THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, APRIL 9, 1894.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9480, 9 April 1894, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, APRIL 9, 1894.

*. «. The prospects of British administration in the groat dominion of India are at the present moment such as can scarcely be contemplated by any one who appreciates- imperial interests without very grave misgiving and apprehension. Never since the great mutiny of 1857 have the difficulties that confront the ruler and the statesman been so formidable, so pressing, and so hard to understand in respect of their intimate and hidden causes and of the true mode of meeting them. In fact, it may fairly be doubted whether our rule in India is not now exposed to greater dangers than it was even in the time of the mutiny. In that great crisis there could be no doubt or hesitation about what was wanted. The remedy lay in those simple but heroic qualities which fortunately have always been ready on demand whenever Englishmen have felt themselves fairly at bay. The British combination of the most desperate valour with the most dogged perseverance, may generally be trusted in such a contingency as the Indian mutiny; but the mischiefs which now threaten the Empire in the East are far more subtle and difficult to deal with. We may leave out of account the constant menace of Russia on the frontier, because from our present point of view this may almost be regarded as exercising a salutary influence in consolidating by its pressure all the elements of strength in India, and counteracting those internal causes of decay and disruption which are always operating. One of these causes is undoubtedly due to the successful rule and governmentof which weareso justly proud. Disorder has been suppressed with a strong hand, and distress has been alleviated by wise statesmanship. The people, no longer harried by marauders, plundered by rulers, or swept away by famine and pestilence, have increased at such a rate as threatens, in theopinion of Malthusian economists, to nullify all the good that we have done. An English Registrar-General has asserted that a population of 200 to the square mile over any considerable extent of country implied mines, manufactories, or the industries of cities. But large districts in India show a population of 600 to the square mile, where the people have no other resource but agriculture. These figures are not easy to realise in our sparsely populated country, but there can be little doubt that the growth of population, and its pressure upon the means of subsistence, forms one .factor in the' present troubles of Indian government. Another and even more obviously prolific source of difficulty is the inoculation of the Eastern mind with European ideas which has been going on for so many years. The crude notionsof modern democracy— equality, and ballot, and representative assemblies, are gaining ground in a country where the grossest religious and social superstitions are still prevalent, and where the people owe all their security of life and property to the steady rule of cooler heads and stronger hands than their own. That this irruption of quackery and folly, with its grotesque and perilous results, should be fostered by a noisy and unpatriotic faction in England, goes without saying, but it has gained undue strength from the too evident sympathy of men like Lord Ripon and Mr. Gladstone, in whom the sense of Imperial greatness has always been deficient, and who seem scarcely to think the British flag worth fighting for. Mr. Froude said that in Mr. Gladstone's /opinion, a " niggar," if clothed in _ a tweed suit, became tit to exercise the franchise and discharge all the duties of citizenship. Mr. Gladstone' will no longer guide the policy of his country in so dangerous a direction, but his theory is still held or professed by many a shallow or artful agitator. Our Eastern fellow-subjects are not as the " nigger" referred to by Mr. Froude, and it will always be an important and interesting question how far the best qualified amongst them may be permitted to join us in administering the government of their country: but it seems safe to assert that nothing but mischief could result from the assent of the House of Commons early in the year to Mr. Herbert Paul's resolution in favour of holding simultaneous examinations for the Indian civil service in England and in India. It is exceedingly questionable whether the desire thus to flood the Indian civil service with Bengalees and Parsees was really spontaneous in the country, or was not rather a purely factitious product of the efforts of wire-pullers m London. But the notion once introduced was pretty sure to spread under the benign influence of a Gladstonian House of Commons, and of all that faction whose inveterate dislike to a combination of orderly government with rational liberty is so singular a feature in present-day politics. The dissatisfaction likely to be caused by ignoring the resolution of the House of Commons would be probably less dangerous than the consequence of compliance, but in any case a wanton and gratuitous difficulty has been put in the way of the Indian government. Another concession to a shallow and crazy fanaticism has caused much alarm amongst vast numbers of the population. The mere fact of appointing a commission to inquire into the opium trade could not tail, in the circumstances, to cause a reasonable apprehension that the prohibition of the general use of opium was contemplated, for, unless this was a possible alternative, what was the object of the commission ? The question is not whether it was right or wrong, in the year 1840, to force at the sword's point an opium traffic upon China, but what is the effect of opium upon the human organisation ? It is true that the result of the inquiry seems likely to be the establishment of the fact that the effect of opium is to lengthen and solace the lives of the poor inhabitants of the malarial districts, and that its use generally is far less injurious than that of the acohol, which would certainly be its substitute. But the opium faddists care for nothing but their own theories. It is nothing to them that the suppression of the opium trade would entail a loss of revenue to the amount of 6,000,000 rupees, and the Government, which has weakly en-

rc=ate\l-o«r, h. easily in mpanlv andV* eVance to India,.*y g , So whole lately insisting that sfc with% the, Cotnmisaion, of dislike in thatVoh w oufcofthelndiato shall be paid w That treasuryMry- ~ waa A, never in a mo J&rtny»*S» •™5 critical condition. Vwfa? Tory and the rupee, combined%£ , 2 rc a commercial and eco\ther causes of J has had such an effect^ 1 xWJSffi b finances that it has \* e £±£' « question how to " ave& * «Si The extraordinary meafe kI "P^ cy - c the Indian mints to the M gf !"f fc! coinage of silver, whilst rel n ~their * use to the Government »W , n rupee in exchange for',K o Wi\i* i ;„ s a rise in the rupee, and a A & a metal from which it is made, «R 0 i, things which, however necessf|.| j measure may have been h an emergency, scarcely seems to «L • J the elements of permanency. «% 10 serious nature of the crisis is showL c the fact that at the end of the lastly r the Government was obliged to g<§ £ Bill passed through Parliament, au% ( rising the Indian Government to ml i a gold loan of ten million sterling] The Bill was passed without oppfy sition, but more than one speakej of authority commented on the gravity of > the situation. Mr. Goschen said that for the first time the Government of India was going to speculate on arise in silver, and there was a general feeling that a crisis involving great responsibility and anxiety had arisen. And at a time like this, with so many ominous signs of danger taking shape around, the late Premier of England was unable to find in all the great political party which he had led to disintegration and degradation, a single man of acknowledged reputation and ability, whose name would suffice to the country as a guarantee that the interests of our great Eastern Empire would be safe in his hands. Yet it is open to us to hope and believe that Lord Elgin has a full endowment of all those qualities of courage, and nerve, and perseverance, and loyalty, which have so often enabled some simplehearted and unpretending Englishman to rise to the greatest occasions. It is by such qualities, if by any, that the forces of quackery, fanaticism, and malevolence are to be frustrated in their efforts to bring ruin upon the Empire whose prosperity, and the race whose genius for good government are perhaps in the present age the best hope of the world.