I am
confident
that Lord Ellenborough knew it to be
in ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at the public charge.
in ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at the public charge.
Macaulay
It is not
necessary now to inquire whether, with universal education, we could
safely have universal suffrage. What we are asked to do is to give
universal suffrage before there is universal education. Have I any
unkind feeling towards these poor people? No more than I have to a
sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the
physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has
to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the
granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be
opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water,
because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of
the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity
into a famine. And in the same way I would not yield to the importunity
of multitudes who, exasperated by suffering and blinded by ignorance,
demand with wild vehemence the liberty to destroy themselves.
But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this petition.
It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he who
he may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve of
it. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing the
sense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasons
that ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the
strangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to
the real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they sign
political manifestoes of the highest importance without taking the
trouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us to
believe that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand,
they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years,
numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest,
have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, and
bound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do. Every man of sense knows that the people support
the Government. But the doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it
is the business of the Government to support the people. It is supposed
by many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible
storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from
mere hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazine
among the poor. We have all of us read speeches and tracts in which it
seemed to be taken for granted that we who sit here have the power of
working miracles, of sending a shower of manna on the West Riding,
of striking the earth and furnishing all the towns of Lancashire with
abundance of pure water, of feeding all the cotton-spinners and weavers
who are out of work with five loaves and two fishes. There is not a
working man who has not heard harangues and read newspapers in which
these follies are taught. And do you believe that as soon as you give
the working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget all
this? Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power. The Charter would
give them no less. In every constituent body throughout the empire
the working men will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an
irresistible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed
at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and is
it possible to doubt what the result must be? The honourable Member for
Bath and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as very
democratic members of Parliament. They would occupy a very different
position in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, if they
succeeded in obtaining seats. They would, I believe, honestly oppose
every attempt to rob the public creditor. They would manfully say,
"Justice and the public good require that this sum of thirty millions
a year should be paid;" and they would immediately be reviled as
aristocrats, monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of old
abuses. And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions who
have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate, and is
wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, use
that power to enforce what they think their rights? What could follow
but one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough.
That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yet
would that a single vast spoliation were the worst! No, Sir; in the
lowest deep there would be a lower deep. The first spoliation would not
be the last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the first
spoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully than
before. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences which
now protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, swept
away. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything that
they held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complain
of being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience,
God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We can
only guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible than
can be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger
scale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow
space, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;
credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenance
of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilence
following in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotion
into a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that I
can anticipate,--and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman
and a Whig calls such an event the very best? --the very best event,
I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong
military despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of all
that immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutions
under which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth,
in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief that
we should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We should
not deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatness
would insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;
and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselves
the means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions her
legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in their
excuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;
for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enough
to comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin would
be the effect of their compliance.
Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God has
given me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to the
granting of universal suffrage. This motion I think, tends that way.
If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for universal suffrage with a
full view of all the consequences of universal suffrage as they are set
forth in this petition, he acts with perfect consistency in voting for
this motion. But, I must say, I heard with some surprise the honourable
baronet the Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope. ) say that, though
he utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just as
I do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in explanation
of their opinions. I conceive that their opinions are quite sufficiently
explained already; and to such opinions I am not disposed to pay any
extraordinary mark of respect. I shall give a clear and conscientious
vote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I
conceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complain
of my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who
tries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has
fully made up his mind not to comply with their demands.
*****
THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH. (MARCH 9, 1843) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH 1843.
On the ninth of March 1843, Mr Vernon Smith, Member for Northampton,
made the following motion:
"That this House, having regard to the high and important functions
of the Governor General of India, the mixed character of the native
population, and the recent measures of the Court of Directors for
discontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in India, is of opinion
that the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in issuing the General Orders of
the sixteenth of November 1842, and in addressing the letter of the same
date to all the chiefs, princes, and people of India, respecting the
restoration of the gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous,
and reprehensible. "
Mr Emerson Tennent, Secretary of the Board of Control, opposed the
motion. In reply to him the following Speech was made.
The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157.
Mr Speaker,--If the practice of the honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of the Board of Control, had been in accordance with his precepts, if he
had not, after exhorting us to confine ourselves strictly to the subject
before us, rambled far from that subject, I should have refrained from
all digression. For and truth there is abundance to be said touching
both the substance and the style of this Proclamation. I cannot,
however, leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question before
us to any great distance or for any long time.
I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravely
represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourable
friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the Governor
General's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this House
is to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty's
Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And how
can we consider how they are governed without considering the conduct
of him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of him
who is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can say
for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friend
the Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our hearts
and souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence of
Lord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit of
England, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at this
moment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has
no right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how important
it is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, the
State should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamation
reflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the present
occasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very different
return. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland
has an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may
have committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. No
brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests and
the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate Lord
Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough the
means of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? A
proclamation by Lord Ellenborough, stigmatising the conduct of Lord
Auckland. And, Sir, since the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the
Board of Control has thought fit to divert the debate from its proper
course, I will venture to request that he, or the honourable director
who sits behind him (Sir James Hogg. ), will vouchsafe to give us some
explanations on an important point to which allusion has been made.
Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly announced that our
troops were about to evacuate Afghanistan before he had ascertained that
our captive countrymen and countrywomen had been restored to liberty.
This accusation, which is certainly a serious one, the honourable
gentleman, the Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be a
mere calumny. Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the withdrawing
of the troops bears date the first of October 1842. What I wish to know
is, whether any member of the Government, or of the Court of Directors,
will venture to affirm that on the first of October 1842, the Governor
General knew that the prisoners had been set at liberty? I believe that
no member either of the Government or of the Court of Directors will
venture to affirm any such thing. It seems certain that on the first
of October the Governor General could not know that the prisoners were
safe. Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board
of Control assures us that, when the proclamation was drawn up, the
Governor General did know that the prisoners were safe. What is the
inevitable consequence? It is this, that the date is a false date, that
the proclamation was written after the first of October, and antedated?
And for what reason was it antedated? I am almost ashamed to tell
the House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that Lord
Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to his
proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was
dated on the first of October. I believe that Lord Ellenborough wished
to make the contrast between his own success and his predecessor's
failure more striking, and that for the sake of this paltry, this
childish, triumph, he antedated his proclamation, and made it appear to
all Europe and all Asia that the English Government was indifferent
to the fate of Englishmen and Englishwomen who were in a miserable
captivity. If this be so, and I shall be surprised to hear any person
deny that it is so, I must say that by this single act, by writing those
words, the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be a
man of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust.
I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourable
gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many other
matters. I might call the attention of the House to the systematic
manner in which the Governor General has exerted himself to lower
the character and to break the spirit of that civil service on the
respectability and efficiency of which chiefly depends the happiness of
a hundred millions of human beings. I might say much about the financial
committee which he appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of his
predecessor, but which at last found out no blunders except his own.
But the question before us demands our attention. That question has two
sides, a serious and a ludicrous side. Let us look first at the serious
side. Sir, I disclaim in the strongest manner all intention of raising
any fanatical outcry or of lending aid to any fanatical project. I would
very much rather be the victim of fanaticism than its tool. If Lord
Ellenborough were called in question for having given an impartial
protection to the professors of different religions, or for restraining
unjustifiable excesses into which Christian missionaries might have been
hurried by their zeal, I would, widely as I have always differed from
him in politics, have stood up in his defence, though I had stood up
alone. But the charge against Lord Ellenborough is that he has insulted
the religion of his own country and the religion of millions of the
Queen's Asiatic subjects in order to pay honour to an idol. And this the
right honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control calls a
trivial charge. Sir, I think it a very grave charge. Her Majesty is the
ruler of a larger heathen population than the world ever saw collected
under the sceptre of a Christian sovereign since the days of the Emperor
Theodosius. What the conduct of rulers in such circumstances ought to be
is one of the most important moral questions, one of the most important
political questions, that it is possible to conceive. There are subject
to the British rule in Asia a hundred millions of people who do not
profess the Christian faith. The Mahometans are a minority: but their
importance is much more than proportioned to their number: for they are
an united, a zealous, an ambitious, a warlike class. The great majority
of the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attached
to doctrines and rites which, considered merely with reference to the
temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. In
no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to
the moral and intellectual health of our race. The Brahminical mythology
is so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind which receives it
as truth; and with this absurd mythology is bound up an absurd system of
physics, an absurd geography, an absurd astronomy. Nor is this form
of Paganism more favourable to art than to science. Through the whole
Hindoo Pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling those
beautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient
Greece. All is hideous, and grotesque, and ignoble. As this superstition
is of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all superstitions
the most inelegant, so is it of all superstitions the most immoral.
Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts of
public worship. The courtesans are as much a part of the establishment
of the temple, as much ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimes
against life, crimes against property, are not only permitted but
enjoined by this odious theology. But for our interference human victims
would still be offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid
on the pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her own
children. It is by the command and under the especial protection of one
of the most powerful goddesses that the Thugs join themselves to the
unsuspecting traveller, make friends with him, slip the noose round his
neck, plunge their knives in his eyes, hide him in the earth, and divide
his money and baggage. I have read many examinations of Thugs; and I
particularly remember an altercation which took place between two
of those wretches in the presence of an English officer. One Thug
reproached the other for having been so irreligious as to spare the life
of a traveller when the omens indicated that their patroness required
a victim. "How could you let him go? How can you expect the goddess
to protect us if you disobey her commands? That is one of your North
country heresies. " Now, Sir, it is a difficult matter to determine
in what way Christian rulers ought to deal with such superstitions as
these. We might have acted as the Spaniards acted in the New World. We
might have attempted to introduce our own religion by force. We might
have sent missionaries among the natives at the public charge. We might
have held out hopes of public employment to converts, and have imposed
civil disabilities on Mahometans and Pagans. But we did none of these
things; and herein we judged wisely. Our duty, as rulers, was to
preserve strict neutrality on all questions merely religious: and I
am not aware that we have ever swerved from strict neutrality for the
purpose of making proselytes to our own faith. But we have, I am
sorry to say, sometimes deviated from the right path in the opposite
direction. Some Englishmen, who have held high office in India, seem to
have thought that the only religion which was not entitled to toleration
and to respect was Christianity. They regarded every Christian
missionary with extreme jealousy and disdain; and they suffered the
most atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hindoo superstition, to be
perpetrated in open day. It is lamentable to think how long after our
power was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting the first
and plainest duty of the civil magistrate, suffered the practices of
infanticide and Suttee to continue unchecked. We decorated the temples
of the false gods. We provided the dancing girls. We gilded and painted
the images to which our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired and
embellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees flung
themselves at every festival to be crushed to death. We sent guards of
honour to escort pilgrims to the places of worship. We actually made
oblations at the shrines of idols. All this was considered, and is
still considered, by some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, as
profound policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, so senseless
a policy. We gained nothing by it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes of
those whom we meant to flatter. We led them to believe that we attached
no importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism.
Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding to
topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxious
for the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, so
speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to
discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice,
and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and
domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, which
has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servants
and playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treason
against humanity and civilisation.
Gradually a better system was introduced. A great man whom we have
lately lost, Lord Wellesley, led the way. He prohibited the immolation
of female children; and this was the most unquestionable of all his
titles to the gratitude of his country. In the year 1813 Parliament
gave new facilities to persons who were desirous to proceed to India
as missionaries. Lord William Bentinck abolished the Suttee. Shortly
afterwards the Home Government sent out to Calcutta the important and
valuable despatch to which reference has been repeatedly made in the
course of this discussion. That despatch Lord Glenelg wrote,--I was then
at the Board of Control, and can attest the fact,--with his own hand.
One paragraph, the sixty-second, is of the highest moment. I know that
paragraph so well that I could repeat it word for word. It contains in
short compass an entire code of regulations for the guidance of British
functionaries in matters relating to the idolatry of India. The orders
of the Home Government were express, that the arrangements of the
temples should be left entirely to the natives. A certain discretion
was of course left to the local authorities as to the time and manner
of dissolving that connection which had long existed between the English
Government and the Brahminical superstition. But the principle was laid
down in the clearest manner. This was in February 1833. In the year 1838
another despatch was sent, which referred to the sixty-second paragraph
in Lord Glenelg's despatch, and enjoined the Indian Government to
observe the rules contained in that paragraph. Again, in the year 1841,
precise orders were sent out on the same subject, orders which Lord
Ellenborough seems to me to have studied carefully for the express
purpose of disobeying them point by point, and in the most direct
manner. You murmur: but only look at the orders of the Directors and at
the proclamation of the Governor General. The orders are, distinctly and
positively, that the British authorities in India shall have nothing
to do with the temples of the natives, shall make no presents to those
temples, shall not decorate those temples, shall not pay any military
honour to those temples. Now, Sir, the first charge which I bring
against Lord Ellenborough is, that he has been guilty of an act of gross
disobedience, that he has done that which was forbidden in the strongest
terms by those from whom his power is derived. The Home Government says,
Do not interfere in the concerns of heathen temples. Is it denied that
Lord Ellenborough has interfered in the concerns of a heathen temple?
The Home Government says, Make no presents to heathen temples. Is
it denied that Lord Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his
intention to make a present to a heathen temple? The Home Government
says, Do not decorate heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord
Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his intention to decorate
a heathen temple? The Home Government says, Do not send troops to do
honour to heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord Ellenborough sent a
body of troops to escort these gates to a heathen temple? To be sure,
the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control tries to
get rid of this part of the case in rather a whimsical manner. He says
that it is impossible to believe that, by sending troops to escort the
gates, Lord Ellenborough can have meant to pay any mark of respect to
an idol. And why? Because, says the honourable gentleman, the Court of
Directors had given positive orders that troops should not be employed
to pay marks of respect to idols. Why, Sir, undoubtedly, if it is to be
taken for granted that Lord Ellenborough is a perfect man, if all our
reasonings are to proceed on the supposition that he cannot do wrong,
then I admit the force of the honourable gentleman's argument. But it
seems to me a strange and dangerous thing to infer a man's innocence
merely from the flagrancy of his guilt. It is certain that the Home
authorities ordered the Governor General not to employ the troops in the
service of a temple. It is certain that Lord Ellenborough employed the
troops to escort a trophy, an oblation, which he sent to the restored
temple of Somnauth. Yes, the restored temple of Somnauth. Those are his
lordship's words. They have given rise to some discussion, and seem not
to be understood by everybody in the same sense. We all know that this
temple is an ruins.
I am confident that Lord Ellenborough knew it to be
in ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at the public charge.
That is the obvious meaning of his words. But, as this meaning is so
monstrous that nobody here can venture to defend it, his friends pretend
that he believed the temple to have been already restored, and that he
had no thought of being himself the restorer. How can I believe this?
How can I believe that, when he issued this proclamation, he knew
nothing about the state of the temple to which he proposed to make an
offering of such importance? He evidently knew that it had once been in
ruins; or he would not have called it the restored temple. Why am I to
suppose that he imagined it to have been rebuilt? He had people about
him who knew it well, and who could have told him that it was in ruins
still. To say that he was not aware that it was in ruins is to say that
he put forth his proclamation without taking the trouble to ask a single
question of those who were close at hand and were perfectly competent to
give him information. Why, Sir, this defence is itself an accusation. I
defy the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, I
defy all human ingenuity, to get his lordship clear off from both the
horns of this dilemma. Either way, he richly deserves a parliamentary
censure. Either he published this proclamation in the recklessness of
utter ignorance without making the smallest inquiry; or else he, an
English and a Christian Governor, meant to build a temple to a heathen
god at the public charge, in direct defiance of the commands of his
official superiors. Turn and twist the matter which way you will, you
can make nothing else of it. The stain is like the stain of Blue Beard's
key, in the nursery tale. As soon as you have scoured one side clean,
the spot comes out on the other.
So much for the first charge, the charge of disobedience. It is fully
made out: but it is not the heaviest charge which I bring against Lord
Ellenborough. I charge him with having done that which, even if it had
not been, as it was, strictly forbidden by the Home authorities, it
would still have been a high crime to do. He ought to have known,
without any instructions from home, that it was his duty not to take
part in disputes among the false religions of the East; that it was his
duty, in his official character, to show no marked preference for any of
those religions, and to offer no marked insult to any. But, Sir, he has
paid unseemly homage to one of those religions; he has grossly insulted
another; and he has selected as the object of his homage the very worst
and most degrading of those religions, and as the object of his insults
the best and purest of them. The homage was paid to Lingamism. The
insult was offered to Mahometanism. Lingamism is not merely idolatry,
but idolatry in its most pernicious form. The honourable gentleman the
Secretary of the Board of Control seemed to think that he had achieved
a great victory when he had made out that his lordship's devotions had
been paid, not to Vishnu, but to Siva. Sir, Vishnu is the preserving
Deity of the Hindoo Mythology; Siva is the destroying Deity; and, as far
as I have any preference for one of your Governor General's gods over
another, I confess that my own tastes would lead me to prefer the
preserving to the destroying power. Yes, Sir; the temple of Somnauth
was sacred to Siva; and the honourable gentleman cannot but know by what
emblem Siva is represented, and with what rites he is adored. I will say
no more. The Governor General, Sir, is in some degree protected by the
very magnitude of his offence. I am ashamed to name those things
to which he is not ashamed to pay public reverence. This god of
destruction, whose images and whose worship it would be a violation of
decency to describe, is selected as the object of homage. As the object
of insult is selected a religion which has borrowed much of its theology
and much of its morality from Christianity, a religion which in the
midst of Polytheism teaches the unity of God, and, in the midst of
idolatry, strictly proscribes the worship of images. The duty of our
Government is, as I said, to take no part in the disputes between
Mahometans and idolaters. But, if our Government does take a part, there
cannot be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference. Lord
Ellenborough is of a different opinion. He takes away the gates from a
Mahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a Pagan temple.
