could be prosecuted in India for their speeches—that is, if they were Indian natives. If they were English-born they could say what they liked. The freedom of the Press had been the bulwark of English rule in India for the past forty years. The speech of the previous speaker was only an indication of the spirit which was growing up amongst the young men in India. There was a spirit of unrest and discontent which was spreading in quarters of which Government knew little. Sedition was present in India, and if the Government shut up the mouths of the educated Indians, who alone could explain to their fellow-countrymen what British rule meant to India, and how necessary it was that it should continue, it must be prepared for an outburst which would shake the British Empire to its foundations. (Cheers.)'

It would plainly seem that England has brought herself to a grave dilemma. She is convinced that if she does not enforce harsh sedition laws which shut the mouths of the educated Indians and prevent them from 'explaining to their fellow-countrymen what British rule means in India,' there will be a sedition, and here is a body of highly intelligent Indians assuring her that if she does not repeal those obnoxious laws and give the educated a chance to smooth the situation over to the masses of their countrymen there will be 'an outburst that will shake the British Empire to its foundations.' In other words British rule is neither safe if it is explained nor if it is not explained: it will not bear investigation and it will not bear not being investigated.

Having this expression of opinion from the Hindus, let us consider the words of a candid Englishman, Mr. Goldwin Smith. He believes that India "has been steadily administered in the interest of the Hindu." Granting for a moment only that this is so-we do not grant it any longer-the incapacity of England to civilize is even more shown by the results, for her efforts to help have 'reduced the population to human sheep, without aspirations, without spur to self-improvement of any kind.' This climax

of seventy-five years of civilizing effort thoroughly discredits the principle of Imperialism. "If," Mr. Smith says, "empire is to be regarded as a field for philanthropic effort and the advancement of civilization, it may safely be said that nothing in that way equals, or ever has equalled, the British Empire in India. For the last threequarters of a century at all events, the Empire has been steadily administered in the interest of the Hindu. Yet what is the result? Two hundred millions of human sheep, without native leadership, without patriotism, without aspirations, without spur to self-improvement of any kind; multiplying, too many of them, in abject poverty and in infantile dependence on a government which their numbers and necessity will too probably in the end overwhelm. Great Britain has deserved and won the respect of the Hindu; but she has never won, and is perhaps now less likely than ever to win, his love. The two races re

main perfectly alien to each other. Lord Elgin sorrowfully observes, that there is more of a bond between man and dog than between Englishman and Hindu. The natives generally, having been disarmed, cannot rise against the conqueror; and their disaffection is shown only in occasional and local outbreaks, chiefly of a religious character, or in the impotent utterances of the native press.

*

Of such periodic phenomena as Indian plagues and famines, their conduciveness to Hindu happiness, and British responsibility for them, I shall say but little. Julian Hawthorne and Lee Merewether, after personal investigations in India during the famine plague of 1897, agreed that not less than "eight million persons had already died of famine and disease directly caused thereby "-"eight times the population of New York; nearly twice that of London,"† and the famine had not then run its course. Mr. Hawthorne tried lamely to exculpate the English government and then said: "It is true that at

*The Moral of the Cuban War." in the Forum, Nov. 1898. †The Cosmopolitan Magazine, 1897, pp. 372-3, and 658.

the moment when millions of Indians were starving, there was paid in London for seats to see the Jubilee money enough to avert all that inconceivable suffering-yes, and much of it was paid by Americans; and the rest was paid by other foreigners and by the English themselves. It was a vain and selfish expenditure no doubt; but it was spent, not by the Government, but by private persons. They were like other persons all over the world." As if the waste of these resources at such a time by private persons in the slightest degree mitigated the responsibility and crime of the English nation! And that these vain and selfish spenders, ourselves included, 'were like other persons all over the world,' is the very thing that shows conclusively that these civilized people 'all over world' cannot rule a subject race unselfishly.

