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THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

JANUARY, 1889.

No. CCCXLV.

ART. 1.-1. Parliamentary Papers. Moral and Material Progress of India.

2. India. By Sir JOHN STRACHEY, G.C.S.I. London: 1888. 3. L'Inde Anglaise. Par M. BARTHÉLEMY SAINT-HILAIRE. 8vo. Paris: 1886.

4. Lettres sur l'Inde. Par M. JAMES DARMESTETER. Paris: 1887.

N° To dissertation upon, or narrative of, the recent history of England is thought complete without a careful and comprehensive study of the beginning, growth, and present condition of our Indian possessions. Professor Seeley's work on the expansion of England made wide and honourable room for India; and Mr. Spencer Walpole's latest volume of the History of England from the year 1815 contains a most instructive and able condensation of Indian events and transactions, showing a remarkable appreciation of their character and relative importance, and of their connexion with the general course of European politics. Sir John Strachey has just published twelve lectures on India, delivered by him before the University of Cambridge. In this volume will be found information of every kind regarding the civil and military administration of the Indian empire, with some most valuable dissertations upon the social and religious characteristics of the people, upon the principles of our government, and generally upon the political condition and prospect of the English sovereignty. Turning to foreign literature, we may recollect that Baron Hübner, in his travels Through the British Empire,' tarried long in India and closely examined our position;

VOL. CLXIX. NO. CCCXLV.

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while the later work of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, to which we shall refer again presently, attests the warm yet critical interest taken by a distinguished French writer in the progress and destiny of the English rule in India. And, lastly, in 'Lettres sur l'Inde,' by M. James Darmesteter, we welcome a small book showing a rare sympathy with the characteristic tone of Asiatic life; with the simplicity, tragic or comical, that runs through the passions and beliefs of primitive races; the tone which underlies all antique poetry, and which modern art, confused by the shiftiness and complexity of civilised existence, is becoming fatally unable to comprehend or recall.

The system of registering the historic chronology of a country under the names of its successive rulers or chief magistrates is ancient and almost universal. We say of a public act or incident that it belongs to a reign or a consulship. The only European nation that once deliberately abolished this system is France; and France has ever since been reduced to the ominous expedient of marking time by serial changes not of the personalty, but of the form, of her government. The practice is manifestly the outcome and revival of a state of society when personal rule was everything to the people, and when the character and capacity of their chief governor were of the highest concern to them. In the Western world such ideas may have become mainly traditional; in the East the kingly power still passes, like a divine energy, into successive visible embodiments; and thus the Viceroy of India still represents in his person a distinct ruling force. For a century at any rate, since Warren Hastings relinquished the office which Lord Dufferin has now, to our great regret, laid down, popular usage, though not formal procedure, has placed the names of each Governor-General at the head of the chapters which divide the chronicle of our Indian empire. We are therefore well justified by custom and precedent in treating the withdrawal from his Viceroyalty of so distinguished a statesman and diplomatist as Lord Dufferin as one of the standpoints at which men naturally turn round and look back in order to review the general movement of recent affairs, and to form a judgement upon the political record of the period with which his name has been associated.

Lord Dufferin's previous career had designated him as eminently qualified for the duties of the Governor-Generalship. He had been Under-Secretary of State for India from 1864 to 1866; he had shown remarkable ability and firmness as British representative upon the Commission

in Syria; he had latterly been Viceroy in Canada; and above all he had proved brilliantly successful in the very important embassies at St. Petersburg and Constantinople, the two European courts whose attitude, whether towards England or to each other, is of particular importance to India. The news of his appointment elicited a unanimous expression of confidence and satisfaction. He reached India in December 1884, and found himself at once in charge of a question of some magnitude and no small difficulty. It is well known that some of the most serious and complicated problems of Indian administration have grown out of the extraordinary diversity and intricacy of the land tenures in a country where they are as various and multiform as the religious beliefs. From the beginning of our dominion there has hardly been a time when the Government has not been occupied in some part of India with the investigation of systems of rent or land revenue, and with passing laws to finish disputes or remedy agricultural grievances. Lord Ripon, as soon as his successful settlement of Afghanistan had left him at leisure for internal affairs, had turned his attention towards the hardly less arduous enterprise of readjusting the relations between landlord and tenant in two very important provinces of India. With great vigour and determination he took up the question of giving greater protection to the tenants in Bengal. His proposals inevitably raised strenuous opposition from the most powerful body of landlords in India; but for two years Lord Ripon had been carrying on the contest, yielding ground here and there, but steadily holding his main points, until he made over the reins of office to his successor. It then became Lord Dufferin's duty to assume command of the legislative forces of the Government in the field, and to complete an unfinished campaign.

The new Viceroy, however, was perfectly familiar with all the issues raised by the Bengal Tenancy Bill. He had been Under-Secretary of State at the time when Lord Lawrence, as Governor-General, by insisting on an investigation of the status of ryots in Oudh, set on foot a famous discussion, in which all the highest authorities in India and at the India Office took different sides. He had also taken during many years an active part in discussions of the agrarian questions in Ireland, and the resemblance between those questions and similar problems in India had not been lost upon him. No better training, in short, than that of the India Office and of Irish politics could have been given to a

statesman who had to pass a Bengal Tenancy Bill within a few months after his arrival in India. What meaning and what measure of legal recognition should be allotted to usage and prescription; how far the law ought to interfere for the control and modification of agricultural contracts; to what extent double ownership in land can be adjusted by statutory definition-all such questions are common, more or less, with differences and variations, to Ireland and to India; to our earliest as to our latest territorial acquisitions beyond the English seas. In India, as in Ireland, we are still actively engaged in mediating between the two interests of ownership and occupancy in agriculture-interests which still, as of old, lie at the basis of civil society, and are yet so sensitive to economic changes that the most skilful attempts to distribute them formally or to provide by legislation, however elastic, for all the incidents of the connexion have hitherto failed to prevent severe periodical strains. But whereas in Ireland the superior ownership and the rent went altogether to private landlords, in India both property and profit have usually been shared between the landholders and the State. The consequence has been to give all Indian administrations a very direct and substantial motive for looking vigilantly to the position and rights of the cultivators; while, as Mr. Froude has observed, the fact that in India there is no English landlordism has kept these questions free from entanglement with the rivalry of races. Το a viceroy of Lord Dufferin's antecedents the whole subject presented features of curious analogy and familiar characteristics; and he took the first occasion of publicly expressing his satisfaction at finding himself associated with the passing of the Act. His position enabled him to arbitrate with conclusive authority between landlord and tenant upon the several matters which, after long debate and still longer report-writing, still remained undetermined. The final decision of the Legislative Council was on most of these points in favour of the landlord; but Lord Dufferin, in moving that the Bill should pass, disallowed in very plain terms the main contention of the landlord party, that an interference between Bengal zemindars and their tenants amounted to an infringement of the permanent settlement made by Lord Cornwallis in 1798. He declared, on the contrary, that the Bill had his hearty and sincere support mainly because it was in harmony with the intentions, and carried out the ideas, of Lord Cornwallis. The Act was passed by a large majority; and, so far as can be judged

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