Morally, this is a crime. Politically, it is a blunder. Nobody who knows
anything of the Mahometans of India can doubt that this affront to their
faith will excite their fiercest indignation. Their susceptibility on
such points is extreme. Some of the most serious disasters that have
ever befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility.
Remember what happened at Vellore in 1806, and more recently at
Bangalore. The mutiny of Vellore was caused by a slight shown to the
Mahometan turban; the mutiny of Bangalore, by disrespect said to have
been shown to a Mahometan place of worship. If a Governor General had
been induced by his zeal for Christianity to offer any affront to a
mosque held in high veneration by Mussulmans, I should think that he had
been guilty of indiscretion such as proved him to be unfit for his
post. But to affront a mosque of peculiar dignity, not from zeal for
Christianity, but for the sake of this loathsome god of destruction, is
nothing short of madness. Some temporary popularity Lord Ellenborough
may no doubt gain in some quarters. I hear, and I can well believe, that
some bigoted Hindoos have hailed this proclamation with delight, and
have begun to entertain a hope that the British Government is about to
take their worship under its peculiar protection. But how long will that
hope last? I presume that the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of
the Treasury does not mean to suffer India to be governed on Brahminical
principles. I presume that he will not allow the public revenue to be
expended in rebuilding temples, adorning idols, and hiring courtesans.
I have no doubt that there is already on the way to India such an
admonition as will prevent Lord Ellenborough from persisting in the
course on which he has entered. The consequence will be that the
exultation of the Brahmins will end in mortification and anger. See
then of what a complication of faults the Governor General is guilty.
In order to curry favour with the Hindoos he has offered an inexpiable
insult to the Mahometans; and now, in order to quiet the English, he
is forced to disappoint and disgust the Hindoos. But, apart from the
irritating effect which these transactions must produce on every part of
the native population, is it no evil to have this continual wavering and
changing? This is not the only case in which Lord Ellenborough has, with
great pomp, announced intentions which he has not been able to carry
into effect. It is his Lordship's habit. He put forth a notification
that his Durbar was to be honoured by the presence of Dost Mahomed.
Then came a notification that Dost Mahomed would not make his appearance
there. In the proclamation which we are now considering his lordship
announced to all the princes of India his resolution to set up these
gates at Somnauth. The gates, it is now universally admitted, will
not be set up there. All India will see that the Governor General has
changed his mind. The change may be imputed to mere fickleness and
levity. It may be imputed to the disapprobation with which his conduct
has been regarded here. In either case he appears in a light in which it
is much to be deplored that a Governor General should appear.
So much for the serious side of this business; and now for the ludicrous
side. Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness; for it is no light
thing that he who represents the British nation in India should be a
jest to the people of India. We have sometimes sent them governors whom
they loved, and sometimes governors whom they feared; but they never
before had a governor at whom they laughed. Now, however, they laugh;
and how can we blame them for laughing, when all Europe and all America
are laughing too? You see, Sir, that the gentlemen opposite cannot keep
their countenances. And no wonder. Was such a State paper ever seen in
our language before? And what is the plea set up for all this bombast?
Why, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control
brings down to the House some translations of Persian letters from
native princes. Such letters, as everybody knows, are written in a most
absurd and turgid style. The honourable gentleman forces us to hear
a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the
secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and
hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort
of eloquence? The honourable gentleman might as well ask why Lord
Ellenborough should not sit cross-legged, why he should not let his
beard grow to his waist, why he should not wear a turban, why he should
not hang trinkets all about his person, why he should not ride about
Calcutta on a horse jingling with bells and glittering with false
pearls. The native princes do these things; and why should not he? Why,
Sir, simply because he is not a native prince, but an English Governor
General. When the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all his
gaudy finery, they bow to him with a certain respect. They know that
the splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth. But if Sir
Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would have thought
that he was out of his wits. They are not such fools as the honourable
gentleman takes them for. Simplicity is not their fashion. But they
understand and respect the simplicity of our fashions. Our plain
clothing commands far more reverence than all the jewels which the most
tawdry Zemindar wears; and our plain language carries with it far more
weight than the florid diction of the most ingenious Persian scribe. The
plain language and the plain clothing are inseparably associated in the
minds of our subjects with superior knowledge, with superior energy,
with superior veracity, with all the high and commanding qualities which
erected, and which still uphold, our empire. Sir, if, as the speech of
the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control seems to
indicate, Lord Ellenborough has adopted this style on principle, if it
be his lordship's deliberate intention to mimic, in his State papers,
the Asiatic modes of thought and expression, that alone would be a
reason for recalling him. But the honourable gentlemen is mistaken in
thinking that this proclamation is in the Oriental taste. It bears no
resemblance to the very bad Oriental compositions which he has read
to us, nor to any other Oriental compositions that I ever saw. It is
neither English nor Indian. It is not original, however; and I will tell
the House where the Governor General found his models. He has apparently
been studying the rants of the French Jacobins during the period of
their ascendency, the Carmagnoles of the Convention, the proclamations
issued by the Directory and its Proconsuls: and he has been seized with
a desire to imitate those compositions. The pattern which he seems to
have especially proposed to himself is the rhodomontade in which it was
announced that the modern Gauls were marching to Rome in order to avenge
the fate of Dumnorix and Vercingetorex. Everybody remembers those lines
in which revolutionary justice is described by Mr Canning:--
"Not she in British courts who takes her stand,
The dawdling balance dangling in her hand;
But firm, erect, with keen reverted glance,
The avenging angel of regenerate France,
Who visits ancient sins on modern times,
And punishes the Pope for Caesar's crimes. "
In the same spirit and in the same style our Governor General has
proclaimed his intention to retaliate on the Mussulmans beyond the
mountains the insults which their ancestors, eight hundred years ago,
offered to the idolatry of the Hindoos. To do justice to the Jacobins,
however, I must say that they had an excuse which was wanting to the
noble lord. The revolution had made almost as great a change in literary
tastes as in political institutions. The old masters of French eloquence
had shared the fate of the old states and of the old parliaments. The
highest posts in the administration were filled by persons who had
no experience of affairs, who in the general confusion had raised
themselves by audacity and quickness of natural parts, uneducated men,
or half educated men, who had no notion that the style in which they had
heard the heroes and villains of tragedies declaim on the stage was
not the style of real warriors and statesmen. But was it for an English
gentleman, a man of distinguished abilities and cultivated mind, a man
who had sate many years in parliament, and filled some of the highest
posts in the State, to copy the productions of such a school?
But, it is said, what does it matter if the noble lord has written
a foolish rhapsody which is neither prose nor verse? Is affected
phraseology a subject for parliamentary censure? What great ruler can be
named who has not committed errors much more serious than the penning of
a few sentences of turgid nonsense? This, I admit, sounds plausible.
It is quite true that very eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, Sir
Robert Walpole, Lord Chatham and his son, all committed faults which did
much more harm than any fault of style can do. But I beg the House to
observe this, that an error which produces the most serious consequences
may not necessarily prove that the man who has committed it is not a
very wise man; and that, on the other hand, an error which directly
produces no important consequences may prove the man who has committed
it to be quite unfit for public trust. Walpole committed a ruinous
error when he yielded to the public cry for war with Spain. But,
notwithstanding that error, he was an eminently wise man. Caligula, on
the other hand, when he marched his soldiers to the beach, made them
fill their helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placed
in the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm to
anybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of governing
an empire. Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most ill judged, and
ended in defeat and disgrace. Yet Mr Pitt was a statesman of a very high
order. On the other hand, such ukases as those by which the Emperor
Paul used to regulate the dress of the people of Petersburg, though they
caused much less misery than the slaughter at Quiberon, proved that
the Emperor Paul could not safely be trusted with power over his
fellow-creatures. One day he forbade the wearing of pantaloons. Another
day he forbade his subjects to comb their hair over their foreheads.
Then he proscribed round hats. A young Englishman, the son of a
merchant, thought to evade this decree by going about the city in a
hunting cap. Then came out an edict which made it penal to wear on the
head a round thing such as the English merchant's son wore. Now, Sir,
I say that, when I examine the substance of Lord Ellenborough's
proclamation, and consider all the consequences which that paper is
likely to produce, I am forced to say that he has committed a grave
moral and political offence. When I examine the style, I see that he
has committed an act of eccentric folly, much of the same kind with
Caligula's campaign against the cockles, and with the Emperor Paul's
ukase against round hats. Consider what an extravagant selfconfidence,
what a disdain for the examples of his great predecessors and for the
opinions of the ablest and most experienced men who are now to be found
in the Indian services, this strange document indicates. Surely it might
have occurred to Lord Ellenborough that, if this kind of eloquence had
been likely to produce a favourable impression on the minds of Asiatics,
such Governors as Warren Hastings, Mr Elphinstone, Sir Thomas Munro,
and Sir Charles Metcalfe, men who were as familiar with the language and
manners of the native population of India as any man here can be
with the language and manners of the French, would not have left the
discovery to be made by a new comer who did not know any Eastern tongue.