6. British Humanity in the Soudan.

The facts, we believe, warrant this statement: That lower races under Imperial rule are dealt with on a code of principles specially framed for them, and differing widely from the principles that white races observe toward one another. The codes for the lesser races vary. Take as instance the Belgian code toward the Congo Free State. This Free State "is not," says the Saturday Review,* “free in any sense of the word. The Belgians have replaced the slavery they found by a system of servitude at least as objectionable. Of what certain Belgians can do in the way of barbarity Englishmen are painfully aware. Mr. Courtney [in the address already quoted] mentions an instance of a Captain Rom who ornamented his flower-beds with the heads of twenty-one natives killed in a punitive expedition. This is the Belgian idea of the most effectual method of promoting the civilization of the Congo. Exports from the State fall seriously short of the imports; such as they are, they are maintained not by legitimate commerce, but by raids made on the ivory stores of luckless native chiefs where

*December 17, 1898.

tribute is said to be in arrears. The tax-gatherer, as we know from consular reports, follows every step of life in the Congo State. Yet expenditure is something like a quarter of a million sterling beyond its income, and the King of the Belgians has to bear the burden of £40,000 a year in order that Belgium may increase her trade by 0.7 per cent." England claims that her code is better than this, and thence makes the dizzy jump that it approaches the stainless and perfect. In truth it is a code for lower races, framed to keep them dependent for unknown periods, and framed with the intent to give the English trade benefits. Her code, as already indicated, is shrewder business policy.

But is the English page so clean and white? Was Captain Rom an exceptional brute to the wretched Africans? It would not seem so if we contemplate the British Soudan campaign. There seem to have been atrocities there well nigh unheard of in 'civilized' warring before. Mr. E. N. Bennett, an eye-witness, tells of these in the January Contemporary Review.*

"On our left along the lower slopes of Gebel Surgham a large number of camp-followers and native servants were already busy among the white-clad figures which lay stretched in little groups as our shell fire or the long-range volleys of the Lee-Metfords had struck them down. These looters had armed themselves somehow or other with rifles, spears, and even clubs, and made short work of any wounded man they came across. Poor wretches who in their agony had crawled under the scanty shade of a rock or shrub were clubbed to death or riddled with bullets by the irresponsible brutality of these native servants, who were in such wholesome dread of a Dervish, even when prostrate, that they frequently fired several shots into bodies already dead before they advanced to strip the corpse of its gibbeh of arms. ... This wholesale

*Of Mr. Bennett's title to a hearing the N. Y. Tribune says: "He is not to be coughed down as a credulous schoolmaster. who ought to have confined his energies to entomology and archæology, and to have kept at a safe distance from the battle-field."

slaughter was not confined to Arab servants. It was stated that orders had been given to kill the wounded. Whether this was so or not I do not know, but certainly no protest was made when the Soudanese dispatched scores, of wounded men who lay in their path. The Dervishes who were stretched on the sand within a few yards were bayoneted, or, in some instances, stabbed with their own spears... Arabs who lay further out in the desert at some little distance from the line of march, and happened, unfortunately for themselves, to move or turn over in their agony, were immediately pierced by rifle bullets. On some occasions shots were fired into the bodies of wounded men at such close quarters that the smell of burning flesh was positively sickening."

Justification is pleaded because the wounded Arab sometimes treacherously slaughters his enemy. But Mr. Bennett replies that the instances of this 'are, after all, extremely few in number,' and that 'the wounded Dervish has become dangerous because he fully expects to be killed.' He continues:

"But no justification whatever exists for the butchery of unarmed or manifestly helpless men lying wounded on the ground. This certainly took place after the battle of Omdurman. Dervishes who lay with shattered legs or arms, absolutely without weapons, were bayoneted and shot without mercy. This unsoldierly work was not even left to the exclusive control of the black troops; our own British soldiers took part in it. At one place, on the western slopes of Surgham, I noticed a fine old Dervish with a gray beard, who, disabled by a wound in his leg, lay prostrate beside a small bush. He had apparently attempted to escape toward Omdurman with the rest of the Khalifa's forces who survived, but his wound had prevented this, and the fugitive had sunk down on the ground, about eight yards behind his son, a boy of seventeen, whose right leg had also been lacerated by a bullet. Neither the father nor son had any weapons at all, yet a Highlander stepped out of the ranks and drove his bay