by John Buchan
“At last,” said the Duchess, “we have got a proposal with which I can cordially agree. I thought when you began to talk about labour you were going to defend things like the importation of coolies into South Africa. You know how much I and many other good Imperialists were distressed by that.”
“You are not going to escape, Susan,” said Lady Lucy, smiling. “Lady Warcliff has been talking about English labour, and I have something to say about the other kinds which the Empire has to show. She pleads for greater elasticity for labour at home, but she has only touched on one part of a very large question. If we owe duties to English labour, we owe duties also to every man under our rule who works with his hands. You will find labour problems as difficult and as urgent as your English question in many parts of the Empire — in India, in the Far East, in the West Indies, in most parts of Africa. You have great tracts, like Southern India, which are so thronged with human beings that there is no room to live; and you have places like the Sudan and the Transvaal, and even this neighbourhood, where the land is far richer than the human population it supports. If we take up the task of government in a scientific spirit, it is surely our business to fit the people to the land. I agree with Lady Warcliff that nothing is so much wanted as mobility in labour. The old idea was that the labouring man was rooted by Providence in the soil where he was born. He might go away if he pleased, but the desire was thought to indicate frivolity. The notion that the State should encourage him to leave would have made the honest Benthamite blush. Happily that frame of mind is gone for ever. Where we see men suffocated for lack of space, and great spaces barren for lack of men, we are not to be kept from adopting the common-sense remedy by any laissez-faire croakings.”
The Duchess saw danger ahead and made haste to meet it half-way.
“I have no fault to find with that, so far as it goes. If the Sudan can support ten millions and has got only three, then by all means import the natives of Southern India who, you say, are too many for their land to feed. Or let them come and cultivate the marshy coastlands near Mombasa, where the white man cannot live. All that is legitimate emigration, and no Liberal could object to it. What I am opposed to is the shifting of masses of men about the world, like chattels, at the will of private employers. You exploit their labour and pack them home again, and the main inducement to emigrate — the chance of a new home — is denied them.”
“And yet,” said Lady Lucy, “I do not see why we should subscribe to the mystical doctrine that emigration is a good thing if we carry it out to the full, but very bad if we stop halfway. I can imagine so many cases where the half would be more than the whole — where, indeed, the whole would be a positive blunder. There are districts in India where the people are landowners and farmers. What they need is a little capital to buy more land or stock, and so enable themselves to make a steady living. They have no desire to settle abroad for good, and they have no need to do so. But if they can give their labour for a few years at good wages to some country which wants it, why should they be prevented? Or you may have the case of a country such as this or South Africa, which is naturally a white man’s country, and which we all hope some day to see filled with white settlers; but some urgent temporary work has to be done — a railway built or new mines opened — and we must import labour at once and in large quantities. Is there any reason why coolies should not be brought in on contract, paid well for their work, and shipped back again? They are not compelled to come, and they are paid for coming; their coming benefits both themselves and the land, but their remaining would in no way benefit the land. In such a case surely we can have restricted emigration without breaking any of the Commandments.”
The Duchess looked round the company in despair. “What has come over my sex?” she asked. “According to Caroline the chief weapon of Imperialism is the rack or the thumbscrew; according to Margaret, the lethal chamber; and now, according to Lady Lucy, it is the chain and the sjambok we must really look to. I begin to be afraid that our enemies are right, and that we have got a taint of the later Roman Empire in our blood. As for this restricted emigration, I refuse to distinguish it from slavery. It is temporary slavery, to be sure, but the quality is the same.”
“If you will really think what you mean by ‘slavery,’ Susan, you will change your mind. The word is like so many others—’despotism,”force,’
‘filibustering,’
‘perpetual tutelage,’ which the heavy guns of our opponents fire daily, — it looks impressive in the air, but when it strikes it is found to be filled with sawdust. The word is formidable only when it is not examined. If you mean by it ‘discipline,’ then all types of organised action are slavery. A coolie who contracts to come here and work on a railway or mine, undertakes to do his work under such conditions as his employers prescribe. So long as these conditions are not such as to offend public morals, the men who organise it have an ample right to say what the particular work demands. The State says, further, that it does not wish these coolies to remain in the country. Is not the State the best judge of what the country requires? Is there anything immoral in a country shutting its doors against a special kind of emigrant? You say that it is wrong for a State to exploit the labour of these emigrants and yet to refuse them permanent citizenship. That, I confess, is a doctrine beyond my comprehension. You may as well say that I have no right to buy provisions from the Stores, when I prefer to order my wine elsewhere.”
