INDIA UNDER LORD LYTTON.

ORD LYTTON is fond of public speaking, and his more solemn speeches are remarkable for the stream of abundant piety which runs through them. Not unfrequently they have taken the form of addresses to some unknown power, rather than discourses delivered to a mundane audience. He signalized his accession to office by one of these semi-theological orations to the members of Council assembled to meet him at Government House, Calcutta. He said :

"Gentlemen, it is my fervent prayer, that a Power higher than that of any earthly Government may inspire and bless the progress of our counsels; granting me, with your valued assistance, to direct them to such issues as may prove conducive to the honour of our country, to the authority and prestige of its august Sovereign, to the progressive well-being of the millions committed to our fostering care, and to the security of the chiefs and princes of India, as well as of our allies beyond the frontier, in the undisturbed enjoyment of their just rights and hereditary possessions."

The sequel renders it probable that by a power higher than any earthly Government," Lord Lytton understood nothing more remote from human ken than the will of Lord Beaconsfield. At any rate, the prayer was rejected; and under the influence of a perverse destiny, the Viceroy has been singled out to accomplish precisely those acts from which he entreated to be delivered. The "valued assistance" of his colleagues in council he has systematically set at nought and rejected; the "millions committed to his fostering care" he has (as I shall show) permitted to perish of hunger under circumstances of peculiar cruelty; and I need not say that he has entirely failed in his endeavours to preserve "our allies beyond the frontier in the undisturbed enjoyment of their just rights and hereditary possessions."

It is the story of these inconsistencies which I propose to tell in the following pages. In the reading they can hardly fail to awaken a

smile; but in the acting they have brought suffering, poverty, and death upon thousands of innocent people. Throughout India they have shaken the confidence of the people in the humanity, justice, and truthfulness of the British character; and have, as I believe, brought our Indian Empire to the verge of a catastrophe, from which nothing but a complete and immediate reversal of policy will avail to save it.

The rule that we have set up in India is so hard and mechanical in its character-it has so entirely failed to strike root in the affections of the natives—that a very brief period of misgovernment suffices to provoke an insurrection. This is occasioned mainly by two causes-the exclusive system on which India is administered, and the absence of all intercommunion (in any true sense of the word) between the ruling and the subject races. It is not too much to say that under the present system every native of ambition, ability, or education, is of necessity a centre of disaffection towards British rule. For within the area of British rule the ascendency of strangers makes him an alien in his native land without scope for his power or hopes for his ambition; and beyond that area the possession of ability awakens the distrust and unconcealed dislike of English officialism. On the other hand, to the great mass of the people, the English official is simply an enigma. Their relations with him are almost exclusively official. The magistrate of a district is little more to them than a piece of machinery possessing powers to kill and tax and imprison. Such pieces of machinery they behold, as Carlyle would say, in endless succession "emerging from the inane,” killing and taxing for a time, and then "vanishing again into the inane." But the people know not whence they come, or whither they go; their voices go for nothing in the selection of this human machinery which hold their fortunes in its power. The great administrative mill goes grinding on, impelled by forces of which they have no knowledge; and the people are merely the passive, unresisting grist which is ground up year after year. A truly frightful and unnatural state of things!

It is impossible that a dominion thus constituted should be otherwise than transitory. But even for a brief space its peaceful continuance is possible only under certain conditions. The absence of either loyalty or thorough understanding in those who are ruled, must be made good by the plainest rectitude of purpose on the part of the Government, and thoroughly genuine and successful administration. If such a Government as we have set up in India does not adhere strictly to the letter and the spirit of its engagements-if it cannot insure the physical well-being of its subjects—it is simply good for nothing; because, from its very nature, it cannot achieve anything more than this. It was the first of these conditions that Lord Dalhousie thought he might safely set at nought; and in five years he brought down upon us the terrible retribution of 1857. But Lord Dalhousie was, at least, sincerely anxious to secure the "physical well-being" of the people. He struck at the chiefs and princes of India because he believed that they stood in

the way of that well-being. He was entirely mistaken; but nevertheless he threw down only one of the pillars on which our rule is sustained, and when the Mutiny came upon us, the bulk of the people remained loyal. Lord Lytton has undermined the foundations of both pillars, and a very brief continuance of his policy will bring them down with a crash. How this has been accomplished I have now to relate. I begin with his policy on the Frontier, because all the other transactions of which I shall have to speak are connected with that policy, as effects with their cause.

The Negotiations with Shere Ali.

Despite of all that has been written and said on the subject, to most people the origin of the war in Afghanistan appears involved in as great obscurity as ever. Leading Liberal politicians are in this benighted condition not less than the rank and file of the Tories. More people than formerly are willing to admit that the Government was rash and mistaken in its calculations-that the Treaty of Gundamuck has not fulfilled the expectations it awakened; but a war of some kind, they believe, was forced upon the Governmeut by the attitude of Russia and the disposition of the Ameer. This belief is entirely erroneous. The war was a war of deliberately planned aggression, entirely unjustified either by the attitude of Russia or the disposition of the Ameer. Unless we perceive this we are not in a position to form a sound estimate of the effect wrought in the minds of the princes and people of India. The wanton character of the war is, therefore, the first thing I must demonstrate. When Lord Lytton reached India, the situation in Afghanistan was as follows:-The late Ameer Shere Ali had succeeded in establishing a degree of order throughout Afghanistan, to which the country had been a stranger for many years. His officers were loyal and devoted; intrigue and rebellion had everywhere failed to make headway; and he was on terms of sincere friendship with the Governor-General at Calcutta. There was, at this time, no fear that the Russians in Central Asia desired to exercise any unwarrantable influence in Afghanistan ; on the contrary, in the despatch to Lord Northbrook's Government, in which Lord Salisbury propounded his new policy of establishing a permanent Embassy at Kabul, he said—

"I do not desire, by the observations which I have made, to convey to your Excellency the impression that, in the opinion of her Majesty's Government, the Russian Government have any intention of violating the frontier of Afghanistan.

