CHAPTER XXVIII.
CONCLUSION.
On the 27th of January 1858 the King of Dehlí had been brought to trial in the Privy Council chamber of his palace, charged with making war against the British Government, with abetting rebellion, with proclaiming himself as reigning sovereign of India, with causing, or being accessory to, the deaths of forty-nine people of British blood or British descent; and with having subsequently abetted others in murdering Europeans and others. After a patient trial, extending over forty days, the King was declared to be guilty of the main points of the charges, and sentenced to be transported for life. Ultimately he was sent to Pegu, where he ended his days in peace.
Meanwhile, in England, it had been found necessary, as usual, to find a scapegoat for the disasters which had fallen upon India. With a singular agreement of opinion the scapegoat was declared to be the Company which had won for England that splendid appanage. In consequence it was decreed to transfer the administration of India from the Company to the Crown. An Act carrying out this transfer was signed by the Queen on the 2d of August 1858.
Her Majesty thought it right, as soon as possible after the transfer had been thus effected, to issue to her Indian subjects a proclamation declaratory of the principles under which she intended thenceforth to administer their country. To the native princes of India she announced then, in that proclamation, that all treaties in force with them would be accepted and scrupulously maintained; that she would respect their rights, their dignity, and their honour as her own; that she would sanction no encroachments on the rights of any one of them; that the same obligations of duty which bound her to her other subjects would bind her also to them. To the natives of India generally Her Majesty promised not only complete toleration in matters of religion, but admission to office, without question of religion, to all such persons as might be qualified for the same by their education, ability, and integrity. The Queen declared, further, that she would direct that, in administering the law, due attention should be paid to the ancient rights, usages, and customs of India; that clemency should be extended to all offenders (in the matter of the Mutiny) save to those who had been or should be convicted of having taken part in the murder of British subjects; that full consideration should be given to men who had thrown off their allegiance, or who had been moved to action by a too credulous acceptance of the false reports circulated by designing men; that to all others who would submit before the 1st of January 1859 unconditional pardon should be granted.
This proclamation virtually conceded the right the denial of which had so greatly unsettled the minds of native princes, the right of adoption. It was hailed everywhere as a binding charter. In the large centres of India natives of every religion and creed, Hindus, Muhammadans, and Parsís, met in numbers to draw up loyal addresses expressive of their deep sense of the beneficent feelings which had prompted the proclamation, of their gratitude for its contents, and of their loyalty to the person of the illustrious lady to whose direct rule they had been transferred.
Published on the 1st of November 1858, this proclamation immediately followed the complete collapse of the Mutiny. Practically there remained only the capture of Tántiá Topí and the expulsion of the remnant of the rebels from Oudh. How these ends were accomplished I have told in the two chapters immediately preceding. In both these cases the conclusion was foregone. It was but a question of a brief time. The rebels in Central India and in Oudh, as well as those few still remaining in Western Bihár and in Chutiá Nagpur, represented the dying embers of a fire which had been extinguished. It now remains for me to sum up in a few words the moral of the Mutiny, the lessons which it taught us, and its warnings.
But before I proceed to this summing up, I am anxious to say a word or two to disabuse the minds of those who may have been influenced by rumours current at the period as to the nature of the retaliation dealt out to the rebels by the British soldiers in the hour of their triumph. I have examined all those rumours — I have searched out the details attending the storming of Dehlí, of Lakhnao, and of Jhánsí — and I can emphatically declare that, not only was the retaliation not excessive, it did not exceed the bounds necessary to ensure the safety of the conquerors. Unfortunately war is war. It is the meeting in contact of two bodies of men exasperated against each other, alike convinced that victory can only be gained by the destruction of the opponent. Under such circumstances it is impossible to give quarter. The granting of quarter would mean, as was proved over and over and over again, the placing in the hands of an enemy the power to take life treacherously. It was well understood, then, by both sides at the storming of the cities I have mentioned, that no quarter would be granted. It was a necessity of war. But beyond the deaths he inflicted in fair fight, the British soldier perpetrated no unnecessary slaughter. He merited to the full the character given to his predecessor in the Peninsular War by Sir William Napier. He proved by his conduct that, 'whilst no physical military qualification was wanting, the fount of honour was still full and fresh within him.'
It has been said that, in certain cases, a new kind of death was invented for convicted rebels, and that the punishment of blowing away from guns was intended to deprive the victim of those rites, the want of which doomed him, according to his view, to eternal perdition. Again, I assert that there is absolutely no foundation for this statement. The punishment itself was no new one in India. It was authorised by courts-martial, the members of which were native officers. Its infliction did not necessarily deprive the victim of all hope of happiness in a future life. The fact, moreover, that the Government of India, jealously careful never to interfere with the religious beliefs of the natives, sanctioned it, is quite sufficient to dispel the notion I have mentioned. The blowing away of criminals from guns was a punishment which was resorted to only when it was necessary to strike a terror which should act as a deterrent. It was in this sense that Colonel Sherer had recourse to it at Jalpaigúrí;[1] and it is indisputable that he thus saved thousands of lives, and, possibly, staved off a great catastrophe.
