INDIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5635, 22 April 1879, Page 3

INDIA.

:. (From The Colonies.) England is at present master of India. Our power oyer it is limited only by our own sense of right and expediency. It is the fashion just now in discussions as te the exercise of our power, to assume that the means by which the power was acquired in the first instances were unjust. No doubt there are many incidents in the progress of British arms upon which we must look back with shame and regret. But, speaking generally, "we think the assumption of national, wrongdoing is but a phase of our English habit of self-deprecation. Judged, by the standard of other nations—above all, of the races and the circumstances with which we had to deal, our policy in India has been not only just, but singularly moderate. Our conquests were generally forced on us against our will, by the need of maintaining what we had already worn. Our Empire has depended not more on the valor of our soldiers, than on the reputation we had acquired for good faith among races to whom gsod faith was a novelty. But whatever difference of opinion there may be as to the means by which; we obtained power, there can be none as to the spirit in. which, as a nation, we have tried to exercise it.. We do not, like the Dutch, draw a tribute from our Indian possessions—nor do we, like the llussians, force our inferior goods, by prohibitory tariffs, on our subject races. No doubt our administration is still in, many important respects mistaken and defective. Grievous shortcomings are unavoidable in such an experiment—-the government of a population of nearly two hundred millions by a handful of aliens. But we have given the country peace, after centuries of anarchy, and we have introduced ideas of right and liberty which will bo . fruitful for good long after the generation that has introduced them has passed away. We have—perhaps too .rapidly—developed the industrial resources of the country, and though hitherto the chief effect of our rule is observable in the growth of a rich middle class, and an enormous increase of numbers in the poorer strata of population—yet there the people are whom the order of rale has called into beinsr. We are responsible for their existence. If we.permit our rule to be overthrown without providing for the succession of agovernmeht as orderly and thrifty as our own-—it we permit our authority to be rudely shaken from without or from within—if we even permit affairs so to drift that we shall have to make some day sudden and violent; calls upon the resources ’ of India, the effect will be at once seen in loss of life, compared with which the loss of life in the. most horrible of recorded famines will seem but trifling. Even the most virulent critics of English administration admit that the area of cultivation has increased. The fields which fell out of cultivation during the troubles that preceded our rule’ have been re-tilled—, the virgin jungle has been reclaimed. Renew the old disorders, and cultivation ’ will. again contract. The vast mass of our fellow-crea-tures who live just on the verge of starvation will perish miserably.' Now, as it is inconceivable that we should surrender India to an invader without a struggle, to neglect reasonable precautions : against attacks.would be,to invite the evils we have indicated. There may ba honest difference of opinion as to what reasonable precautions are ; bat to say that -we ought to neglect them because the Indian peasants are poor and ; are already heavily taxed, or because^trade is bad in England,;is equivalent to saying that a man ought; not to insure-his life because he has a large family. And the assertion that a Government that discerns danger in the existing state of .things

can . only be animated by lust of conquest is the suggestion of slander -us and reckless ignorance. Putting aside considerations such as these, -which are intended to blind, not to assist the judgment, we must examine calmly what is alleged by honest, thoughtful men on each side as to what “ reasonable ” precautions are.

India is surrounded by the sea and by mountains. Of .the sea we are masters, and there is no probability of our supremacy being challenged. Naval invasion, therefore, is not to be feared ; but it is absolutely necessary that wo should keep our way to India open. It would be dangerous to allow to any nation the power of blocking it ; but it would be doubly dangerous to allow that power to the only nation from whom there is any fear of invasion by laud. To keep the Russians out of Constantinople has therefore been, and we think still is, a cardinal point of English policy., .We do not of course propose to discuss here whether there was any real danger that Constantinople would fall into Russian hands as the result of, the Turkish troubles, or whether the means taken by our Government to avert that result were judicious. We will only point out that the Indian troops were summoned to Europe to avert what seemed to the Government to be a real danger, and therefore, even if the interference; of Russia in Afghanistan was occasioned or: precipitated by the summons to the Sepoys, Government was justified in bringing them to Malta if it believed that the injury they could do to Russia in Europe would be greater than the injury Russia could do us in Afghanistan,. The Eastern Question, it must he remembered, is one which has to be fought all along the line. We have to defend our road to India as well as our frontier. The object of Govern-r ment is apparently to secure to us a new route to India, by the same steps by which it prevents Russia from acquiring one. Russia, if allowed to go . on slowly annexing in Asiatic Turkey, would finally have reached the Persian- Gulf ; would have obtained absolute control of Persia, and would thus be in a position for attacking Afghanistan, supposing it had not already got a foothold there. The acquisition of Cyprus was intended to give us a place of arms whence we could command the terminus of the Euphrates Valley or Palmyrene railway. Erom the reports now current there can be little doubt that the construction of that much-debated line is to be commenced at once. By standing forth as the protector of Turkey this new route will remain under our control, and will enable us to meet Russia in Persia as well as, give us a route to India in addition to those' which already exist by the Cape of Good Hope and through the Suez Canal.