The Righting of Wrongs
John Bright MP urged a critic of the British Raj to offer India more than fine words.
1883
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
© Bernard Gagnon, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
A view across Hyderabad in the State of Telangana, India, from the Falaknuma Palace. The palace, designed by English architect William Ward Marrett, was the pet project of Nawab Viqar ul Omra, the Prime Minister of the Princely State of Hyderabad. However, spiralling costs forced him to call in the free-spending Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Mahbub Ali Khan (r. 1869-1911), to bail it out. Over the years, the ‘Mirror of the Sky’ welcomed such illustrious visitors as King George V and Tsar Nicholas II to its elegant courts. For a view of the palace, see Court of the Taj Falaknuma, Hyderabad.
Introduction
In 1883, Major Thomas Evans Bell, a former employee of the East India Company and a severe critic of the British Raj, was preparing for a lecturing tour in the United States. John Bright MP (who was not uncritical himself) wrote to remind him that what India needed most from Britain and America was not colonial guilt or blame, but free trade.
abridged
YOU are supposed to judge somewhat harshly of our Indian Government.* In describing its course I do not doubt you will give it credit where credit is due, and that you will point out how much the people of England are disposed, so far as they are concerned, to govern wisely the vast population conquered by their fathers.
The task of the wise government of so vast an empire may be an impossible one — I often fear it is so — we may fail in our efforts, but, whether we fail or succeed, let us do our best to compensate for the wrong of the past and the present by conferring on the Indian people whatever good it is in our power to give them. Perhaps when the United States are wise enough to abolish what they call protections* — that is, protection of a class or classes at the expense of the nation — they may find a market in India, from which now their costly system shuts them out.
abridged
Abridged from ‘The Public Letters of John Bright’, collected and edited by H. J. Leech (1885).
That is, ‘People say that you judge &c.’. Bell was appointed Assistant Commissioner at Nagpur in 1855, in the vacuum left by the death of King Raghoji III, who had no heir. Bell lost his position five years later for insubordination, after going over the head of the Commissioner to complain about the neglect of the royal family. However the Viceroy, Viscount Canning, backed him, his demands were met, and Bell himself was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Police at Madras.
Protectionism describes any policy designed to insulate a country’s economy from foreign competition, for example, by taxing or regulating international trade. Protectionism (characteristic of nearly every major economy today) tends to increase prices, cost jobs, discourage innovation, and deny choice. In the longer term, it also inhibits growth at home and abroad, hence Bright’s fears for American exports — if Americans cannot buy from Indians, Indians will have less money to buy from Americans.