Whilst on the question of punishments, I am desirous to disprove an assertion so often repeated that it has been accepted as true — that the term 'Clemency Canning' was invented in Calcutta by the men who opposed the policy of the Government of India. The term 'Clemency Canning' had its origin in a phrase, 'the Clemency of Canning,' applied by the Times newspaper of October 17, 1857, to a circular issued by the Government of India, dated the 31st July of that year, and intended to restrain, prematurely, as the Times considered, the hands of its officers. The phrase was not intended to denounce clemency in the abstract, but the offer of clemency to men who believed they were triumphing, who had still possession of the North-west Provinces, and of Oudh. In that sense, and in no other, was it applied. The argument of those who alike in India and in England, denounced the circular may be expressed in these words: 'Put down the Mutiny first, that you may exercise clemency afterwards.'
I proceed now to deal with the two questions I have indicated in a preceding page — The lessons which the Mutiny has taught us, and its warnings.
The gradual conquest of India by a company of merchants inhabiting a small island in the Atlantic has ever been regarded as one of the most marvellous achievements of which history makes mention. The dream of Dupleix was realised by the very islanders who prevented its fulfilment by his countrymen. But great, marvellous even, as was that achievement, it sinks into insignificance when compared with the reconquest, with small means, of that magnificent empire in 1857-8. In 1857 the English garrison in India was surprised. There were not a dozen men in the country who, on the 1st of May of that year, believed that a catastrophe was impending which would shake British rule to its foundations. The explosion which took place at Mírath ten days later was followed, within five weeks, by similar explosions all over the North-west Provinces and in Oudh, not only on the part of the sipáhís, but likewise on the part of the people. The rebel sipáhís were strong in the possession of many fortified places, of a numerous artillery, of several arsenals and magazines. In trained soldiers they preponderated over the island garrison in the proportion of at least five to one. They inaugurated their revolt by successes which appealed to the imagination of an impulsive people. At Dehlí, at Kánhpur, at Jhánsí, in many parts of Oudh, and in the districts around Agra, they proved to them the possibility of expelling the foreign master. Then, too, the majority of the population in those districts, landowners and cultivators alike, displayed a marked sympathy with the revolted sipáhís. For the English, in those first five weeks, the situation was bristling with danger. A false move might have temporarily lost India. In a strictly military sense they were too few in numbers, and too scattered, to attempt an offensive defence. It is to their glory that, disregarding the strictly scientific view, they did attempt it. The men who administered British India recognised at a glance that a merely passive defence would ruin them. They displayed, then, the truest forecast when they insisted that the resources still available in the North-west and in the Panjáb should be employed in an offensive movement against Dehlí. That offensive movement saved them. Though Dehlí offered a resistance spreading over four months, yet the penning within her walls of the main army of the rebels gave to the surprised English the time necessary to improvise resources, to receive reinforcements, to straighten matters in other portions of the empire.
The secret of the success of the British in the stupendous conflict which was ushered in by the Mutiny at Mírath and the surprise of Dehlí, lay in the fact that they never, even in the darkest hour, despaired. When the news of the massacre of Kánhpur reached Calcutta, early in July, and the chattering Bengálís, who would have fainted at the sight of a sword drawn in anger, were discussing which man amongst them was the fittest to be Chancellor of the Exchequer under the King of Dehlí,[2] there was not an Englishman in that city who did not feel the most absolute confidence that the cruel deed would be avenged. There was not one cry of despair — not one voice to declare that the star of Great Britain was about to set. In the deepest distress there was confidence that the sons of Britain would triumph. The same spirit was apparent in every corner of India where dwelt an English man or an English woman. It lived in the camp before Dehlí, it was strong in the Residency of Lakhnao, it prevailed in every isolated station where the few Europeans were in hourly dangers of attack from rebels who gave no quarter. Nowhere did one of them shrink from the seemingly unequal struggle. As occasion demanded, they held out, they persevered, they pressed forward, and, with enormous odds against them, they wore down their enemies, and they won. The spirit which had sustained Great Britain in her long contest against Napoleon was a living force in India in 1857-8, and produced similiar results.
How did they accomplish the impossible? The answer must spring at once to the lips of those who have witnessed the action of our countrymen in every part of the world. The energy and resolution which gave the Britain which Cæsar had conquered to the Anglian race; which almost immediately brought that Britain to a preponderant position in Europe; which, on the discovery of a new world, sent forth its sons to conquer and to colonise; which, in the course of a brief time, gained North America, the islands of the Pacific, and Australasia; which, entering only as third on the field, expelled its European rivals from India; that energy and that resolution, far from giving evidence of deterioration in 1857, never appeared more conspicuously. It was a question of race. This race of ours has been gifted by Providence with the qualities of manliness, of endurance, of a resolution which never flags. It has been its destiny to conquer and to maintain. It never willingly lets go. Its presence in England is a justification of its action all over the world. Wherever it has conquered, it has planted principles of order, of justice, of good government. And the Providence which inspired the race to plant these great principles, endowed it with the qualities necessary to maintain them wherever they had been planted. Those principles stood them in good stead in 1857. It was the sense of the justice of England which, in the most terrible crisis of her history in India, brought her the support of the Sikhs, conquered but eight years before; of the princes and people of Rájpútána, rescued from oppression but twenty-nine years before; of that Sindhiá, whose great ancestor was England's deadliest enemy; of the Nizam, our ally since the time of Clive; of Maisur, restored by Marquess Wellesley to its ancient ruler; of Nipal, our nearest independent neighbour. But for the consequences of that sense of the justice of England, we might have been temporarily overwhelmed. Supported by it, the race did the rest. It showed itself equal to difficulties which, I believe, no other created race would have successfully encountered.
