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"None can say or compute what a vital detriment throughout the British empire is in such an example [as that afforded by the exertions of the Jamaica committee] set to all the colonies and governors the British empire has."

Further particulars respecting the Eyre Defence Committee have interest, as bearing indirectly upon the opinion we are maintaining— that a relatively deficient sensitiveness to the feelings and interests of other races and of other classes is bound up with that conservatism of feeling of which the natural obverse is more or less orthodoxy in opinion. A conspicuous feature was the large number of clerical names included in the committee-list, as also of other (largely aristocratic) names identified directly and indirectly with the maintenance of the current creed. Meanwhile, there was but one evolutionist on the committee; so that the immense predominance of anti-evolution opinion was a trait of the Eyre Defence Committee, as zemarkable as was the converse a trait of the opposing committee. Any one who wanted facts showing the connection between evolutionism and humanity could not find more striking ones than those furnished by this Jamaica business, which Mr. Goldwin Smith names as showing the connection between evolutionism and inhumanity.

As further illustrating the same relative tendency, may be noted on the list of subscribers to the "Eyre Defence Fund" sundry anonymous donors who, with their contribution, sent in their reasons for subscribing. Here are some of them :

1. "One whose sister was massacred at Cawnpore." (Here we have apparent vindictiveness against the negro for the misdeed of the Hindoo. One dark skin is to reap the penalty due to another dark skin.)

2. "One who detests the principles of Bright, Gladstone, and Russell." (This speaks eloquently for itself.)

3. "One who perceives the necessity of firmness and vigour in those in authority." (But overlooks apparently the more abiding necessity of patience and equity.)

4. "A lady who has suffered by the Jamaica insurrection, and believes Governor Eyre has saved Jamaica to his ungrateful country." (Personal retaliation, tinged by territorial feeling.)

It would be unfair to quote these individual examples as indicative of the feeling generally at work among the defenders of Eyre's "Black Policy," were there elsewhere any evidence of larger feeling having prompted that defence. In the total absence of such evidence, however, these pitiful published confessions may well stand as, so far, confirmatory of the charge of relative inhumanity here maintained against average orthodoxy. Whereas the principle which the scientific sections of the community invariably gave as ground for their sympathy with the negroes was simply that of merciful fair-play, the principle leant upon by the Eyre Defence

agitators took uniformly the lower and narrower ethical ground of "British interests" in one shape or another. Examples have not been wanting in later years, similarly illustrative of the Conservative tendency to ridicule as preposterous in matters of foreign and social policy any practical application of the belief in human brotherhood. Orthodox Conservatism is inclined to keep its theory of world-wide humanity for its wife and children to listen to, duly couched in Jewish phraseology, on Sunday. It seldom evinces a frank belief in it as a sound principle for nations to live by, and shows hesitation to countenance it as the basis of any large political measures. It is in the opposite camp that we oftenest find men boldly trusting in "human brotherhood" as in the main a sound workaday principle; even to the extent of hazarding its immediately-disadvantageous political issues. There are exceptions on both sides, of course; but the relative balance of feeling exists as here indicated.

There is, we say, abundant evidence. Mr. Goldwin Smith, however, filches for his own theory exactly such instances as appear to us to tell most strongly against that theory. He cites the injustice of British arms in Afghanistan, and British cruelties in Zululand, as alike the offspring of scientific belief. Writing in 1879, during the ministry of Lord Beaconsfield, he remarks respecting the first:

"It is now averred by the Prime Minister of England that the real object of the [Afghan] war was a scientific frontier, and that Afghanistan was invaded, the villages burned, and the people killed in execution of that policy."

Are we to infer from this passage that to Lord Beaconsfield and his party-that is, to the main body of English Conservatism and its concomitant English orthodoxy-we should look for the most consistent exhibition of the very doctrine of which that party contains the leading repudiators? Was it science truly so-called, or "science falsely so-called," that thus claimed a frontier for our territory at the expense of international sympathy and of equity? If Lord Beaconsfield's view of the matter was the scientific one, what was that of Mr. Frederic Harrison, who, in his stirring papers on "Martial Law in Kabul," entered earnest protest against our Afghan misdoings?

"By what title (asks Mr. Harrison) [is it that we are] treating the Afghan people as rebels? By what law are our generals hanging men on charge of leading the enemy's forces to battle? And whence comes our right to kill priests who incite their people to resist us?"

The protest concludes with an indignant declaration that we will never accept the English crown as that of a "lawless, conquering, blood-stained Empire."

As to the cruelties in Zululand, Mr. Goldwin Smith makes much

of the opportunity taken by an English illustrated journal to create fun for us at home by depicting the bodily tortures of Zulu prisoners in the hands of British tars.

"It may (he says) pretty safely be said that these pictures, in which the inferior races are treated simply as game for the British hunter, would not have been produced for the amusement of Englishmen fifty, or even thirty years ago; and that their appearance now denotes a change in the mind of the nation."

Once more the question is unavoidable. Why, in the alleged existence of a causal connection between modern British philosophy and modern British cruelty, do the cruelty and the philosophy show such a perverse tendency to appear apart, and to repudiate one another ?

