cealment. In India the case is quite otherwise. We are there carrying on an experiment with materials which, despite of all that official apologists may assert and indolent persons may choose to believe, are ludicrously inadequate for the end to be accomplished. We are dealing with a continent possessed of a high and very complex civilization of its own, and inhabited by a people exceedingly intelligent and active-minded, quick to learn our language and imbibe our ideas, and shrewd to a degree in their criticism of our characters and political methods. None the less in the government of this country we have pushed the people altogether aside, and have entrusted the entire control of their destinies to Englishmen, selected, when still boys, by a system of competitive examination, who proceed to India simply in order to obtain a livelihood. Between them and the people of the country (speaking generally) no social or friendly relations are ever established; on the contrary (as was proved to demonstration in the excitement provoked by the Ilbert Bill), a bitter and increasing antipathy divides the two races as by an impassable gulf. To crown all, the ruling race have no permanent stake in the country which they rule. They come and go, the entire personnel of the administration undergoing a complete change in the course of twenty years. In India, therefore, all accumulation of official knowledge and experience is impossible. The people of the country, by reason of their exclusion from the higher posts of the administration, cannot acquire it; and the English officials withdraw as soon as they have acquired a sufficient income to live on at home. There are people, I am aware, not a few, who believe that British rule in India is a vast success, notwithstanding, "the most perfect government," in fact, "that the world has ever seen." There are also spiritualists, believers in an occult Buddhism; and indeed no limits can be put to human eccentricity or to the measure of human credulity. But the immense majority of people, assuming them to be clothed and in their right minds, will acknowledge that to predicate success of a government constituted in the manner I have described is hardly less absurd than to argue in favour of the flatness of the earth. In British India the Government, as at present constituted, is lacking in every condition which has been found essential to the production of good government in every other country in the world, and that should suffice to convince any reasonable person that it must be greatly in need of supervision and reform.

Now I do not propose an increase of Parliamentary supervision and authority under the impression that it would be adequate to the needs of the case. I know that it would be wofully inadequate; but it would be the beginning of a better state of things. By providing a Court of Appeal, where all cases would be discussed in the full glare of publicity, it would allow the people of India to

place their own case before the English nation, a boon of which at present they are altogether deprived. At the same time it is obvious that if the extent of Parliamentary knowledge and control was to be left at the discretion of the Secretary of State for India we should remain exactly where we are now. A Secretary of State for India is, by the hard necessity of the case, the automaton of the department of which he is nominally the chief. He no sooner enters upon his office than he has to surrender up his judgment and his reason to the Indian official advisers, and to become their agent and spokesman. A Standing Committee, having power to call for all Indian documents, and to raise debates upon Indian questions, would effectually defeat this policy of silence and obscurantism. Take, for example, such a case as the secret demands made upon Shere Ali at Peshawur eighteen months anterior to the breaking out of the last war in Afghanistan. When questioned on the subject in the House of Lords, Lord Salisbury gave a reply that had the effect of quieting public anxiety; but had all the facts been known there can be no question that that fatal and disgraceful war would never have been waged. Had there existed then such a Standing Committee as I have suggested, Lord Salisbury would never have ventured to make the statement he made. I am aware that any proposition which, if carried into effect, would curtail the authority of those in office will be denounced by those who actually hold office, and by those who expect to do so, as dangerous, and therefore unadvisable. But the point to be considered is whether it be not far more dangerous to leave the government of our Indian Empire in the exclusive possession of a body irresponsible alike to the people of India and to the people of the United Kingdom. Year after year the interests of the two countries become more inextricably interwoven, and any violent rupture would result in consequences even more disastrous to ourselves than to the people of India. We know well enough what the Indian officials think of their own achievements in the East; but of the actual condition of India and its peoplewhether they are thriving under our rule or the reverse-we possess little accurate knowledge, and respecting these all-important topics the ruling class, so far as I can see, can supply us with no information which bears examination. As a member of the Indian Railway Committee, I have been profoundly impressed by the utter absence of official evidence as to the economic effect of the railways on the condition of the people. It is evident to me that in the vast expenditure on public works which for the last quarter of a century has gone on in India, we have been literally plunging in the dark. Even if it be granted that in the mere administration of India the members of the Indian services stand in no need of a watchful and intelligent criticism outside of their own body-an assertion, however,

which only needs to be put into words, in order to be rejected as preposterous-they have, assuredly, no special aptitude for the uncontrolled management of the vast commercial, interests which this country has created in India. These, at any rate, imperatively demand the vigilant consideration of Parliament; but unless Parliament delegates to certain of its own members the duty of collecting the necessary information, and bringing the same from time to time under the consideration of the House, it is impossible that either Parliament or the nation can acquire the knowledge to enable them to watch and to criticise. We may remain as we are at present, knowing little about India, swallowing upon trust whatever facts or statements may be prepared for the national consumption; and if this be thought a wise and safe condition, then there is no need to abolish the Indian Council, or to set up a standing committee of the House of Commons in its stead. But if the duty which Parliament owes, not less to the people of India than to the nation, demands that it should be able to know and to judge of the things which are done under the sanction of its authority in our Oriental Empire, it seems to me that a Standing Committee is the only machinery by which the information essential to the discharge of these high functions can be placed at its disposal.