So much for the moral of the story. Mistakes doubtless were made, especially in certain details at the outset of the rebellion. Some injustices were committed, mainly by the men who made the mistakes. But, taking it as a whole, there is no epoch in the history of Great Britain in which the men and women of these islands shone with greater lustre than throughout this period of 1857-9. From the moment he quitted the pernicious air of Calcutta Lord Canning stood in the van, the far-seeing, courageous, resolute Englishman. Lords Elphinstone and Harris, at Bombay and Madras, were in all respects worthy of their chief. The three Lawrences in the Panjáb, at Lakhnao, and in Rájpútána, upheld the glory of that sister island irrevocably united to Great Britain. Scotland contributed Sir Colin Campbell, Sir Robert Napier, Adrian Hope, Lumsden, killed at the Sikandarabágh, Charles MacGregor, and hosts of kindred warriors. Frere in Sind, William Tayler at Patná, Wynyard at Gorákhpur, Spankie and Dunlop in the Mírath districts, showed what great things Englishmen, untrained to arms, left to their own resources, could accomplish. Their action prevailed all over India. There was scarcely one exception to it. To name every man and his achievements would require a volume exceeding in bulk the present record.
So much, I repeat, for the moral of the Mutiny. One word now regarding its lessons and its warnings. The determining cause of the Mutiny of 1857 was the attempt to force Western ideas upon an Eastern people. This was especially the case in the North-western Provinces, where the introduction of the Thomasonian system unsettled the minds of noble and peasant. It was the case in Oudh, where the same system suddenly superseded the congenial rule of the ex-King. Nowhere else in India was the rebellion more rampant and more persistent than in those provinces. Three hundred years previously the great Akbar had attempted to interfere with the village system, but, after a short experience, he had recoiled. He recognised in good time that custom is nowhere so strong as in India, and that interference with that system would uproot customs as dear as their lives to the children of the soil. The English, rushing in where Akbar had feared to tread, met their reward in a general uprising. It is scarcely too much to assert that in the provinces I have mentioned the hand of almost every man was against us.
More than thirty years have elapsed since the Mutiny was crushed, and again we witness a persistent attempt to force Western ideas upon an Eastern people. The demands made by the new-fangled congresses for the introduction into India of representative institutions is a demand coming from the noisy and unwarlike races which hope to profit by the general corruption which such a system would engender. To the manly races of India, to the forty millions of Muhammadans, to the Sikhs of the Panjáb, to the warlike tribes on the frontier, to the Rohílás of Rohilkhand, to the Rájputs and Játs of Rájpútáná and Central India, such a system is utterly abhorrent. It is advocated by the adventurers and crochet-mongers of the two peoples. Started by the noisy Bengálís, a race which, under Muhammadan rule, was content to crouch and serve, it is encouraged by a class in this country, ignorant for the most part of the real people of India, whilst professing to be in their absolute confidence. The agitation would be worthy of contempt but for the element of danger which it contains. I would impress upon the rulers of India the necessity, whilst there is yet time, of profiting by the experience of the Mutiny. I would implore them to decline to yield to an agitation which is not countenanced by the real people of India. I entreat them to realise that the Western system of representation is hateful to the Eastern races which inhabit the continent of India; that it is foreign to their traditions, their habits, their modes of thought. The people of India are content with the system which Akbar founded, and on the principles of which the English have hitherto mainly governed. Our Western institutions, not an absolute success in Europe, are based upon principles with which they have no sympathy. The millions of Hindustan desire a master who will carry out the principles of the Queen's proclamation of 1858. Sovereigns and nobles, merchants and traders, landlords and tenants prefer the tried, even-handed justice of their European overlord to a justice which would be the outcome of popular elections. India is inhabited not by one race alone, but by many races. Those races are subdivided into many castes, completely separated from each other in the inner social life. If the higher castes are the more influential, the lower are the more numerous. The attempt to give representation to mere numbers would then, before long, provoke religious jealousies and antipathies which would inevitably find a solution in blood. A rising caused by such an innovation on prevailing customs would be infinitely more dangerous than the Mutiny of 1857. Concession to noisy agitation on the part of the ruling power would place the lives, the fortunes, the interests of the loyal classes of India at the mercy of the noisiest; most corrupt, and most despised race in India. Against such concession — the inevitable forerunner of another rising — and equally against fussy interference with the Hindu marriage-law — I, intimately associated on the most friendly terms, for thirty-five years, with the manlier races of India, make here, on their behalf, my earnest protest.