Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/246

232  very much according to the character of its ever-changing leaders. Sir Emerson Tennent has observed that it is "unhappily the tendency of small sections of society to decompose when separated from the great vital mass, as pools stagnate and putrefy when cut off from the invigorating flow of the sea;" and he adds that the process is variable, so that a colonial society which is repulsive to-day may be attractive to-morrow, or a contrary change may take place with one or two departures or new arrivals. The same holds good in India; and though Indian society can boast of some superiority to colonial (a superiority which is amusingly asserted on board mail-steamers), it has very great defects of its own, and in certain circumstances degenerates into the intolerable. One tendency of life in India is to create an immense amount of conceit, and to make men assume airs of superiority, not because of any superiority of mind or character, or on account of great services rendered to the State, but simply because long residence in the country, or some particular district of it, has given them high appointments, or the advantage as regards local knowledge. Then, though military society has many good points, "discipline must be observed;" and it was in perfect good faith, and expressing his own opinion as well as that which he believed to be generally entertained, that an old Indian remarked to me, "We don't think much of any one's opinions here until he is a lieutenant-colonel at least." 0f course in all countries opinions are often measured by the position of the spokesman; but in Europe that is not so much the case as in India, and in our happier climes it is easy to shun the society of snobs, whether social or intellectual, without becoming a social pariah. This social tendency is not corrected, but developed rather than otherwise, by a close bureaucracy such as the Indian civil service — and there is no other element in the community sufficiently strong to correct it; while it is almost justified by the extraordinary effect India has in rapidly producing intense conceit and insufferable presumption among Europeans of a low order of mind and character, whatever classes of the community they may belong to. Nothing struck me mere in that country than the contrast between its elevating and even ennobling effects on those Europeans whose minds were above a certain level, and its exactly contrary effects on almost all those who were below that level. What, then, Indian society has specially to struggle against are two apparently opposite tendencies, — a slavish respect for mere position, and for exceptional power and knowledge in particular directions; and, on the other hand, excessive individual conceit and presumption. But these evil tendencies (which, curiously enough, belong also to the Indian native character) are not opposed in any such way as to counteract each other. On the contrary, they are apt to foster and inflame each other; because the old Indian justly sees that he has opposed to him an immense deal of ignorant presumption which ought to be severely repressed, while the democrat and the griffin instinctively feel that they are oppressed by an amount of tyrannical old fogyism which would not be allowed to exist in any other country. The more acute English travellers see a little of this state of matters; but everything is made as pleasant as possible to travellers in India with good introductions; and it is necessary to reside for some time in the country in order to understand what an absolute nonentity a man is in himself, and how entirely his importance, his accomplishments, his character, his value, and his very raison d'étre, depend on the appointment which he holds. I do not at all wonder at that old sergeant in a very out-of-the-way place in the jungle, who, on being asked what he did there, answered, with some surprise, "Why, sir, I fills the sitivation." In Anglo-India you not only fill the situation; it is the situation that fills you, and makes you what you are, and without which you would immediately collapse.

These observations are necessary to explain the great superiority of Simla society, when I knew it, over the society to be found in nearly all other places in India. That superiority would not be accounted for merely by the number of high officers collected there whom a process of selection had brought to the front. In a community such as that of India, the two strong evil tendencies which I have just noticed as specially existing there, are most effectually held in check when the highest appointments are held by men of high intellect and good disposition, using the latter phrase so as to exclude alike the pharisee and the prodigal. Whenever the leaders of society are essentially commonplace men, whose only claim to distinction is that they fill the situation, society degrades 