Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/877

1885.] Britain will fall back into her old self-confident indifference to everything that concerns her interests outside the British Islands. And even should due precautions be taken to keep Russia in check and prevent her from a second time springing a mine upon us, the rapid development which India has been undergoing under our administration must receive a severe check. Ever since the Mutiny, the question of the defence of our Indian empire has happily been a matter of secondary consideration. Now it must take the first place in the mind of every Government in that country. The increase of the Indian army – the extension of our frontier to the Helmund – the construction of arsenals, military railways, and strategical works, – will now swallow up the larger portion of the revenue which we have hitherto been able to expend upon works of utility and in the improvement of the people. We shall have to largely increase our native forces just at the time when we are beginning to discover that the old recruiting-grounds where we were wont to raise such excellent soldiers are practically worked out, and that civilisation and prosperity are rendering the former military classes indifferent to the attractions of a warlike career. Added to this, we shall have to encounter the doubts that are being fast engendered in the minds of the native masses as to our ability to hold the country should Russia choose to lay her hands upon it, – a sentiment which will create new and most serious difficulties for our administration. We have also a source of new danger introduced in times of popular excitement; for however sensible the natives may be of the greater beneficence of British rule, political experience clearly tells us that wisdom is not proof against the temptations of passion, and that at such times the sympathy of a rival Power is readily had recourse to. Our ability to influence the natives will henceforth be greatly impaired; and the exercise of our power over them, which has always been for their benefit, must in future be restricted by the feeling that there is a powerful neighbouring State ready to turn any popular grievances among our native subjects to our own disadvantage. Our career in India, until a few months ago so bright and promising, has been suddenly overcast with the cloud of a future full of difficulties and dangers. And why? Merely because England chooses to commit the destinies of her empire to the guidance of a demagogue instead of a statesman. The sole ground for hoping that we may yet be able to save our position in Asia, and re-establish our credit in Europe, is to be found in the Premier's own intimation that he is "a person whose future intervention in political conflicts is much more likely to be measured by weeks than by months, and certainly by months more than by years."