It is undoubtedly true that the recent advances in Central Asia have been rather forced upon the Government of St. Petersburg than originated by them, and that their efforts, at present, are sincerely directed to the prevention of any movement which may give just umbrage to the British Government."

The political horizon was, therefore, cloudless at the moment selected by Lord Salisbury for a radical change of policy in Afghanistan. This very fact would have sufficed to arouse the suspicions of the Ameer. Lord Salisbury has since expressed his conviction that if Lord Northbrook

had made the proposal, the Ameer would have accepted the permanent Embassy, and both he and we should have been spared the calamities which resulted from delay. But at the time Lord Salisbury sent his instructions to the Government of India he thought otherwise. He had then no doubt that if the Ameer was asked in so many words to receive a permanent Mission in Afghanistan, the Ameer would refuse. But he thought it was possible to fasten a Mission on him by means of a deception.

"The first step" Lord Salisbury wrote to the Government of India, "in establishing our relations with the Ameer on a more satisfactory footing will be to induce him to receive a temporary Embassy in his capital. It need not be publicly connected with the establishment of a permanent Mission within his dominions. There would be many advantages in ostensibly directing it to some object of smaller political interest, which it will not be difficult for your Excellency to find, or if need be, to create. I have, therefore, to instruct you .. without any delay that you can reasonably avoid, to find some occasion for sending a Mission to Kabul."

Lord Northbrook, as is well known, declined to carry out this ingenious plan for overreaching the Ameer, and breaking the pledge that we had given not to force English officers upon him. He resigned almost immediately after the receipt of the despatch setting forth the new policy, and was succeeded by Lord Lytton. It is generally assumed that Lord Lytton came to India charged with the execution of no other policy than that to which Lord Northbrook had declined to assent. But this assumption is incompatible with the line of action pursued by Lord Lytton. This much, however, is clear already. The new policy, whatever it was, was not forced upon the British Government, either by the alienation of the Ameer or the intrigues of Russia. They entered upon it at a time when, by their own confession, the sky was clear. Afghanistan was in the enjoyment of an unprecedented quiet and prosperity; the Ameer was conducting his foreign policy in accordance with our wishes; and the efforts of the Government of St. Petersburg were "sincerely directed to the prevention of any movement which might give just umbrage to the British Government." So far as India was concerned, the condition of the country called aloud for a policy devoted to internal reform and retrenchment. The limit of endurable taxation had been reached; the army imperatively needed thorough reorganization; and the people and the land were still being scourged by famine upon famine of the most appalling character.

Now, if the English Cabinet had no designs in their frontier policy except to establish British agents in Afghanistan, without breach of pre-existing arrangements, and with the free concurrence o the Ameer, it is plain that for such a policy concealment was unnecessary. Yet, until the actual outbreak of hostilities, the negotiations with the Ameer were kept hidden from the English Parliament and the nation. The fact is, that in the instructions given to Lord Lytton before his departure frogland, lisbury anticipates the

refusal of the Ameer to agree to the new policy, and points out what, in that case, is to be done :

"11. If the language and demeanour of the Ameer be such as to promise no satisfactory result of the negotiations thus opened, his Highness should be distinctly reminded that he is isolating himself at his own peril from the friendship and protection it is his interest to seek and deserve.

"28. The conduct of Shere Ali has more than once been characterized by so significant a disregard of the wishes and interests of the Government of India, that the irretrievable alienation of his confidence in the sincerity and power of that Government is a contingency which cannot be dismissed as impossible. Should such a fear be confirmed by the result of the proposed negotiation, no time must be lost in reconsidering, from a new point of view, the policy to be pursued in reference to Afghanistan."

These instructions clearly establish the following points:-They show that the new policy, whatever it was, was expected "irretrievably" to destroy the confidence of the Ameer "in the sincerity of the Government;" and that, in that case, the Ameer was to be informed that he had forfeited our friendship and protection, and a new policy was immediately to be adopted towards Afghanistan. Here, then, we have the first note of war. All this time there was no pressure upon the British Government occasioned by the attitude of Russia. Our relations with Russia were excellent. On the 5th May, 1876, Mr. Disraeli said in the House of Commons, " I believe, indeed, that at no time has there been a better understanding between the Courts of St James and St. Petersburg than at this present moment, and there is this good understanding because our policy is a clear and frank policy." So here we have the proof, that in a season of perfect calm, the Ministry commenced a policy for the "irretrievable alienation" of the Ameer, and sent Lord Lytton to India in order to execute it.

Lord Lytton entered with zest into the spirit of these singular instructions, and set to work to "alienate" the Ameer with the utmost vigour. He politely caused him to be informed that he (the Ameer) was an earthen pipkin between two iron pots; that if he did not come to a "speedy understanding" with us, the two iron pots would combine to crush him out of existence altogether. "As matters now stand, the British Government is able to pour an overwhelming force into Afghanistan, which could be spread round him as a ring of iron, but if he became our enemy, it could break him as a reed." "Our only interest in maintaining the independence of Afghanistan is to provide for the security of our own frontier." "If we ceased to regard it as a friendly State, there was nothing to prevent us coming to an understanding with Russia which would wipe Afghanistan out of the map for ever." Would any man, I ask, address these insults and menaces to one whose friendship and confidence he was desirous to gain ? It must be plain to every reasonable person that British officers could only then be established in Afghanistan with safety to themselves, and utility to the British Government, when they were admitted with the free con