THE GOVERNMENT OF COLOURED RACES IN COLONIES.

 (From the Saturday Review, January 20.)

PERHAPS nothing so much illustrates the careless hand-to-mouth state of political opinion in England as the utter ignorance of two-thirds of the people, and the utter indifference of nearly the whole other third, as to the principles on which alien and dissimilar races ought to be governed. Whoever at any time thinks at all on the subject of civil government must think on this. But the fact is that, in England, very few people ever do think of the theory of government. We pride ourselves on our "practical" character and habits. We rejoice that we are not as other nations are, theorists and formalists. We have shaped, rather than designed, a form of government which altogether suits our disposition and our wants, but which is so full of modifications, inconsistencies, checks, and counter-checks, that we should wholly despair of making it intelligible to an enlightened citizen of those nations which rejoice in the elaborate enunciation of first principles, and the rigid formularies of codified constitutions. We do not care very much about first principles. We fashion for ourselves a Parliament and Government, and re-fashion them as we feel the need of change. But we leave to a select few, whether natives or foreigners, the duty of explaining, criticising, and formalising what we have done.

This so-called "practical" character of our minds has made most of us wholly indifferent, if not blind, to one of the greatest problems which can puzzle the ingenuity of statesmen. For certainly no question can well be more puzzling than this:—"How ought subject alien races be governed?" Even when the unexpected flash of a Jamaica rebellion or tumult startles us, we fail to recognise in the event a symptom which we ought long since to have studied and examined. "We had a graver warning in the Indian mutiny ; smaller ones in disturbances at St. Vincent's and Antigua. The Indian mutiny was put down, but it flared long enough to startle the whole of England with its unwonted blaze. The riots at St. Vincent's and Antigua were also put down, though not in a very satisfactory or honourable way ; for the one required the intervention of French troops, and the other left vestiges of greater alarm on the minds of those who had been assailed than of those who disturbed the public peace. The final suppression of the first, and the comparative obscurity of the latter insurrections deadened inquiry and thought in England. "Practical" men took it for granted that, if such outbreaks did occur, some means would be found to put them down. So all concern was dissipated, men ceased to think on the subject, and its important bearings on the relations, not only of England, but of other European countries, to other multifarious races, were soon lost sight of.

Yet, even in an age in which intelligent artisans allow themselves to be persuaded by a powerful demagogue that there was a time in the history of England when the right of voting for members of Parliament was possessed by all yearly tenants of houses (as that phrase is now understood), it may not be impossible to convince some persons that the question which we have propounded, even if difficult of solution, is worthy of consideration. To us, as a people, it is one of urgent importance. To others—for example, Holland, France, Spain, and the United States—it is only of less importance because their coloured and alien subjects are less numerous than ours. But it is important to all Europe and to the European races in North America, because both Europe and America will, every succeeding year, have greater intercourse with this motley herd of dissimilar populations. In England we see little of these races. A lascar at a crossing, an old negro servant preserved as a relic by an only half-ruined Jamaica family, are objects which excite occasional sympathy or liking or pity in the minds of the worldly Londoner. A negro preacher or law student occasionally falls in our way; but it would hardly be accurate to say that either of these specimens is generally calculated to excite sympathy or liking beyond the unctuous pale of Exeter Hall. As a rule, English people out of London see little either of the Eastern or the African races. They do not know what it is to grow up with, and in close proximity to a race of different origin, manners, thoughts, intellect, from themselves, and bearing on their bodies the strong ineradicable signs of this hereditary difference. Not only are the races different in all other characteristics, but they have the two signal marks of distinction—a distinct feature and a distinct colour. Of this contiguity of populations nothing is known in England, as it is known in the East Indies, in the West Indies, and the Southern States of the American Federation. But something distantly resembling it is known in our larger towns. There, mixed up with our own native artisans, is a large body of Irish immigrants—different indeed in race, lineament, and religion, but not different in colour or language. Such dissimilarity as does exist, though fruitful in small disputes, and inimical to fusion, does not prevent a general harmony of existence and occasional intermarriages. It gives, however, a peculiar, and perhaps not a desirable, character to the life of those districts in which the two races are found together. There is a great deal of Celtic impulse, of Celtic warmth, of Celtic mobility, and Celtic quickness, together with a certain degree of Celtic insincerity and want of truth, thrown, in casual and unadjusted proportions, into mixture with the dull stolid obstinacy of the lower English-man. The result is not, on the whole, particularly pleasing. But then there is this to be remembered. Both the races thus brought together in frequent collision and only partial combination are of the lowest and poorest class. All the temptations and all the irritations of poverty are common to both. And the result could hardly be expected to be pleasing. When the Irish become disproportionately numerous (which they have a faculty of becoming), their characteristics give a decided tone and colour to the suburb or district. What that tone and that colour are, magistrates, vestry-men, and parish officers can best define. Whatever they are (and they are not unmixedly bad) they illustrate—partially, indeed, imperfectly, and suggestively—what it is to deal with a whole population of which not one-half or two-thirds, but eight or nine-tenths, are as dissimilar and as alien from the governing race as the great Author of mankind can make His creatures.