Surely, too, it might have occurred to the noble lord that, before he
put forth such a proclamation, he would do well to ask some person who
knew India intimately what the effect both on the Mahometans and Hindoos
was likely to be. I firmly believe that the Governor General either did
not ask advice or acted in direct opposition to advice. Mr Maddock was
with his lordship as acting Secretary. Now I know enough of Mr Maddock
to be quite certain that he never counselled the Governor General to
publish such a paper. I will pawn my life that he either was never
called upon to give an opinion, or that he gave an opinion adverse to
the course which has been taken. No Governor General who was on good
terms with the civil service would have been, I may say, permitted to
expose himself thus. Lord William Bentinck and Lord Auckland were, to be
sure, the last men in the world to think of doing such a thing as this.
But if either of those noble lords, at some unlucky moment when he was
not quite himself, when his mind was thrown off the balance by the pride
and delight of an extraordinary success, had proposed to put forth such
a proclamation, he would have been saved from committing so great a
mistake by the respectful but earnest remonstrances of those in whom
he placed confidence, and who were solicitous for his honour. From the
appearance of this proclamation, therefore, I infer that the terms on
which Lord Ellenborough is with the civil servants of the Company are
such that those servants could not venture to offer him counsel when he
most needed it.
For these reasons, Sir, I think the noble lord unfit for high public
trust. Let us, then, consider the nature of the public trust which
is now reposed in him. Are gentlemen aware that, even when he is at
Calcutta, surrounded by his councillors, his single voice can carry any
resolution concerning the executive administration against them all?
They can object: they can protest: they can record their opinions
in writing, and can require him to give in writing his reasons for
persisting in his own course: but they must then submit. On the most
important questions, on the question whether a war shall be declared,
on the question whether a treaty shall be concluded, on the question
whether the whole system of land revenue established in a great province
shall be changed, his single vote weighs down the votes of all who
sit at the Board with him. The right honourable Baronet opposite is a
powerful minister, a more powerful minister than any that we have seen
during many years. But I will venture to say that his power over the
people of England is nothing when compared with the power which the
Governor General possesses over the people of India. Such is Lord
Ellenborough's power when he is with his council, and is to some extent
held in check. But where is he now? He has given his council the slip.
He is alone. He has near him no person who is entitled and bound to
offer advice, asked or unasked: he asks no advice: and you cannot expect
men to outstep the strict line of their official duty by obtruding
advice on a superior by whom it would be ungraciously received. The
danger of having a rash and flighty Governor General is sufficiently
serious at the very best. But the danger of having such a Governor
General up the country, eight or nine hundred miles from any person who
has a right to remonstrate with him, is fearful indeed. Interests so
vast, that the most sober language in which they can be described sounds
hyperbolical, are entrusted to a single man; to a man who, whatever
his parts may be, and they are doubtless considerable, has shown an
indiscretion and temerity almost beyond belief; to a man who has been
only a few months in India; to a man who takes no counsel with those who
are well acquainted with India.
I cannot sit down without addressing myself to those Directors of the
East India Company who are present. I exhort them to consider the heavy
responsibility which rests on them. They have the power to recall Lord
Ellenborough; and I trust that they will not hesitate to exercise that
power. This is the advice of one who has been their servant, who has
served them loyally, and who is still sincerely anxious for their credit
and for the welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. But
if, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord,
then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to
return to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by the
next mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors nor
Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mail
without great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough back
to Calcutta. There at least he will find persons who have a right to
advise him and to expostulate with him, and who will, I doubt not, have
also the spirit to do so. It is something that he will be forced to
record his reasons for what he does. It is something that he will be
forced to hear reasons against his propositions. It is something that a
delay, though only of twenty-four hours, will be interposed between the
first conception of a wild scheme and the execution. I am afraid that
these checks will not be sufficient to prevent much evil: but they are
not absolutely nugatory. I entreat the Directors to consider in what
a position they will stand if, in consequence of their neglect, some
serious calamity should befall the country which is confided to their
care. I will only say, in conclusion, that, if there be any use in
having a Council of India, if it be not meant that the members of
Council should draw large salaries for doing nothing, if they are really
appointed for the purpose of assisting and restraining the Governor,
it is to the last degree absurd that their powers should be in abeyance
when there is a Governor who, of all the Governors that ever England
sent to the East, stands most in need both of assistance and of
restraint.
*****
THE STATE OF IRELAND. (FEBRUARY 19, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 19TH OF FEBRUARY 1844.
On the thirteenth of February 1844, Lord John Russell moved for a
Committee of the whole House to take into consideration the state of
Ireland. After a discussion of nine nights the motion was rejected by
324 votes to 225. On the fifth night of the debate the following Speech
was made.
I cannot refrain, Sir, from congratulating you and the House that I
did not catch your eye when I rose before. I should have been extremely
sorry to have prevented any Irish member from addressing the House on a
question so interesting to Ireland, but peculiarly sorry to have stood
in the way of the honourable gentleman who to-night pleaded the cause of
his country with so much force and eloquence. (Mr J. O'Brien. )
I am sorry to say that I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to follow
the advice which has been just given me by my honourable friend the
Member for Pomfret (Mr R. Milnes. ), with all the authority which, as he
has reminded us, belongs to his venerable youth. I cannot at all agree
with him in thinking that the wisest thing that we can do is to suffer
Her Majesty's Ministers to go on in their own way, seeing that the
way in which they have long been going on is an exceedingly bad one. I
support the motion of my noble friend for these plain reasons.
First, I hold that Ireland is in a most unsatisfactory, indeed in a most
dangerous, state.
Secondly, I hold that for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's
Ministers are in a great measure accountable, and that they have not
shown, either as legislators, or as administrators, that they are
capable of remedying the evils which they have caused.
Now, Sir, if I make out these two propositions, it will follow that
it is the constitutional right and duty of the representatives of the
nation to interfere; and I conceive that my noble friend, by moving
for a Committee of the whole House, has proposed a mode of interference
which is both parliamentary and convenient.
My first proposition, Sir, will scarcely be disputed. Both sides of the
House are fully agreed in thinking that the condition of Ireland may
well excite great anxiety and apprehension. That island, in extent about
one fourth of the United Kingdom, in population more than one-fourth,
superior probably in natural fertility to any area of equal size in
Europe, possessed of natural facilities for trade such as can nowhere
else be found in an equal extent of coast, an inexhaustible nursery of
gallant soldiers, a country far more important to the prosperity,
the strength, the dignity of this great empire than all our distant
dependencies together, than the Canadas and the West Indies added to
Southern Africa, to Australasia, to Ceylon, and to the vast dominions
of the Moguls, that island, Sir, is acknowledged by all to be so ill
affected and so turbulent that it must, in any estimate of our power,
be not added but deducted. You admit that you govern that island, not as
you govern England and Scotland, but as you govern your new conquests in
Scinde; not by means of the respect which the people feel for the laws,
but by means of bayonets, of artillery, of entrenched camps.
My first proposition, then, I take to be conceded. Ireland is in a
dangerous state. The question which remains to be considered is, whether
for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's Ministers are to be held
accountable.
Now, Sir, I at once admit that the distempers of Ireland must in part be
attributed to causes for which neither Her Majesty's present Ministers
nor any public men now living can justly be held accountable. I will not
trouble the House with a long dissertation on those causes. But it is
necessary, I think, to take at least a rapid glance at them: and in
order to do so, Sir, we must go back to a period not only anterior to
the birth of the statesmen who are now arrayed against each other on
the right and left of your chair, but anterior to the birth even of the
great parties of which those statesmen are the leaders; anterior to the
days when the names of Tory and Whig, of court party and country party,
of cavalier and roundhead, came into use; anterior to the existence
of those Puritans to whom the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr
Disraeli. ), in a very ingenious speech, ascribed all the calamities of
Ireland.
The primary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland became
subject to the English crown. The annexation was effected by conquest,
and by conquest of a peculiar kind. It was not a conquest such as we
have been accustomed to see in modern Europe. It was not a conquest
like that which united Artois and Franche Comte to France, or Silesia
to Prussia. It was the conquest of a race by a race, such a conquest as
that which established the dominion of the Spaniard over the American
Indian, or of the Mahratta over the peasant of Guzerat or Tanjore. Of
all forms of tyranny, I believe that the worst is that of a nation over
a nation. Populations separated by seas and mountain ridges may call
each other natural enemies, may wage long wars with each other, may
recount with pride the victories which they have gained over each other,
and point to the flags, the guns, the ships which they have won from
each other. But no enmity that ever existed between such populations
approaches in bitterness the mutual enmity felt by populations which
are locally intermingled, but which have never morally and politically
amalgamated; and such were the Englishry and the Irishry. Yet it might
have been hoped that the lapse of time and the progress of civilisation
would have effaced the distinction between the oppressors and the
oppressed. Our island had suffered cruelly from the same evil. Here the
Saxon had trampled on the Celt, the Dane on the Saxon, the Norman on
Celt, Saxon, and Dane. Yet in the course of ages all the four races had
been fused together to form the great English people.
necessary now to inquire whether, with universal education, we could
safely have universal suffrage. What we are asked to do is to give
universal suffrage before there is universal education. Have I any
unkind feeling towards these poor people? No more than I have to a
sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the
physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has
to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the
granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be
opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water,
because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of
the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity
into a famine. And in the same way I would not yield to the importunity
of multitudes who, exasperated by suffering and blinded by ignorance,
demand with wild vehemence the liberty to destroy themselves.
