CHAPTER XXII

WHAT INDIA PAID

India pays for English Hospitality—Royal English generosity to India paid for by India—How to deal with an angry opponent—Indian Finance and the poor Ryot—Gratitude from India—How Fawcett prepared his Speeches.

[Sidenote: The Sultan’s Ball.]

The purpose of this chapter is not to comment on the condition of India, and of its government in Fawcett’s time, but through these new labours of his to know him better, to show how gallantly he fought for a poor remote people, and how poignantly he brought their needs before their English fellow-subjects. It was a work he was peculiarly fitted to do. His vigorous action, his picturesque personality, his gift for singling out a weak point, perhaps trifling in itself, and making it a vivid symbol of wrong policy, all helped Englishmen unfamiliar with India to realise better their responsibilities to a country in whose destinies they were so closely concerned.

Fawcett once said that in his undergraduate days he had picked up a book on India which attracted him to the subject. His comments in his schoolboy essays have been noted. It is possible that Mill and other friends of his closely connected with India stimulated his interest. He referred to the country a good deal in his _Manual of Political Economy_.

He first dealt with Indian affairs publicly in 1867, and in most characteristic fashion. The Sultan of Turkey was about to visit England, and it was proposed to give a ball in his honour at the India Office. Fawcett demanded who was to foot the bill. He was told that India was to pay for this courtesy offered to the Sultan by the British, because the Sultan had been courteous in the matter of telegraphic communication between India and Europe.

[Sidenote: India pays for English Hospitality.]

Though Mill urged Fawcett not to protest, as there were greater abuses to be found, Fawcett could not quiet his resentment at this unfair distribution of the burden. Had not England benefited equally by the telegraphic communication, and should it not at least pay equally? So, when a motion was made for the list of invitations, with the usual Parliamentary pleasantries about the unfair selection of guests, Fawcett rose with true reluctance to strike a discordant note. He urged that the really important question was to determine by what justice the Secretary for India could tax the people of India for this entertainment. It might be proper for the officials themselves to give the entertainment. But why should the toiling peasant pay for it? At that very time there was famine in India, and the Indian press complained of the slowness of relief measures. It would have new occasion for sarcasm, when a part of the much-needed Indian revenue was voted for an entertainment of smart folk in London.

His protest against this ‘masterpiece of meanness,’ as he afterwards called it, had little effect for the time being. But it aroused the attention of many in India, and began to make known to them the man whom they learned to call almost affectionately the ‘Member for India.’

[Sidenote: An Insolent Meddler.]

When presenting a petition to the House of Commons from European residents and natives of India, who complained of the expenditure on public works and asked for greater economy, Fawcett moved that a commission be sent to India to obtain evidence on the spot—a motion that he afterwards withdrew. During the debate arising out of his motion, he was attacked with such asperity and lack of civility by one of the Under Secretaries of State, that it aroused the protest of other members. Fawcett was content to reply with a very characteristic maxim. ‘Five years’ experience in the House,’ he said, ‘had taught him that a member was always right in bringing forward a question, when the fact of his bringing it forward caused the minister concerned to lose his temper.’ On another occasion the same antagonist warned Fawcett that his love of competition was becoming a fetish. But Fawcett smilingly retaliated, ‘Beware of the fetish of officialism.’ Good advice for many!

Fawcett’s stand from the first was taken so surely and firmly, that his ground could not be cut from under him. His success was merely a question of work and time. Part of his power lay in his frank realisation of his own limitations.

[Sidenote: Supporting a family on fourpence halfpenny a day.]

He had no special knowledge of Indian religion and customs, and was not competent to judge questions of internal policy. But the financial relations between England and India, as well as the methods of dealing with finance in India itself, were well within the compass of his clear mind. With these he proposed to deal exhaustively. He knew whether the balance-sheets shown by Indian statesmen were intelligible or not, whether charges made to India were just, and he set himself with a will to study these questions. And to them he knew how to give a most intimately personal touch. He was an untravelled man, and lived within the isolation of his blindness. But he had the great gift of realising habitually the existence of the world beyond his experience. He made England understand that India is no rich country from the Arabian Nights, but a poor country, where the ryot, the peasant of India, had but fourpence halfpenny a day to keep himself and his family, where taxes were increased only with great hardship to the poor, and where of all places money must not be wasted.

In 1870, in a long and technical speech, he criticised the Indian Budget. He complained that it was brought on so late in the session that there was no time for proper discussion, and urged that a committee on Indian finance should be appointed. In this speech, which showed his careful study of the whole Budget, he singled out one item for especial scorn. The Queen’s second son, the Duke of Edinburgh, had recently journeyed through India, and had distributed royal gifts amounting in value to £10,000. These had been paid for out of the Indian revenues, that is to say, by the Indian taxpayers themselves!

The Prime Minister agreed that the Indian Budget should be presented earlier in the session, and the next year adopted Fawcett’s proposal to appoint a committee on Indian finance. It sat for four years, and Fawcett was a hard-working member of it, and a most effective one.

The committee, urged by Fawcett, asked for native witnesses, and two Hindoos were sent to England to give evidence, and their expenses were paid by the Government.

Mr. Nadabhai Naoroji, one of them, said that he wrote a letter telling of the evidence which he had to give, and then appeared before the Finance Committee. The chairman was not sympathetic, and made things as uncomfortable as possible for him. But when Fawcett, with whom Naoroji had discussed matters previously, undertook the examination, by a series of apt questions he brought out all the distinguished Hindoo had to say. Mr. Naoroji adds: ‘This was an instance of the justice and fearlessness with which he wanted to treat this country. As I saw him pleading our cause, I felt awe and veneration as for a superior being.’