Does it ever occur to mere loungers in a London club, laying down the law with a positiveness of assertion that makes men of experience and knowledge dumb with amazement, that there are not only inherent but increasing difficulties in the way of governing these dusky populations ? That such is the case will be testified by every Englishman who returns from official, professional, or commercial life in India or the West Indies. It is natural that the feeling of nationality, and the desire of vindicating it, should in every people be intensified and exasperated by the presence of another, and that a dominant race; and we must not be surprised if the mixed races who make up the population of British India— Hindoos, Mussulmans, and what not—should gradually learn from the incumbent sway of England the dreamy notion of a united Indian people. It may take generations to give the vision body and form ; but whether it ever will—or will within any assignable period of time—become a reality, depends, according to all trustworthy accounts, much more upon Englishmen, English officers, civil and military, and English residents, than on the natives themselves. " As long as we prove ourselves worthy to govern and capable of governing, so long shall we continue to govern. From the moment we betray the slightest consciousness or incapacity from that moment our raj is doomed." Such is the testimony of those who know India best and longest. And what they mean is this :—In order to govern an Eastern people, you must not shirk the outward and visible signs of governing. You must not appear to fear them, or to fear anything. You must not allow the people to take liberties with you. You must not allow them to jostle you in the streets, as they now do in Bombay. You must assert your authority in ways which might be thought strange in England. "If," say they, "you treat a Bombay man or a Bengalee as you treat an Englishman of the lower class, you do not conciliate him ; you simply affront his pride. You are of the governing race ; yet you allow him to push and jostle you as he would push or jostle some wretched Pariah. He knows you do not permit this through pure affection. Therefore, he infers, you do it through fear. That simple suspicion of fear on your part is a loss equal to the loss of a great battle. It destroys the feeling of veneration, which is an instinct of the Oriental. It saps the innate submissiveness of the natives, and stimulates a rebellious contempt which one day may be fatal."

This doctrine, if it has some followers, has many opponents in England. All the religious world is opposed to it. It is apparently opposed to the teaching of the Gospel. It is not readily reconcilable with those texts which inculcate humility, long-suffering, and turning the cheek to the smiter. But, if this be so, and if India cannot be retained by a precise adhesion to the most pacific texts of the New Testament, some rather embarrassing questions present themselves. If India were Christian— that is, if the people of India admitted the obligation of Christian precepts—of course every English officer of every kind might be expected to deal with them as he would deal with his own countrymen at home. But not only is this not the case now, but there seems no chance of its ever being the case. There are, and probably will continue to be, conversions, more or less genuine, to Christianity all over the peninsula. But to suppose that the mass of the Mussulman and Hindoo population will ever profess Christianity of the English Protestant type is simply one of those expectations on which no statesman would ever think of acting. And so long as they remain Mussulmans or Hindoos, so long will their awe and obedience be ensured by those virtues on the part of their masters which, though co-existent with many Christian qualities, are not themselves specially and eminently typical of the Christian character. To hold outnumbering foes at bay, to preserve a haughty and imperious demeanour amid treacherous and rebellious subjects, to forego not one jot of merited severity even when all around is ominous of danger and perfidy, these are the virtues which awe the Eastern mind ; but they are not the virtues most specially inculcated in the Epistles of St. James or St. John. And we fear that those virtues which are most specially enjoined by the last-named Apostle are signally calculated to excite in the Eastern mind feelings as opposed as well can be to awe, reverence, and submission.