But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this petition.
It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he who
he may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve of
it. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing the
sense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasons
that ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the
strangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to
the real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they sign
political manifestoes of the highest importance without taking the
trouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us to
believe that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand,
they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years,
numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest,
have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, and
bound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do. Every man of sense knows that the people support
the Government. But the doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it
is the business of the Government to support the people. It is supposed
by many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible
storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from
mere hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazine
among the poor. We have all of us read speeches and tracts in which it
seemed to be taken for granted that we who sit here have the power of
working miracles, of sending a shower of manna on the West Riding,
of striking the earth and furnishing all the towns of Lancashire with
abundance of pure water, of feeding all the cotton-spinners and weavers
who are out of work with five loaves and two fishes. There is not a
working man who has not heard harangues and read newspapers in which
these follies are taught. And do you believe that as soon as you give
the working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget all
this? Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power. The Charter would
give them no less. In every constituent body throughout the empire
the working men will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an
irresistible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed
at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and is
it possible to doubt what the result must be? The honourable Member for
Bath and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as very
democratic members of Parliament. They would occupy a very different
position in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, if they
succeeded in obtaining seats. They would, I believe, honestly oppose
every attempt to rob the public creditor. They would manfully say,
"Justice and the public good require that this sum of thirty millions
a year should be paid;" and they would immediately be reviled as
aristocrats, monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of old
abuses. And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions who
have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate, and is
wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, use
that power to enforce what they think their rights? What could follow
but one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough.
That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yet
would that a single vast spoliation were the worst! No, Sir; in the
lowest deep there would be a lower deep. The first spoliation would not
be the last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the first
spoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully than
before. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences which
now protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, swept
away. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything that
they held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complain
of being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience,
God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We can
only guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible than
can be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger
scale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow
space, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;
credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenance
of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilence
following in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotion
into a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that I
can anticipate,--and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman
and a Whig calls such an event the very best? --the very best event,
I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong
military despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of all
that immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutions
under which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth,
in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief that
we should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We should
not deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatness
would insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;
and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselves
the means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions her
legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in their
excuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;
for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enough
to comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin would
be the effect of their compliance.
Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God has
given me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to the
granting of universal suffrage. This motion I think, tends that way.
If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for universal suffrage with a
full view of all the consequences of universal suffrage as they are set
forth in this petition, he acts with perfect consistency in voting for
this motion. But, I must say, I heard with some surprise the honourable
baronet the Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope. ) say that, though
he utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just as
I do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in explanation
of their opinions. I conceive that their opinions are quite sufficiently
explained already; and to such opinions I am not disposed to pay any
extraordinary mark of respect. I shall give a clear and conscientious
vote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I
conceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complain
of my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who
tries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has
fully made up his mind not to comply with their demands.
*****
THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH. (MARCH 9, 1843) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH 1843.
On the ninth of March 1843, Mr Vernon Smith, Member for Northampton,
made the following motion:
"That this House, having regard to the high and important functions
of the Governor General of India, the mixed character of the native
population, and the recent measures of the Court of Directors for
discontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in India, is of opinion
that the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in issuing the General Orders of
the sixteenth of November 1842, and in addressing the letter of the same
date to all the chiefs, princes, and people of India, respecting the
restoration of the gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous,
and reprehensible. "
Mr Emerson Tennent, Secretary of the Board of Control, opposed the
motion. In reply to him the following Speech was made.
The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157.
Mr Speaker,--If the practice of the honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of the Board of Control, had been in accordance with his precepts, if he
had not, after exhorting us to confine ourselves strictly to the subject
before us, rambled far from that subject, I should have refrained from
all digression. For and truth there is abundance to be said touching
both the substance and the style of this Proclamation. I cannot,
however, leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question before
us to any great distance or for any long time.
I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravely
represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourable
friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the Governor
General's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this House
is to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty's
Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And how
can we consider how they are governed without considering the conduct
of him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of him
who is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can say
for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friend
the Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our hearts
and souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence of
Lord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit of
England, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at this
moment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has
no right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how important
it is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, the
State should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamation
reflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the present
occasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very different
return. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland
has an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may
have committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. No
brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests and
the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate Lord
Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough the
means of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? A
proclamation by Lord Ellenborough, stigmatising the conduct of Lord
Auckland. And, Sir, since the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the
Board of Control has thought fit to divert the debate from its proper
course, I will venture to request that he, or the honourable director
who sits behind him (Sir James Hogg. ), will vouchsafe to give us some
explanations on an important point to which allusion has been made.
Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly announced that our
troops were about to evacuate Afghanistan before he had ascertained that
our captive countrymen and countrywomen had been restored to liberty.
This accusation, which is certainly a serious one, the honourable
gentleman, the Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be a
mere calumny. Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the withdrawing
of the troops bears date the first of October 1842. What I wish to know
is, whether any member of the Government, or of the Court of Directors,
will venture to affirm that on the first of October 1842, the Governor
General knew that the prisoners had been set at liberty? I believe that
no member either of the Government or of the Court of Directors will
venture to affirm any such thing. It seems certain that on the first
of October the Governor General could not know that the prisoners were
safe. Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board
of Control assures us that, when the proclamation was drawn up, the
Governor General did know that the prisoners were safe. What is the
inevitable consequence? It is this, that the date is a false date, that
the proclamation was written after the first of October, and antedated?
And for what reason was it antedated? I am almost ashamed to tell
the House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that Lord
Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to his
proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was
dated on the first of October. I believe that Lord Ellenborough wished
to make the contrast between his own success and his predecessor's
failure more striking, and that for the sake of this paltry, this
childish, triumph, he antedated his proclamation, and made it appear to
all Europe and all Asia that the English Government was indifferent
to the fate of Englishmen and Englishwomen who were in a miserable
captivity. If this be so, and I shall be surprised to hear any person
deny that it is so, I must say that by this single act, by writing those
words, the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be a
man of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust.
I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourable
gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many other
matters. I might call the attention of the House to the systematic
manner in which the Governor General has exerted himself to lower
the character and to break the spirit of that civil service on the
respectability and efficiency of which chiefly depends the happiness of
a hundred millions of human beings. I might say much about the financial
committee which he appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of his
predecessor, but which at last found out no blunders except his own.
But the question before us demands our attention. That question has two
sides, a serious and a ludicrous side. Let us look first at the serious
side. Sir, I disclaim in the strongest manner all intention of raising
any fanatical outcry or of lending aid to any fanatical project. I would
very much rather be the victim of fanaticism than its tool. If Lord
Ellenborough were called in question for having given an impartial
protection to the professors of different religions, or for restraining
unjustifiable excesses into which Christian missionaries might have been
hurried by their zeal, I would, widely as I have always differed from
him in politics, have stood up in his defence, though I had stood up
alone. But the charge against Lord Ellenborough is that he has insulted
the religion of his own country and the religion of millions of the
Queen's Asiatic subjects in order to pay honour to an idol. And this the
right honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control calls a
trivial charge. Sir, I think it a very grave charge. Her Majesty is the
ruler of a larger heathen population than the world ever saw collected
under the sceptre of a Christian sovereign since the days of the Emperor
Theodosius. What the conduct of rulers in such circumstances ought to be
is one of the most important moral questions, one of the most important
political questions, that it is possible to conceive. There are subject
to the British rule in Asia a hundred millions of people who do not
profess the Christian faith. The Mahometans are a minority: but their
importance is much more than proportioned to their number: for they are
an united, a zealous, an ambitious, a warlike class. The great majority
of the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attached
to doctrines and rites which, considered merely with reference to the
temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. In
no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to
the moral and intellectual health of our race. The Brahminical mythology
is so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind which receives it
as truth; and with this absurd mythology is bound up an absurd system of
physics, an absurd geography, an absurd astronomy. Nor is this form
of Paganism more favourable to art than to science. Through the whole
Hindoo Pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling those
beautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient
Greece. All is hideous, and grotesque, and ignoble. As this superstition
is of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all superstitions
the most inelegant, so is it of all superstitions the most immoral.
Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts of
public worship. The courtesans are as much a part of the establishment
of the temple, as much ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimes
against life, crimes against property, are not only permitted but
enjoined by this odious theology. But for our interference human victims
would still be offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid
on the pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her own
children. It is by the command and under the especial protection of one
of the most powerful goddesses that the Thugs join themselves to the
unsuspecting traveller, make friends with him, slip the noose round his
neck, plunge their knives in his eyes, hide him in the earth, and divide
his money and baggage. I have read many examinations of Thugs; and I
particularly remember an altercation which took place between two
of those wretches in the presence of an English officer. One Thug
reproached the other for having been so irreligious as to spare the life
of a traveller when the omens indicated that their patroness required
a victim. "How could you let him go? How can you expect the goddess
to protect us if you disobey her commands? That is one of your North
country heresies. " Now, Sir, it is a difficult matter to determine
in what way Christian rulers ought to deal with such superstitions as
these. We might have acted as the Spaniards acted in the New World. We
might have attempted to introduce our own religion by force. We might
have sent missionaries among the natives at the public charge. We might
have held out hopes of public employment to converts, and have imposed
civil disabilities on Mahometans and Pagans. But we did none of these
things; and herein we judged wisely. Our duty, as rulers, was to
preserve strict neutrality on all questions merely religious: and I
am not aware that we have ever swerved from strict neutrality for the
purpose of making proselytes to our own faith. But we have, I am
sorry to say, sometimes deviated from the right path in the opposite
direction. Some Englishmen, who have held high office in India, seem to
have thought that the only religion which was not entitled to toleration
and to respect was Christianity. They regarded every Christian
missionary with extreme jealousy and disdain; and they suffered the
most atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hindoo superstition, to be
perpetrated in open day. It is lamentable to think how long after our
power was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting the first
and plainest duty of the civil magistrate, suffered the practices of
infanticide and Suttee to continue unchecked. We decorated the temples
of the false gods. We provided the dancing girls. We gilded and painted
the images to which our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired and
embellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees flung
themselves at every festival to be crushed to death. We sent guards of
honour to escort pilgrims to the places of worship. We actually made
oblations at the shrines of idols. All this was considered, and is
still considered, by some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, as
profound policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, so senseless
a policy. We gained nothing by it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes of
those whom we meant to flatter. We led them to believe that we attached
no importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism.
Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding to
topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxious
for the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, so
speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to
discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice,
and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and
domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, which
has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servants
and playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treason
against humanity and civilisation.
Gradually a better system was introduced. A great man whom we have
lately lost, Lord Wellesley, led the way. He prohibited the immolation
of female children; and this was the most unquestionable of all his
titles to the gratitude of his country. In the year 1813 Parliament
gave new facilities to persons who were desirous to proceed to India
as missionaries. Lord William Bentinck abolished the Suttee. Shortly
afterwards the Home Government sent out to Calcutta the important and
valuable despatch to which reference has been repeatedly made in the
course of this discussion. That despatch Lord Glenelg wrote,--I was then
at the Board of Control, and can attest the fact,--with his own hand.
One paragraph, the sixty-second, is of the highest moment. I know that
paragraph so well that I could repeat it word for word. It contains in
short compass an entire code of regulations for the guidance of British
functionaries in matters relating to the idolatry of India. The orders
of the Home Government were express, that the arrangements of the
temples should be left entirely to the natives. A certain discretion
was of course left to the local authorities as to the time and manner
of dissolving that connection which had long existed between the English
Government and the Brahminical superstition. But the principle was laid
down in the clearest manner. This was in February 1833. In the year 1838
another despatch was sent, which referred to the sixty-second paragraph
in Lord Glenelg's despatch, and enjoined the Indian Government to
observe the rules contained in that paragraph. Again, in the year 1841,
precise orders were sent out on the same subject, orders which Lord
Ellenborough seems to me to have studied carefully for the express
purpose of disobeying them point by point, and in the most direct
manner. You murmur: but only look at the orders of the Directors and at
the proclamation of the Governor General. The orders are, distinctly and
positively, that the British authorities in India shall have nothing
to do with the temples of the natives, shall make no presents to those
temples, shall not decorate those temples, shall not pay any military
honour to those temples. Now, Sir, the first charge which I bring
against Lord Ellenborough is, that he has been guilty of an act of gross
disobedience, that he has done that which was forbidden in the strongest
terms by those from whom his power is derived. The Home Government says,
Do not interfere in the concerns of heathen temples. Is it denied that
Lord Ellenborough has interfered in the concerns of a heathen temple?
The Home Government says, Make no presents to heathen temples. Is
it denied that Lord Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his
intention to make a present to a heathen temple? The Home Government
says, Do not decorate heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord
Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his intention to decorate
a heathen temple? The Home Government says, Do not send troops to do
honour to heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord Ellenborough sent a
body of troops to escort these gates to a heathen temple? To be sure,
the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control tries to
get rid of this part of the case in rather a whimsical manner. He says
that it is impossible to believe that, by sending troops to escort the
gates, Lord Ellenborough can have meant to pay any mark of respect to
an idol. And why? Because, says the honourable gentleman, the Court of
Directors had given positive orders that troops should not be employed
to pay marks of respect to idols. Why, Sir, undoubtedly, if it is to be
taken for granted that Lord Ellenborough is a perfect man, if all our
reasonings are to proceed on the supposition that he cannot do wrong,
then I admit the force of the honourable gentleman's argument. But it
seems to me a strange and dangerous thing to infer a man's innocence
merely from the flagrancy of his guilt. It is certain that the Home
authorities ordered the Governor General not to employ the troops in the
service of a temple. It is certain that Lord Ellenborough employed the
troops to escort a trophy, an oblation, which he sent to the restored
temple of Somnauth. Yes, the restored temple of Somnauth. Those are his
lordship's words. They have given rise to some discussion, and seem not
to be understood by everybody in the same sense. We all know that this
temple is an ruins.
I am confident that Lord Ellenborough knew it to be
in ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at the public charge.
That is the obvious meaning of his words. But, as this meaning is so
monstrous that nobody here can venture to defend it, his friends pretend
that he believed the temple to have been already restored, and that he
had no thought of being himself the restorer. How can I believe this?
How can I believe that, when he issued this proclamation, he knew
nothing about the state of the temple to which he proposed to make an
offering of such importance? He evidently knew that it had once been in
ruins; or he would not have called it the restored temple. Why am I to
suppose that he imagined it to have been rebuilt? He had people about
him who knew it well, and who could have told him that it was in ruins
still. To say that he was not aware that it was in ruins is to say that
he put forth his proclamation without taking the trouble to ask a single
question of those who were close at hand and were perfectly competent to
give him information. Why, Sir, this defence is itself an accusation. I
defy the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, I
defy all human ingenuity, to get his lordship clear off from both the
horns of this dilemma. Either way, he richly deserves a parliamentary
censure. Either he published this proclamation in the recklessness of
utter ignorance without making the smallest inquiry; or else he, an
English and a Christian Governor, meant to build a temple to a heathen
god at the public charge, in direct defiance of the commands of his
official superiors. Turn and twist the matter which way you will, you
can make nothing else of it. The stain is like the stain of Blue Beard's
key, in the nursery tale. As soon as you have scoured one side clean,
the spot comes out on the other.
So much for the first charge, the charge of disobedience. It is fully
made out: but it is not the heaviest charge which I bring against Lord
Ellenborough. I charge him with having done that which, even if it had
not been, as it was, strictly forbidden by the Home authorities, it
would still have been a high crime to do. He ought to have known,
without any instructions from home, that it was his duty not to take
part in disputes among the false religions of the East; that it was his
duty, in his official character, to show no marked preference for any of
those religions, and to offer no marked insult to any. But, Sir, he has
paid unseemly homage to one of those religions; he has grossly insulted
another; and he has selected as the object of his homage the very worst
and most degrading of those religions, and as the object of his insults
the best and purest of them. The homage was paid to Lingamism. The
insult was offered to Mahometanism. Lingamism is not merely idolatry,
but idolatry in its most pernicious form. The honourable gentleman the
Secretary of the Board of Control seemed to think that he had achieved
a great victory when he had made out that his lordship's devotions had
been paid, not to Vishnu, but to Siva. Sir, Vishnu is the preserving
Deity of the Hindoo Mythology; Siva is the destroying Deity; and, as far
as I have any preference for one of your Governor General's gods over
another, I confess that my own tastes would lead me to prefer the
preserving to the destroying power. Yes, Sir; the temple of Somnauth
was sacred to Siva; and the honourable gentleman cannot but know by what
emblem Siva is represented, and with what rites he is adored. I will say
no more. The Governor General, Sir, is in some degree protected by the
very magnitude of his offence. I am ashamed to name those things
to which he is not ashamed to pay public reverence. This god of
destruction, whose images and whose worship it would be a violation of
decency to describe, is selected as the object of homage. As the object
of insult is selected a religion which has borrowed much of its theology
and much of its morality from Christianity, a religion which in the
midst of Polytheism teaches the unity of God, and, in the midst of
idolatry, strictly proscribes the worship of images. The duty of our
Government is, as I said, to take no part in the disputes between
Mahometans and idolaters. But, if our Government does take a part, there
cannot be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference. Lord
Ellenborough is of a different opinion. He takes away the gates from a
Mahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a Pagan temple.