“I do not feel so strongly opposed to State action,” said the Duchess. “After all, the State has certain rights, and its motives are disinterested, and its oversight will be rigorous. If the indentured labourers were only imported for public works, I should not complain. It is when they are brought in for the use of private firms that the taint of slavery appears.”
Lady Lucy laughed. “Well, let us argue in the style of the Platonic dialogues. How, and by means of what qualities, are we to define State action? And shall we include municipal action in this category? And if State action is the action of the organised community for the good of the community, on what principle are we to exclude the action of public companies who control the main industries of the State? And again—”
“For goodness’ sake stop, Lucy!” said the Duchess good-humouredly. “I never could bear the Socratic method. Its little pistol-shot arguments give me a headache. I daresay there is something in what you say. Slavery may be an inaccurate term to describe what I so much dislike, but in any case it involves a perpetual danger of slavery. If you tie up by contract the liberty of an individual for a term, you pave the way for restricting it without any contract for life. It is the thin end of the wedge.”
“I shouldn’t use that phrase, my dear,” said Lord Appin solemnly. “It is the worst of our parliamentary clichés, and, besides, Hardcastle has made it comic for ever. I was privileged to hear his great speech in the Lords against the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill. He declared that he did not object to the present measure, which was merely permissive. ‘But,’ said Hardcastle, ‘it is the thin end of the wedge. Soon it will be compulsory, and it is my misfortune that my dear wife has left me without any taste for her family.’”
Lady Lucy, who at most times spoke little, had been so stirred by the Duchess’s criticism that she had risen to her feet, and now addressed the company from beside Carey on the hearthrug.
“Susan does not mean what she says. She is only repeating the arguments of her party, like a pious brigand who mumbles a paternoster before robbing a coach. Her last phrase is typical of a frame of mind which is very common and very hopeless. You are not to embark upon a scheme, however clearly you define its limits, because of its possible maleficent extension. I cannot understand the creed. If we believed in it all energy and progress would cease. We should sit like Buddha, twirling our thumbs, afraid to move a muscle lest we blundered. Not that any one seriously holds this faith. They imagine they do, because they are confused and slack, and have never taken the pains to think out what words mean. That i
s one class of my opponents. The others frankly detest the Empire, and hide their bias under the cloak of humanitarian tenderness. They hate colonial indentured labour, as Macaulay’s Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it does harm to the labourer, but because it does good to the colony.
“The honest souls who dread the bugbear of slavery need not concern themselves. Slavery, which means that one man is at the mercy of another’s caprices, will never raise its head again.
Even though it had done no ill to the slave, it was economically and morally ruinous for the master. No I what we have to do is to save men from the far more relentless tyranny of circumstance. The bondage of things, believe me, is more cruel than the bondage of men. I call a dock-labourer in Poplar, who sees no hope for himself or his children, a slave. I call men slaves who, whether they own their land or not, are living always on the brink of starvation. But I call him a free man who sells his labour under contract for a term of years that he may earn enough to make his livelihood secure. I grant you that liberty is beyond price; but, like Burke, I want to see a ‘manly, moral, and regulated liberty.’ How often must it be repeated that freedom is not the absence of restraints, but a willing acceptance of them, because their purpose is understood and approved.”
Lady Lucy’s quiet voice had risen to that pitch of fervour which betrays the natural orator. As she stopped, she looked with some little embarrassment at the Duchess, and with a sudden movement sank on the floor beside her chair and took a hand in hers.
“Please forgive me for scolding you, Susan dear! But you know you deserved it. You have still got the General Election in your ears, and somehow its odious phrases make a fury of me. I don’t blame any one for talking nonsense at home, but one must leave it behind at Musuru.”
“I am not convinced,” said the Duchess. “Your principle may be right, but all your applications are wrong. And I am far from being sure about your principle. Without being a dogmatic individualist, I protest against the idea of the State incurring such vast responsibilities as providing employers with labour and moving populations about the world. I admit that the province of the State has been widened, but such an insane stretching of boundaries seems to me to court disaster.”
