; first in India, and then at home?

Conditions of the Anglo-Indian Case

1. Specific State of Mind.

– The English in India have always been noted for losing nothing for want of self-confidence. It could not be otherwise. It was Clive’s audacity which won India first; and the whole history of our occupation is one of conspicuous ability achieving prodigious successes. That the coarse men should be arrogant, and the more refined sufficiently self-confident, is an inevitable consequence of such a history. Moreover, the English in India have always been, ex officio, possessed of a specific knowledge which must nourish their self-satisfaction. While immeasurably exalted above the natives by their European cultivation and character of intellect, they have found themselves superior to all whom they met at home in a special kind of information, which seemed to them more important than any other – knowledge of India and its affairs. The peculiarity of this knowledge, and its being distinctively held, necessarily generated specific prejudices. There is no department of knowledge which does not yield its own particular crop of prejudice, – exceedingly hurtful, unless a constant process of weeding is kept up by enlarged association with minds otherwise employed. Those which specially infest the Anglo-Indian mind need not be enlarged on here, as it is not proposed to make the British in India the arbiters of destiny there. It suffices that they are, amidst all their superiorities, subject to specially strong persuasions, which are not always defensible. The noble exceptions, which may be easily noted, only make the rule more evident.

2. Antecedents.

— A yet more important condition is the mode in which our countrymen over there have arrived at their present position. Our empire in India began in commercial adventure, ordinarily selfish in its character in old times; and we need not repeat so much of its history as would prove how unscrupulous, rapacious, violent, and crafty were some of the early heroes of the wonderful tale. The singularity of the case is, that out of such a beginning there has arisen an administration, benevolent in aim and disinterested in practice beyond any other that the world ever saw. Washington and his comrades may have aspired, and did aspire, to something as morally fine; but their design fell short of its accomplishment. So, to a certain extent, has that of the East India Company; but the project stands before the world for judgment; and it is of the utmost importance now that the world, and especially the English public, should gravely contemplate it. If the policy of the East India Company, since its attention has been devoted to its territorial rule, had been studied as it deserves, its aims (though frustrated), its benevolent vigilance (though baffled), the disinterestedness of its proposals (though overborne), and the extraordinary average ability of its officials (though slighted), would have obviated any such proposal as that our Indian empire should pass under Parliamentary government.

3. Specific Errors.

– Another condition in the Anglo-Indian case is, the nature and character of the errors which have impaired the Company’s rule.

Those errors seem to have been of two classes.

The first were errors of mere antiquity; such as the monopoly which was aimed at as a matter of course by the first merchant adventurers who obtained a charter. There is no occasion to dwell now on the evidence, and the mischievous character, of the mistake. Any history of India will show what harm was done by 'interlopers' on the one hand, and by the tyranny which they exasperated on the other. The early conflicts of the Company with the principles of free trade principles only groping their way without a name or a claim - are interesting to read of, and very suggestive; but they need be only referred to here, and simply as affecting our position in India long after the error has been outgrown.

The other class of errors is of corporate origin. These are of the nature of monopoly; but the monopolizing principle was of a higher order by far than the obsolete commercial one. Perceiving more clearly than people at home have ever done, the difficulty of establishing any sound understanding between Europeans and the natives, the Company doubted the possibility of sustaining social order and existing native liberties without conflict, if the free ingress of Europeans were allowed. The secession of the American colonies on republican principles aggravated this fear at the time of that revolution, and sustained it afterwards; and, though there never could have been any danger of Asiatics rebelling on such grounds, there was nothing irrational in the dread of the operation of a promiscuous assemblage of European insurgents on the mind of Hindoo and Mohammedan communities. When time passed on, and the danger lessened, and the Company's rule was never spontaneously relaxed, it became clear that the corporate spirit was more or less answerable for persistency in a policy of exclusion. This policy has had enough to do with our recent and present difficulties to justify its being set down among the conditions of the case we have to decide upon. This done, we may pass on to the third group of conditions; those, namely, which belong to the English at home, who, by themselves and their representatives in Parliament, constitute the jury and judge, or council and ruler, in the most important matter which could be brought before them.

Conditions of the English Case

1. Popular Ignorance.

– The most obvious and unquestionable difficulty we have to deal with at present is the prodigious and insurmountable popular ignorance which disqualifies us as a nation for any immediate legislation for India. When the first news of the mutiny arrived, the extent of this ignorance became apparent. Not only did men of the working class want to know ‘why our people staid in such a place,’ and ask whether, ‘if they came away, their enemies would come after them,’ but some of the best educated persons in England admitted that they had never known till now how India was governed, and that they did not believe that one in a hundred of their cultivated acquaintances could tell how many Presidencies there were; nor whether Holkar was a Mohammedan or a Hindoo; nor who Scindiah was – unless he were the King of Scinde. Turn where we may, we can fi...