Morally, this is a crime. Politically, it is a blunder. Nobody who knows
anything of the Mahometans of India can doubt that this affront to their
faith will excite their fiercest indignation. Their susceptibility on
such points is extreme. Some of the most serious disasters that have
ever befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility.
Remember what happened at Vellore in 1806, and more recently at
Bangalore. The mutiny of Vellore was caused by a slight shown to the
Mahometan turban; the mutiny of Bangalore, by disrespect said to have
been shown to a Mahometan place of worship. If a Governor General had
been induced by his zeal for Christianity to offer any affront to a
mosque held in high veneration by Mussulmans, I should think that he had
been guilty of indiscretion such as proved him to be unfit for his
post. But to affront a mosque of peculiar dignity, not from zeal for
Christianity, but for the sake of this loathsome god of destruction, is
nothing short of madness. Some temporary popularity Lord Ellenborough
may no doubt gain in some quarters. I hear, and I can well believe, that
some bigoted Hindoos have hailed this proclamation with delight, and
have begun to entertain a hope that the British Government is about to
take their worship under its peculiar protection. But how long will that
hope last? I presume that the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of
the Treasury does not mean to suffer India to be governed on Brahminical
principles. I presume that he will not allow the public revenue to be
expended in rebuilding temples, adorning idols, and hiring courtesans.
I have no doubt that there is already on the way to India such an
admonition as will prevent Lord Ellenborough from persisting in the
course on which he has entered. The consequence will be that the
exultation of the Brahmins will end in mortification and anger. See
then of what a complication of faults the Governor General is guilty.
In order to curry favour with the Hindoos he has offered an inexpiable
insult to the Mahometans; and now, in order to quiet the English, he
is forced to disappoint and disgust the Hindoos. But, apart from the
irritating effect which these transactions must produce on every part of
the native population, is it no evil to have this continual wavering and
changing? This is not the only case in which Lord Ellenborough has, with
great pomp, announced intentions which he has not been able to carry
into effect. It is his Lordship's habit. He put forth a notification
that his Durbar was to be honoured by the presence of Dost Mahomed.
Then came a notification that Dost Mahomed would not make his appearance
there. In the proclamation which we are now considering his lordship
announced to all the princes of India his resolution to set up these
gates at Somnauth. The gates, it is now universally admitted, will
not be set up there. All India will see that the Governor General has
changed his mind. The change may be imputed to mere fickleness and
levity. It may be imputed to the disapprobation with which his conduct
has been regarded here. In either case he appears in a light in which it
is much to be deplored that a Governor General should appear.
So much for the serious side of this business; and now for the ludicrous
side. Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness; for it is no light
thing that he who represents the British nation in India should be a
jest to the people of India. We have sometimes sent them governors whom
they loved, and sometimes governors whom they feared; but they never
before had a governor at whom they laughed. Now, however, they laugh;
and how can we blame them for laughing, when all Europe and all America
are laughing too? You see, Sir, that the gentlemen opposite cannot keep
their countenances. And no wonder. Was such a State paper ever seen in
our language before? And what is the plea set up for all this bombast?
Why, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control
brings down to the House some translations of Persian letters from
native princes. Such letters, as everybody knows, are written in a most
absurd and turgid style. The honourable gentleman forces us to hear
a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the
secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and
hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort
of eloquence? The honourable gentleman might as well ask why Lord
Ellenborough should not sit cross-legged, why he should not let his
beard grow to his waist, why he should not wear a turban, why he should
not hang trinkets all about his person, why he should not ride about
Calcutta on a horse jingling with bells and glittering with false
pearls. The native princes do these things; and why should not he? Why,
Sir, simply because he is not a native prince, but an English Governor
General. When the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all his
gaudy finery, they bow to him with a certain respect. They know that
the splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth. But if Sir
Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would have thought
that he was out of his wits. They are not such fools as the honourable
gentleman takes them for. Simplicity is not their fashion. But they
understand and respect the simplicity of our fashions. Our plain
clothing commands far more reverence than all the jewels which the most
tawdry Zemindar wears; and our plain language carries with it far more
weight than the florid diction of the most ingenious Persian scribe. The
plain language and the plain clothing are inseparably associated in the
minds of our subjects with superior knowledge, with superior energy,
with superior veracity, with all the high and commanding qualities which
erected, and which still uphold, our empire. Sir, if, as the speech of
the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control seems to
indicate, Lord Ellenborough has adopted this style on principle, if it
be his lordship's deliberate intention to mimic, in his State papers,
the Asiatic modes of thought and expression, that alone would be a
reason for recalling him. But the honourable gentlemen is mistaken in
thinking that this proclamation is in the Oriental taste. It bears no
resemblance to the very bad Oriental compositions which he has read
to us, nor to any other Oriental compositions that I ever saw. It is
neither English nor Indian. It is not original, however; and I will tell
the House where the Governor General found his models. He has apparently
been studying the rants of the French Jacobins during the period of
their ascendency, the Carmagnoles of the Convention, the proclamations
issued by the Directory and its Proconsuls: and he has been seized with
a desire to imitate those compositions. The pattern which he seems to
have especially proposed to himself is the rhodomontade in which it was
announced that the modern Gauls were marching to Rome in order to avenge
the fate of Dumnorix and Vercingetorex. Everybody remembers those lines
in which revolutionary justice is described by Mr Canning:--
"Not she in British courts who takes her stand,
The dawdling balance dangling in her hand;
But firm, erect, with keen reverted glance,
The avenging angel of regenerate France,
Who visits ancient sins on modern times,
And punishes the Pope for Caesar's crimes. "
In the same spirit and in the same style our Governor General has
proclaimed his intention to retaliate on the Mussulmans beyond the
mountains the insults which their ancestors, eight hundred years ago,
offered to the idolatry of the Hindoos. To do justice to the Jacobins,
however, I must say that they had an excuse which was wanting to the
noble lord. The revolution had made almost as great a change in literary
tastes as in political institutions. The old masters of French eloquence
had shared the fate of the old states and of the old parliaments. The
highest posts in the administration were filled by persons who had
no experience of affairs, who in the general confusion had raised
themselves by audacity and quickness of natural parts, uneducated men,
or half educated men, who had no notion that the style in which they had
heard the heroes and villains of tragedies declaim on the stage was
not the style of real warriors and statesmen. But was it for an English
gentleman, a man of distinguished abilities and cultivated mind, a man
who had sate many years in parliament, and filled some of the highest
posts in the State, to copy the productions of such a school?
But, it is said, what does it matter if the noble lord has written
a foolish rhapsody which is neither prose nor verse? Is affected
phraseology a subject for parliamentary censure? What great ruler can be
named who has not committed errors much more serious than the penning of
a few sentences of turgid nonsense? This, I admit, sounds plausible.
It is quite true that very eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, Sir
Robert Walpole, Lord Chatham and his son, all committed faults which did
much more harm than any fault of style can do. But I beg the House to
observe this, that an error which produces the most serious consequences
may not necessarily prove that the man who has committed it is not a
very wise man; and that, on the other hand, an error which directly
produces no important consequences may prove the man who has committed
it to be quite unfit for public trust. Walpole committed a ruinous
error when he yielded to the public cry for war with Spain. But,
notwithstanding that error, he was an eminently wise man. Caligula, on
the other hand, when he marched his soldiers to the beach, made them
fill their helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placed
in the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm to
anybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of governing
an empire. Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most ill judged, and
ended in defeat and disgrace. Yet Mr Pitt was a statesman of a very high
order. On the other hand, such ukases as those by which the Emperor
Paul used to regulate the dress of the people of Petersburg, though they
caused much less misery than the slaughter at Quiberon, proved that
the Emperor Paul could not safely be trusted with power over his
fellow-creatures. One day he forbade the wearing of pantaloons. Another
day he forbade his subjects to comb their hair over their foreheads.
Then he proscribed round hats. A young Englishman, the son of a
merchant, thought to evade this decree by going about the city in a
hunting cap. Then came out an edict which made it penal to wear on the
head a round thing such as the English merchant's son wore. Now, Sir,
I say that, when I examine the substance of Lord Ellenborough's
proclamation, and consider all the consequences which that paper is
likely to produce, I am forced to say that he has committed a grave
moral and political offence. When I examine the style, I see that he
has committed an act of eccentric folly, much of the same kind with
Caligula's campaign against the cockles, and with the Emperor Paul's
ukase against round hats. Consider what an extravagant selfconfidence,
what a disdain for the examples of his great predecessors and for the
opinions of the ablest and most experienced men who are now to be found
in the Indian services, this strange document indicates. Surely it might
have occurred to Lord Ellenborough that, if this kind of eloquence had
been likely to produce a favourable impression on the minds of Asiatics,
such Governors as Warren Hastings, Mr Elphinstone, Sir Thomas Munro,
and Sir Charles Metcalfe, men who were as familiar with the language and
manners of the native population of India as any man here can be
with the language and manners of the French, would not have left the
discovery to be made by a new comer who did not know any Eastern tongue.