“Your fears always make me nervous, Susan,” said Carey, “for you have an uncanny instinct for being right. But I think I can persuade—”
He was not permitted, for the Duchess rose and held before him protesting hands. “No, Francis, you shall not lecture me. And I promise in return to talk no more platform stuff. Besides, I am to be left alone after to-morrow with you, and you will have every chance to convert me.... Dear, dear, how solemn we all look! A Social Science Congress is out of place in a turquoise boudoir. That little Watteau shepherdess looks ready to weep with boredom. If there were such things as card-tables in this room I might think of bridge.”
CHAPTER IX
THE whole party, men and women, breakfasted at the same hour next morning, most of them with that look of mingled unrest and high spirits which marks the expectant traveller. All their clothes spoke of the road, though the various styles showed that that road was not the same for every one. Those who were to stay behind — the Duchess, Lord Appin, and Lord Launceston — had the bland air of ease and proprietorship which all steadfast things wear in a changing world. The clock-work régime of Musuru made bustle impossible. There was no running about of maids and valets, no ringing of bells and confused directions. Carey consulted a paper in his hand, and now and then gave an order to a noiseless servant. The vast size of the house prevented the guests from catching any unsettling intimations of departure.
“We are now,” said the Duchess, to whom breakfast was a cheerful meal, “about to begin the inter-act in our comedy. I should like to know, before we scatter, what point we have reached in our discussions. We have talked about a great many different things, and on the whole I think we have been fair.”
“When Susan calls any one fair,” said Lord Appin, “she means that he is a little biassed in her own favour.”
“Of course,” said the Duchess, “I have that complete candour which does not mind confessing a slight lack of it. We won’t quarrel about words. We have examined home politics and found them largely at war about irrelevant issues. For myself, I think that we overstated the case, but I have no complaint against our positive conclusion — that Imperialism meant the treatment of all our problems on a wider basis. Then we took up certain questions in detail. Some, such as the kind of imperial constitution we must look forward to, and the kind of administration the Tropics will require, were imperial questions in the strictest sense — new conundrums which the fact of empire calls into being. Others, such as the proper way of remedying our social disorders, were ordinary home problems discussed from the imperialist standpoint. Am I right, Francis? You always said I had a logical mind.”
Carey nodded, and the Duchess continued.
“I don’t want to be unreasonable, but it seems to me that the subject wants a broader handling. I am old-fashioned enough to believe in principles. I want the principles, and not the details, of empire. Stop me if I am talking nonsense, please, for I never pretended to be a philosopher. But tell me, some one, if the orthodox way is not to get the general principles clear and leave the treatment of specific points to be deduced from them. Hugh, will you get me some cold partridge?”
“My complaint,” said Mr Wakefield, “is just the opposite — I am in no great hurry for principles. A vague philosophy of empire seems to me of the slenderest value at the present moment. Wait till we have penetrated some distance into the new country before we begin to map it. It is surely our business to have a clear policy on the different imperial questions, — that is to say, on every phase of our political life, — and having got that, to consider the best way and means of forcing it upon the world. That is the omission which I complain of. We all know roughly what we mean by Imperialism. What I want to know is how to make the ideal a fact, to exchange Imperialism for Empire. We have discussed most of the great practical questions except that of the tariff — and I am content to leave that alone for the moment. But how are we to set to work to enforce our solution?”
“If you know what Imperialism is,” said Lord Appin, “you know more than I do. I don’t think your complaint can be admitted, Wakefield. As Carey declared a fortnight ago, we are here to get our minds clear. We are not in office with a solemn mandate to reconstruct the Empire. Our business is to create opinion. Our works, to adopt the old distinction, must be light-giving before they can be fruit-bearing.”
“Then what better are we than other framers of barren Utopias?” asked Mr Wakefield, in the act of assaulting a ham.
“The distinction is easy. A Utopia is a scheme of things which is possible but not practicable. There is nothing in it inherently inconceivable, but it demands a change of conditions so complete as to be beyond reasonable hope. The empire we wish is not only possible, but practicable. We have all the elements of it before us. It only requires a slight adjustment of things as they are to make it a reality. If, then, it needs no magician’s wand to change our dream into fact, but only a touch here and there, surely it is our first duty to see that the dream is clear and complete. Once that is accomplished, once something has been prepared which the mind of our people will accept as its creed, then with an easy conscience we can leave the rest to the hacks and journeymen of politics.”
