The Henson Journals

[260]

Thursday, November 25th, 1926.

["]If we undertake to govern the inhabitants of such a country [as India], we must govern them upon their own principles and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think to force them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in their system of opinions & rites, & the necessities which result from both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have more versatility of character & manners, and it is we who must conform.["]

v. Burke. v. Warren Hastings. vi. 378/9

On the other hand, Burke argues that "when a British governor is sent abroad, he is sent to pursue the good of the people as much as possible in the spirit of the laws of this country, which in all respects intend their conservation, their happiness, & their prosperity." (Ibid. 446) He sweeps aside with prodigious contempt the notion of "geographical morality" which he attributes to Hastings. "The title of conquest["?] makes no difference at all.

"By conquest, which is a more immediate designation of the hand of God, the conqueror succeeds to all the painful duties & subordination to the power of God which belonged to the sovereign whom he has displaced, just as if he had come in by the positive law of some descent or some election." (Ibid. p. 456)

The case of our African empire where there is a direct conflict of interest between the native populations and the white colonists raises a most difficult issue. Which is to be sacrificed to the other? In fact the interest of the white colonist prevails: but is this ethically defensible?

[261]

My Lords, your House yet stands, – it stands as a great edifice; but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins, – that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed & shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, – that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice, – that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for a guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well–spent life.

Burke's peroration when concluding his speech against Warren Hastings. June 16. 1794.

The words read as if dictated by the circumstances of 1926. They are not very remote for they were spoken only 18 years before my father was born. The world is returning on its course, & entering again the shadowed interval of Revolution.

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