Surely, too, it might have occurred to the noble lord that, before he
put forth such a proclamation, he would do well to ask some person who
knew India intimately what the effect both on the Mahometans and Hindoos
was likely to be. I firmly believe that the Governor General either did
not ask advice or acted in direct opposition to advice. Mr Maddock was
with his lordship as acting Secretary. Now I know enough of Mr Maddock
to be quite certain that he never counselled the Governor General to
publish such a paper. I will pawn my life that he either was never
called upon to give an opinion, or that he gave an opinion adverse to
the course which has been taken. No Governor General who was on good
terms with the civil service would have been, I may say, permitted to
expose himself thus. Lord William Bentinck and Lord Auckland were, to be
sure, the last men in the world to think of doing such a thing as this.
But if either of those noble lords, at some unlucky moment when he was
not quite himself, when his mind was thrown off the balance by the pride
and delight of an extraordinary success, had proposed to put forth such
a proclamation, he would have been saved from committing so great a
mistake by the respectful but earnest remonstrances of those in whom
he placed confidence, and who were solicitous for his honour. From the
appearance of this proclamation, therefore, I infer that the terms on
which Lord Ellenborough is with the civil servants of the Company are
such that those servants could not venture to offer him counsel when he
most needed it.
For these reasons, Sir, I think the noble lord unfit for high public
trust. Let us, then, consider the nature of the public trust which
is now reposed in him. Are gentlemen aware that, even when he is at
Calcutta, surrounded by his councillors, his single voice can carry any
resolution concerning the executive administration against them all?
They can object: they can protest: they can record their opinions
in writing, and can require him to give in writing his reasons for
persisting in his own course: but they must then submit. On the most
important questions, on the question whether a war shall be declared,
on the question whether a treaty shall be concluded, on the question
whether the whole system of land revenue established in a great province
shall be changed, his single vote weighs down the votes of all who
sit at the Board with him. The right honourable Baronet opposite is a
powerful minister, a more powerful minister than any that we have seen
during many years. But I will venture to say that his power over the
people of England is nothing when compared with the power which the
Governor General possesses over the people of India. Such is Lord
Ellenborough's power when he is with his council, and is to some extent
held in check. But where is he now? He has given his council the slip.
He is alone. He has near him no person who is entitled and bound to
offer advice, asked or unasked: he asks no advice: and you cannot expect
men to outstep the strict line of their official duty by obtruding
advice on a superior by whom it would be ungraciously received. The
danger of having a rash and flighty Governor General is sufficiently
serious at the very best. But the danger of having such a Governor
General up the country, eight or nine hundred miles from any person who
has a right to remonstrate with him, is fearful indeed. Interests so
vast, that the most sober language in which they can be described sounds
hyperbolical, are entrusted to a single man; to a man who, whatever
his parts may be, and they are doubtless considerable, has shown an
indiscretion and temerity almost beyond belief; to a man who has been
only a few months in India; to a man who takes no counsel with those who
are well acquainted with India.
I cannot sit down without addressing myself to those Directors of the
East India Company who are present. I exhort them to consider the heavy
responsibility which rests on them. They have the power to recall Lord
Ellenborough; and I trust that they will not hesitate to exercise that
power. This is the advice of one who has been their servant, who has
served them loyally, and who is still sincerely anxious for their credit
and for the welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. But
if, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord,
then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to
return to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by the
next mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors nor
Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mail
without great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough back
to Calcutta. There at least he will find persons who have a right to
advise him and to expostulate with him, and who will, I doubt not, have
also the spirit to do so. It is something that he will be forced to
record his reasons for what he does. It is something that he will be
forced to hear reasons against his propositions. It is something that a
delay, though only of twenty-four hours, will be interposed between the
first conception of a wild scheme and the execution. I am afraid that
these checks will not be sufficient to prevent much evil: but they are
not absolutely nugatory. I entreat the Directors to consider in what
a position they will stand if, in consequence of their neglect, some
serious calamity should befall the country which is confided to their
care. I will only say, in conclusion, that, if there be any use in
having a Council of India, if it be not meant that the members of
Council should draw large salaries for doing nothing, if they are really
appointed for the purpose of assisting and restraining the Governor,
it is to the last degree absurd that their powers should be in abeyance
when there is a Governor who, of all the Governors that ever England
sent to the East, stands most in need both of assistance and of
restraint.
*****
THE STATE OF IRELAND. (FEBRUARY 19, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 19TH OF FEBRUARY 1844.
On the thirteenth of February 1844, Lord John Russell moved for a
Committee of the whole House to take into consideration the state of
Ireland. After a discussion of nine nights the motion was rejected by
324 votes to 225. On the fifth night of the debate the following Speech
was made.
I cannot refrain, Sir, from congratulating you and the House that I
did not catch your eye when I rose before. I should have been extremely
sorry to have prevented any Irish member from addressing the House on a
question so interesting to Ireland, but peculiarly sorry to have stood
in the way of the honourable gentleman who to-night pleaded the cause of
his country with so much force and eloquence. (Mr J. O'Brien. )
I am sorry to say that I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to follow
the advice which has been just given me by my honourable friend the
Member for Pomfret (Mr R. Milnes. ), with all the authority which, as he
has reminded us, belongs to his venerable youth. I cannot at all agree
with him in thinking that the wisest thing that we can do is to suffer
Her Majesty's Ministers to go on in their own way, seeing that the
way in which they have long been going on is an exceedingly bad one. I
support the motion of my noble friend for these plain reasons.
First, I hold that Ireland is in a most unsatisfactory, indeed in a most
dangerous, state.
Secondly, I hold that for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's
Ministers are in a great measure accountable, and that they have not
shown, either as legislators, or as administrators, that they are
capable of remedying the evils which they have caused.
Now, Sir, if I make out these two propositions, it will follow that
it is the constitutional right and duty of the representatives of the
nation to interfere; and I conceive that my noble friend, by moving
for a Committee of the whole House, has proposed a mode of interference
which is both parliamentary and convenient.
My first proposition, Sir, will scarcely be disputed. Both sides of the
House are fully agreed in thinking that the condition of Ireland may
well excite great anxiety and apprehension. That island, in extent about
one fourth of the United Kingdom, in population more than one-fourth,
superior probably in natural fertility to any area of equal size in
Europe, possessed of natural facilities for trade such as can nowhere
else be found in an equal extent of coast, an inexhaustible nursery of
gallant soldiers, a country far more important to the prosperity,
the strength, the dignity of this great empire than all our distant
dependencies together, than the Canadas and the West Indies added to
Southern Africa, to Australasia, to Ceylon, and to the vast dominions
of the Moguls, that island, Sir, is acknowledged by all to be so ill
affected and so turbulent that it must, in any estimate of our power,
be not added but deducted. You admit that you govern that island, not as
you govern England and Scotland, but as you govern your new conquests in
Scinde; not by means of the respect which the people feel for the laws,
but by means of bayonets, of artillery, of entrenched camps.
My first proposition, then, I take to be conceded. Ireland is in a
dangerous state. The question which remains to be considered is, whether
for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's Ministers are to be held
accountable.
Now, Sir, I at once admit that the distempers of Ireland must in part be
attributed to causes for which neither Her Majesty's present Ministers
nor any public men now living can justly be held accountable. I will not
trouble the House with a long dissertation on those causes. But it is
necessary, I think, to take at least a rapid glance at them: and in
order to do so, Sir, we must go back to a period not only anterior to
the birth of the statesmen who are now arrayed against each other on
the right and left of your chair, but anterior to the birth even of the
great parties of which those statesmen are the leaders; anterior to the
days when the names of Tory and Whig, of court party and country party,
of cavalier and roundhead, came into use; anterior to the existence
of those Puritans to whom the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr
Disraeli. ), in a very ingenious speech, ascribed all the calamities of
Ireland.
The primary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland became
subject to the English crown. The annexation was effected by conquest,
and by conquest of a peculiar kind. It was not a conquest such as we
have been accustomed to see in modern Europe. It was not a conquest
like that which united Artois and Franche Comte to France, or Silesia
to Prussia. It was the conquest of a race by a race, such a conquest as
that which established the dominion of the Spaniard over the American
Indian, or of the Mahratta over the peasant of Guzerat or Tanjore. Of
all forms of tyranny, I believe that the worst is that of a nation over
a nation. Populations separated by seas and mountain ridges may call
each other natural enemies, may wage long wars with each other, may
recount with pride the victories which they have gained over each other,
and point to the flags, the guns, the ships which they have won from
each other. But no enmity that ever existed between such populations
approaches in bitterness the mutual enmity felt by populations which
are locally intermingled, but which have never morally and politically
amalgamated; and such were the Englishry and the Irishry. Yet it might
have been hoped that the lapse of time and the progress of civilisation
would have effaced the distinction between the oppressors and the
oppressed. Our island had suffered cruelly from the same evil. Here the
Saxon had trampled on the Celt, the Dane on the Saxon, the Norman on
Celt, Saxon, and Dane. Yet in the course of ages all the four races had
been fused together to form the great English people.