[Sidenote: Grateful messages from India.]

In Miss Maria Fawcett’s dining-room there hangs at this day a long hand-written document, with a beautifully illuminated gold and coloured border. It was sent to her brother from a remote city in India in 1873, to thank him for the work he had done. Too long to quote in full, a sentence from it may show how Fawcett was regarded in India. ‘We view with feelings of inexpressible delight your efforts to enlighten your countrymen of the wants and grievances of the millions of Her Majesty’s subjects living in a country so far from the seat of government, and our feeling of admiration is heightened into that of reverence on learning that you are labouring in this cause of philanthropy under great disadvantages, among which the great physical disability which Providence has pleased to impose upon you is much to be regretted.’

Distinguished now as an able critic on Indian finance, Fawcett had an extensive correspondence with residents of India, and with members of the Indian Civil Service, and neglected no opportunity to increase his knowledge of Indian affairs.

Appreciative resolutions were sent to him from many native Indian associations. At a meeting in Calcutta an address was voted to him and also one to ‘the Mayor of Brighton thanking the constituency for returning such a worthy representative and disinterested friend of India.’ He was frequently begged to present petitions stating the grievances of the native and non-official community.

He helped privately, as well as publicly, as many a poor Indian student or petitioner came to know. When, however, Fawcett was urged to represent the grievances of certain Indian rulers, he refused, saying quaintly that ‘he was too poor a man to have anything to do with princes.’

[Sidenote: An Optimist.]

Mr. Justice Scott said, speaking of the ideal for which Fawcett worked: ‘It is not enough for us Englishmen to say that we have given to India order, peace, security and justice, roads, railroads, and other material benefits of Western civilisation, but it should be our duty to ourselves and in co-operation with the people of India in the great task of education, private, social and political, never to rest content till every individual of the teeming masses of India can take an intelligent part as a citizen in the management of their own concerns. This is a great idea. It may seem the Utopian dream of an optimist. Mr. Fawcett was no doubt an optimist.’

Fawcett most powerfully influenced people by his speeches. His appearance was arresting and interesting, while his brave disregard of his blindness claimed instant sympathy and admiration. His voice, which was unusually powerful, softened in tone with years, and his language grew less severe; he uttered each word clearly, and what he said was clearly thought out. What he wanted was never for himself. What he fought for was invariably to help some one less fortunate, less free, less happy, than the blind man who pleaded so earnestly.

He delivered two speeches in 1872 and 1873 on the Indian Budgets of those years which an adversary said ‘he considered to be the most remarkable intellectual efforts he had ever heard.’ Of course Fawcett, unlike other speakers, had no notes to help him, yet he gave an exposition of complex questions with a clearness which might have raised the envy of the most accomplished Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Sidenote: How Fawcett prepared his Speeches.]

The way he prepared his speeches is interesting. First, he would master the vital facts and figures he wanted. Then he would press into his service some friend well up on the subject with which he wished to deal, and together they would go over the ground until Fawcett felt that the facts were arranged so as to express most clearly and pithily his contention.

Lucid arrangement helped his memory. His object was primarily to be clear, to say a thing as well as he could. He did not hesitate to repeat the same illustrations and statements, and paid little attention to rhetoric, epigram or elegance. He wished to hammer certain leading principles into people’s heads, and he did this so effectively that they stuck there, and he pressed his points so vividly and insistently that he made his audiences, no matter where he found them, usually become his supporters, and even workers for his policy.

On one occasion Fawcett spoke on India for nearly two hours. He had the House absolutely in his hand the whole of that time, and never once had to hark back. The figures that he dealt with were exceedingly complicated and numerous. Later an M.P. congratulated him and expressed his surprise at his wonderful memory. Fawcett, with his habitual modesty, said, ‘There is nothing strange about it. You know I see the thing mentally as I suppose you see whatever you are looking upon now; really that is the difference.’ The M.P. replied, ‘Yes, but it doesn’t account for it at all. I see and forget—you see and don’t forget, there’s the difference.’

[Sidenote: Sympathy from Suffering.]

A Cambridge professor said of Fawcett when he began to make those remarkable speeches on Indian affairs: ‘We, I think, were mainly struck with the extraordinary intellectual feats that they were for a man under his calamity; but the effect produced in India was of a different and profounder kind. There was the sense of the largeness of heart of the statesman who had known suffering, and a gratitude for his broad sympathy with all whom he could protect against what he conceived to be oppression of any kind.’

[Sidenote: No time in Parliament for India.]

He did not hesitate to speak on Indian affairs to his constituency, and to ask of them their sympathy and interest. At a meeting in Brighton he said that the most trumpery question ever brought before Parliament, a wrangle over the purchase of a picture or a road through a park excited more interest than the welfare of the many millions of our Indian fellow-subjects. Constituencies were said to take no interest in the subject. They would be some day forced to take an interest, if affairs were neglected in the future as they had been in the past. ‘The people of India have not votes; they cannot bring so much pressure to bear upon Parliament as can be brought by one of our great railway companies; but with some confidence I believe that I shall not be misinterpreting your wishes if, as your representative, I do whatever can be done by one humble individual to render justice to the defenceless and powerless.’

That last sentence could be taken as his policy and motto through life. Could there be a more valiant one for a blind man, or for any one fighting against great odds for the right? ‘I do whatever can be done by one humble individual to render justice to the defenceless and powerless.’ He does not limit whom or where. There are no limitations. That they are defenceless and powerless is all the recommendation which they need to claim his warmest interest and ceaseless effort to help them to find the way out of their misery.