Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/229

 Abdur Rahman's son and successor. Meanwhile the imexpected happened. Ayub Khan, Sher All's younger son, who had been holding Herat, took advantage of Stewart's absence, and defeated General Burrows at Mai wand on 27 July 1880. Lord Ripon again showed no wavering. He authorised the march of Roberts from Kabul to Kandahar. The Afghans were routed ; Stewart in September withdrew his troops from Kabul ; and before the year closed Kandahar was evacuated and in due course reunited to Kabul by the Amir. Each step in this policy was fiercely contested at home and in India, but the viceroy carried it out Avithout faltering, and Arithout incurring any of the predicted evil consequences.

The three other main episodes of Ripon's Indian administration — his dealings with the press, his development of schemes of self-government, and the Ilbert bill — call for a more quahfied judgment than Ripon's triumphant policy in Afghanistan. The Vernacular Press Acts, ix. and xvi. of 1878, passed by Lord Lytton's government, were capable of amendment, but to Lord Ripon's strong liberalism they were wholly objectionable as conflicting with British traditions of the freedom of the press, and they were hastily repealed in 1882. Lord Ripon scarcely realised the differences between the conditions attaching to the press in the two countries. The vernacular press of India did not further discussion, but was used by political intriguers to spread false reports and create an attitude of hostility not against a party m the state but against the reign of law and order. None of the effective safeguards which the hostility of public opinion to untruth and extravagance provides in England are available in India. After nearly thirty years' experience, press restrictions 'for the better conduct of the press' were re-imposed by Viscount Morley, a liberal secretary of state for India, in 1910, and Lord Ripon's action in 1882 was proved so far to be too uncompromising. Ripon's efforts to encourage the develop- ment of self-government in India were similarly marred by the tendency to judge India by British standards. The viceroy made clear his point of departure when he annoimced in the 'Gazette of India,' dated 4 Oct. 1882, that ' only by removing the pressure of direct official interference can the people be brought to take sufficient interest in local matters.' In the next few years the provincial governments passed laws entrusting local bodies with education, dispensaries, and the concern of other local requirements, but it was found impossible to expect or seek for self-government in rural or small urban areas without official guidance. The educated classes in India welcomed the reform. But although Ripon gave new force to the transfer of public duties to local boards, little progress was effected, as is showTi by the report of the royal commission on decentralisation presided over in 1907 by Mr. C. E. Hobhouse, a sympathiser with Ripon's aims. Section 806 of the report puts the matter thus : 'Those who expected a complete revolution in existing methods in consequence of Lord Ripon's pronouncement were inevitably doomed to disappointment. The political education of any people must necessarily be slow, and local self-government of the British type could not at once take root in Indian soil.'

In the racial controversy over the 'Ilbert bill' which Ripon's action fanned he showed no better appreciation of Indian conditions. On 23 Feb. 1882 he declared in council that he would 'be very glad if it was possible to place the law in regard to every person not only on the same footing, but to embody it in the very same language whether it relates to Europeans or natives.' At the time the Criminal Procedure Code, which amended and consolidated the law based on Macaiilay's famous Indian Law Commission, was being enacted. By chapter xxxiii. of this Act only magistrates who were justices of the peace, or judges who were European British subjects, or judges of the highest court of appeal, were empowered to try (with jurors or assessors) Europeans and Americans charged with criminal offences. Although there was no general demand for a change of law, on 30 Jan. 1883 Sir Courtenay Ilbert, then legal member, introduced into the council, in the spirit of Lord Ripon's declaration, a bill 'to remove from the Code at once and completely every judicial disqualification which is based merely on race distinctions.' Lord Ripon, in the course of subsequent debates in March 1883, added fuel to the fire by the imputation that the opposition to the bill was 'really opposition to the declared policy of parliament about the admission of natives to the covenanted civil service.' British planters and traders felt that justice and not privilege was at stake. They had no complaint whatever against the admission of Indians by competition. What they feared was trial by inexperienced Indian magistrates. During several months violent and unreasonable speeches and memorials on both