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That of late years there has been a lamentable return on the part of England to violent and predatory dealings with weaker peoples we are all too well aware. But, so far from such dealings having arisen out of, or been supported by, science, it cannot be too often repeated that we find the whole weight of scientific sympathies thrown into resisting and deploring them. A contrast is everywhere conspicuous between the passivity of the clerical body in presence of our various atrocities, and the active opposition of the rationalist bodies and their leaders. Next to nothing was said in orthodox quarters respecting our unjust breach of the treaty the Ashantees, or the disgraceful acquittal against evidence of the man who shot three native children in Natal. The smashing of Coomassee was rejoiced over by a leading weekly organ of Christianity, while nothing was said by ministers of religion about brutalities committed by our officers in Perak. Meanwhile, I have quoted Mr. Frederic Harrison on the Afghan doings; now hear another rationalist on our exploits in South Africa. One of the earliest protests against the Zulu war came from Mr. John Morley, when in two articles in this Review 2 he condemned British conduct in the matter of that war as one of the worst crimes that have been perpetrated in our history." After commenting on the " "impious and sanguinary" utterances of an orthodox preacher in Grahamstown (to which utterances on the British position, rights, and duties in Zululand Sir Bartle Frere had drawn the attention of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach as the "outspoken opinions of a thoughtful, religious man"), Mr. Morley remarks

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"It would only be too easy to . . . . make mock at the priests of the creed of brotherly love.... wading through slaughter to a pulpit to preach how blessed are the peacemakers. But the spirit of mockery dies away shame and humiliation that we . . . . are now once more embarking very course of policy towards a lower race which from our childhood upwards we have all been taught to abhor in the Spanish and Portuguese tyrants of the

(1) Atlantic Monthly, October, 1879 (p. 639).

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sixteenth century.'. . . . Even assuming it to be the destiny of England to supersede the poor germs of civilisation among these less fortunate members of the human family, it is not by the violent and precipitate annexation of kingdoms and provinces that such an end is to be gained. . . . . Patience, caution, moderation-but before all else patience-these are the key-words of a true policy.".

Again,3

"It is for the people of England to decide whether . . . . the old realm which was once the home of justice and freedom is to be transformed into a PirateEmpire, with the Cross hypocritically chalked upon its black flag."

Such is the moral colour of modern philosophical heterodoxy, and so fast as a creed approaches the scientific standard, until it reaches that standard completely, does it show increased readiness to throw forth humanely vigorous action. Scarcely an English evolutionist or positivist of eminence has held his peace in face of our recent inhumanities in Africa and Asia; and the leaders and members of heterodox congregations, secularist and theological, have been almost equally earnest in the same cause. Public meetings are addressed, and efforts set afoot in repudiation of British atrocities by the politicians who are more or less formally detached from all orthodox churches; printed protests of the same character bear such signatures as those of Herbert Spencer, John Morley, Frederic Harrison, and Dr. Congreve; and from heterodox bodies emanate nearly all the petitions to Parliament to check governmental bullyings and colonial aggressions. But while rationalism of all grades, and apparently in proportion to its degree, thus evinces a leaning to national generosity and humane principle, orthodoxy is naturally bent chiefly on its own propagation, and that of British rule as conducive to its own propagation, among the weak tribes into whose midst it carries at once arms and Bibles.

Nor was the spirit of Christianity at the seat of war more consistent, or more inclined to make home-thrusts at actual wrong-doing. One Cape paper stated that "while the colony is making strenuous efforts to disarm the natives, the missionaries are giving away guns of a superior sort in order to induce the chiefs to allow them to pursue their labours in peace." That the gospel of good-will and peace on earth may be verbally preached with ease and safety to the preacher, it is to be practically annulled beforehand by bribing with arms of war the heathen he seeks to attract! Truly, in face of this, one may long for the time when religion shall no longer have the power to paralyse the morality it professes to patronise. Again, also from South Africa :

"The Christian Express reports fighting amongst the natives in the interior, in which some of the mission people were engaged."

(1) Fortnightly Review, March, 1879 (p. 350).
(2) Ibid., p. 352.

(3) Ibid., April, 1879, p. 562.

Thus while orthodoxy at home was largely in favour of the war, orthodoxy on the spot fanned its fury.

We would not overlook or misappreciate those pleasant but too rare instances where ministers of the English Church have risen above the general current of orthodox passivity, and have spoken bravely against recent cases of inhumane British policy. Still less can be forgotten the earnest protests entered against the South African and Afghan wars by Protestant Nonconformists, who made common cause with rationalists, at the time of the last general election, in stoutly repudiating those wars, and the iniquities they entailed, as a disgrace to British arms. But the fact remains that whereas the body of orthodoxy and the body of its chief upholders have publicly shown relative indifference to the ferocities of English rule, and have again and again been, for the sake of British interests, found passive in face of the enormities committed in name of those interests; the body of scientific heterodoxy, and nearly all its chief leaders, have been invariably found on the side of humanity, and relatively eager in its defence. And it is here maintained that the contrary charge brought against science by Mr. Goldwin Smith is, in face of this fact, as unfair as it is unfounded.

L. S. BEVINGTON.

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