“There’s something in what you say,” Mr Wakefield admitted. “I don’t ask for officebearers, a committee, a list of members, and a telegraphic address. There is a foolish matter-of-factness as well as a wise. But I think we should turn our attention to methods as well as to ideals. All about us lies a stubborn and unregenerate world. Though we speak with the tongues of men and angels we shall not be listened to, unless we prepare for ourselves a hearing.”
“Again, I say, that it is not our business. Imperialism is not a propaganda which needs to be canvassed like an election policy. It will find acc
eptation when it is acceptable — not before. Our trouble is that ours is still a cryptic faith, unformulated and incoherent. Our task is to bring its meaning to light, first for our own sakes and then for our people’s. One man with a clear mind is more of a dynamic force than a dozen well-organised guilds for the dissemination of platitudes. When our symposium is at an end and we go back to the world, then by all means let us talk about methods. But do not let us confuse ourselves here by any obeisance to that intolerable fool, the ‘practical man.’”
“That is all very well,” said the Duchess, “but nobody has answered my question. I am content that we should discuss empire without any eye to the ways and means of speedy realisation. But I am not content that we should settle isolated details and leave our principles all vague and inconclusive.”
“L’ineptie,” Lady Flora quoted wickedly, “consiste à vouloir conclure.”
The Duchess laughed. “A very apposite quotation, my dear, but I am not to be silenced by a tag from a French novelist. Francis, give me some comfort.”
“I am quite ready to defend our course,” said Carey. “A question so vast and so subtle as ours — one, too, which has a bearing on every interest of our mortal life — cannot be treated in a mechanical way. It would be easy for us to pass a string of dapper resolutions, but, if we did, we should leave things as we found them. Principles and axioms we have, but they will only emerge when we have re-thought the conditions of our new world. We must creep before we can walk, and feel our way humbly in the mysterious twilight of dawn. We shall make many mistakes in that half-light, for the objects are blurred and the morning haze is still on the hills: but at least we can learn something of the nature of the land, and we can tell where the east lies. All of us have slightly different standpoints, different principles, and different prejudices. When a man lays down a dogma he is bound to colour it in a large degree by his temperamental bias. The colouring is probably unconscious, but the result is that truths appear, not in their white light, but all shot across with rays from the thinker’s personality. There is a vast deal of irrelevant stuff in them, which is dear to some minds and antipathetic to others. Now, the best way, in my opinion, to get rid of this embarrassing surplus is to let the various temperaments conflict, for out of such conflict emerges the ultimate agreement. Ideals expressed crudely and summarily in conversation may be far from the perfection of a dogma patiently elaborated in the study. But they will have the merit of life, and the strife of living things always bears fruit in the end. Our object, as I said before, is to get our minds clear, not to frame a political catechism. And if this is so, then the minds must speak in their own accents, for it is only when we have understood wherein we differ from each other that we can realise wherein we agree. There is a method which philosophers call dialectic — the attainment of harmony by the reaction upon each other of opposing theories — and the plan we are following is in its way a homely kind of dialectic. Clearly we could not begin by laying down principles, for they would have been intelligible only to the man who laid them down. But at the start we found we were agreed, not on our axioms, but on our attitude. Imperialism, we decided, was the realisation of new conditions for all our problems, an enlarged basis, and fuller data. We did not attempt to find an answer to any of the great political questions: we only indicated the lines on which the answer must be sought. Imperialism, so ran our conclusion, is a spiritual change. We next looked at some of the simpler results which flow from the acceptance of the fact of empire, — especially the need for a new machinery of State, — and we applied the conception to our eternal labour problem, not to solve it, but to see how far it lit the path to a solution. But the kernel of our inquiry still awaits us, though we have cracked the shell. We have all by this time got a rough idea of what is the general meaning of the imperial attitude. But we must understand more fully the nature of the spiritual change we have talked of. I suggest, therefore, that we look at some of the great compartments of life and see how our conception will apply. It is a political conception, remember, but since politics in their new meaning are so intimately inwoven with life, we may learn something of its meaning by examining its bearing on art and conduct. And then, having got some understanding of the concrete significance of our ideal, we can hazard a fuller definition. So you shall have your principles, Susan, but at the end instead of at the beginning.”