The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886Various
History
The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886
Various
Periodicals
The school of Radicals represented only too numerously in the present
Parliament--unreasoning, ignorant of India, impulsive, narrow and
insular--is also represented among the more recent importations of
'competition wallahs.' Baron Huebner met with many of them. 'In their
opinion,' he says, 'the ideal of a sound English policy is the
dismemberment of the British Empire, and above all the abandonment of
India. To save England, it is necessary first to destroy her.' To the
shrewd and experienced Austrian diplomatist, these ideas seem to be
absolutely ruinous, but the oddity of it is that thousands of persons in
England cling to them with a sort of idolatry, as if within them was
compressed the sum and substance of human wisdom. The Radical party
to-day lives upon these theories of dismemberment, although it is
careful to keep its ultimate aim as much as possible in the background.
In India, its adherents are doing an immense amount of harm. Baron
Huebner seems to have been struck with amazement at the phenomenon. 'This
is, indeed,' he exclaims, 'a curious and perhaps a unique spectacle--an
immense administration, managed according to doctrines which are
repudiated by the large majority of those who compose it.' The natives
who are educated in our schools and colleges emerge from them filled
with ideas of Socialism and Atheism. We break down their faith in their
own creeds, without succeeding in inducing them to adopt Christianity.
They find themselves free to construct a religion of their own, or to do
without any religion. As regards the Government, they are led to
believe that it ought not to be where it is, and that India should be
ruled by its own people. The native press is full of sedition. Let us
hear what Baron Huebner has to say upon this subject, for it is worth
attention:--
'Is there any public opinion in India? It is declared that
there is none. And yet people agree in saying that the
natives who have been educated in the State colleges have
become singularly importunate of late years, that they are
beginning to adopt a high tone, and that they take especial
delight in criticising the acts of the Government, who,
unwisely, as it seems to me, encourage if not provoke such
criticism. These baboos and their newspapers, I am told,
would only become dangerous at a crisis; and by a crisis is
understood a disastrous European war. But the life of
nations, like that of individuals, is nothing but a series
of successes and reverses. Looked at from this point of
view, the baboo is not such an insignificant being as he
appears to be considered.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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