This, however, is a matter of detail. If any one can suggest any other arrangement, as effective and less objectionable, I am prepared to surrender the plan of a committee without reluctance. The end it is which appears to me so supremely important. Within the last quarter of a century our Indian empire has undergone a marvellous transformation; and questions of great difficulty and complexity require to be dealt with which the Indian services are neither by training or circumstances fitted to handle successfully. There is first the economical question. We have spent an enormous amount of the wealth of India in the construction of railways, canals, and other works under the impression that we should thereby, not merely develop the resources of the country, but greatly improve the condition of the people. There is a strong desire in official circles that this vast expenditure should continue; but we are by no means fully supplied with evidence as to its good effects, so far, upon the people. The point ought to be certainly decided, either in the affirmative or the negative, before any further continuance of the policy is sanctioned, or otherwise we may discover, when too late, that we have laid burdens on our empire by the very policy which was intended to enrich it. Secondly, there is the not less vital question of providing for the increasing class of educated and thoughtful natives which we are doing our utmost to increase annually a proper field for the exercise of their abilities-a just share in the government of their country. As regards this the Indian authorities have made it clear, by

the attitude which they have taken up in regard to the Ilbert Bill, that they are determined to make no concession. It will perhaps be urged on the other side that they have exhibited no such frantic hostility to the local self-government scheme; but this is easily accounted for. Each local government has had the drafting of the provisions of its own scheme, which has in every case been so whittled down as to become quite insignificant. Moreover, all these local bodies, when established, will exist merely by sufferance of the collector, and, should they exhibit any troublesome independence, will be reported to head-quarters as appropriating to themselves a political character, and promptly dissolved for their audacity. It is only Parliament, as the interpreter of the will of the British nation, which possesses sufficient authority to confer upon the people of India some measure of political liberty.

Lastly, there are the foreign relations of the Empire, now altogether in the hands of a class which is of necessity militant and aggressive. This is due to several causes, partly to the predilection for violent measures which the possession of great power invariably produces; partly to the fact that, from their position in India, they are free from the sacrifices which war inflicts upon the people; but chiefly because their attitude towards the political aspirations of the able and educated natives of India has deprived them of any strong hold upon the affections or loyalty of the people. Hence their belief in prestige; hence their wearisome iteration of the trite and most inaccurate assertion that India was won by the sword, and must be held by the sword; and hence the eagerness with which they plunge into any enterprise having for its object to keep a possible enemy at a distance from India. Russophobia is a natural product of our system of government. It is a disease to which the official class is peculiarly liable, and they communicate the infection to the British public. There is only one way by which the nation can be delivered from this most dangerous form of homicidal mania. It is by making Parliamentary control over India more direct, more continuous, and more effective. Then the Indian "expert" would be reduced to his proper dimensions. At present

he is a kind of Indian political Pope, whose dicta are to be received implicitly, and whose reasons are much too recondite to be subjected to examination and criticism. Then it is that the reasons would be examined, and not the man substituted, as a divine oracle, whose function it was only to state conclusions.

JOHN SLAGG.

CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND THOUGHT

IN FRANCE.

[ONSIEUR J. REINACH, who has made himself, so to speak, the intellectual executor of Gambetta, and who is publishing the complete collection of his speeches, with his despatches from Tours and from Bordeaux, has just given us a "History of the Gambetta Ministry." Nothing can be more melancholy than the story of those three months in which an apparently unassailable prestige was breaking down under that distrust which seems to be the inherent vice of democracies. There were faults, no doubt, on the side of Gambetta himself, and M. Reinach has not made this sufficiently clear; but it is none the less true that his fall was the result of a mixture of prejudice and calumny, blind passions and petty interests. Gambetta did not fall because he had made M. Allain Targé Minister of Finance, nor because he had made M. Paul Bert Minister of Religion, nor because he had yielded to the Radical cry for a revision of the Constitution, and for three years' military service for all citizens without exception; he fell because he had attempted to constitute a real Government, which should have the courage to act and to bear the responsibility of its actions, and should be something more than the minion of deputies, themselves the minions of their electoral committees; he fell because he had resolved on a broad, energetic, and truly national policy, with which men of all parties might be proud to associate themselves. M. Reinach had opportunities of watching very closely the events of those three months, and he has given us a lively record of them, showing very plainly how the parliamentary storm arose which swept away the Gambetta Ministry. But it was more

than this. His evil genius was against him. He came into power at an unlucky moment, forced on by the public curiosity rather than the public confidence. He was made to take office, not because people agreed with him, but because they wanted to see how he would go through with it. From the very first day his position was not that of a general leading his troops under fire, but that of a gymnast on the tight-rope in the midst of a circle of spectators, whom he is to astonish by his skill, and who are quite ready to hiss him if he fails