With regard to the negroes, a superficial contrast is established between them and the natives of India by the readiness with which the former have learned to profess Christianity. It must be remembered that the negroes who are known to us as Christians had no choice but between Christianity and Paganism. No other religion, at the time of their conversion, was known to them. At this day it is an open question whether Mahometanism, whenever it does compete with Christianity in Central and even in Western Africa, does not compete successfully. Certainly the superior tribes, the more warlike races—those of whom, because they are the more warlike, we see the least in our own colonies—are for the most part Mahometans. These men will die rather than be sold as slaves. Our own negroes became Christians after they had become slaves. And there was much in the Christianity popularly taught by the missionaries to the negroes which was likely to engage the sympathies of the latter. Compassionateness and long-suffering were qualities calculated to gain the hearts of men living in bondage. Subsequently, after the days of bondage, the negro found particular attractions in the doctrines which his Baptist teachers love to dwell on, without qualification or limitation —namely, the equality of all men ; the duty of calling no man " master ;" in fine, all those doctrines which are generally known as those of Christian socialism. Preached to men endowed with no power of reflection, but gifted with an amount of self-conceit which no other race of human beings ever possessed, and with a love of lazy devotion, they naturally inflated their self-importance until it broke down the barriers of ancient customs, manners, and feelings. The negro, civilly free and religiously exalted, began, like all other races, to dream of a nationality for his own colour. He was the equal of the white man. Why should he work for the white man ? Why should he be governed by the white man ? Such, we are informed on good authority, are the questions with which the negroes of our West India colonies season their social gatherings. Neither identity of language nor identity of creed has broken down the barrier between the white race and the black race. Both have made the negroes fanatical democrats of the socialist type. Though speaking the same tongue and living under the same laws, they have very few sympathies with white men. The black man craves an equality which the white man will not concede. The white man avows a superiority which the modern negro will not admit. The gulf widens deeper between them every day. A strong external power keeps the two elements together. It compels them in appearance to maintain a genuine harmony. In truth, it only compels them to keep a long truce. But how long will this truce last? And is this government? Can any sort of recognised polity be said to exist where two dissimilar races, of the most opposite natures, are kept from flying at one another only by a Power three thousand miles away ? And that they cannot be so kept apart for ever, this Jamaica outbreak shows.

Many persons who speak with a personal knowledge of the West Indies say that events have long been moving up to this catastrophe ; that it was long foreseen ; that it was a mere question of sooner or later ; that the conflict was simply postponed by tact and management ; and that it will again be repeated at no distant day. We have not experience or knowledge sufficient to affirm or deny these allegations. But we feel assured of this. If there is any truth in them, two things are clear. First, that there can be no public opinion in the West Indies ; only heated passion in two hostile camps. Next, that to attempt to govern the West Indies on the principles of Exeter Hall would be as unfair to our white brethren as to govern them on the principles of Colonel Hobbs, Colonel Whitfield, and the West India ensigns would be cruel to our black subjects. Who shall discover the true art of governing the two races? The French treat their free blacks as aliens, amenable to police protection and police supervision. But this cannot now be even tried in English colonies. Such are the fruits of a government founded on a public opinion of the narrowest metropolitan pretensions. The two races are becoming intolerant of each other, and there is no powerful dispassionate mediator between them possessing the requisite knowledge of local habits, relations, and prejudices.

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW 1866,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13129440