Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎529r] (182/238)

Proceedings of the East India Association.
395
remark elicited by this portion of my paper was a reference in Mr. Martin
Wood’s written notes to the waste of Indian resources in wars beyond the
frontier. Here I am with him generally as to the past, and as anxious as
he can be that our “ forward ” policy should be carefully watched and
checked in the future. I strongly suspect that, if only the will were
present, a way might be found of placing our relations with both Russia
and Afghanistan on such a footing that we might save the Afghan subsidy
and reduce the numerical strength of our army. But, on the other hand,
the cost per man will have to be increased if in the present state of the
labour market we are to secure the kind of recruit who will not disgrace the
British name by vice and violence. Lumping together the military and
civil branches of the absolutely indispensable work of Government, and
assuming (contrary to present probability) that all the economies which
ought to be effected will be effected, I much doubt the possibility of
reducing the total without sacrificing some of the security that the subject
has a right to expect.
4. The Pleas for State Aid to Priniary Education. —Mr. Pennington puts
concisely the now dominant view when he writes that “ a prophylactic is
superior to any mere remedy.” I hold with Sir George Cornewall Lewis
that in legislation the proverb ought to be reversed, and that more often
than not cure is better than prevention. The reason is that the only
curative or preventive methods at the disposal of governments are acts
so intrinsically mischievous that they rank as crimes when done without
special justification. Taxation is primafacie robbery, as arrest is prima
facie an assault. As a wise Government does not arrest people without
strong suspicion of actual or imminent criminality, so neither should it rob
them of their money without some more urgent and obvious necessity than
a vague idea that the State knows better how it should be spent than the
proprietor.
Sir C. Stevens, Mr. Thorburn, and Mr. Pennington all lay stress on the
importance of teaching the raiyat to read and cipher in order that he may
protect himself against being cheated. I will ask them to reckon up on the
one hand the cost of providing efficient elementary instruction to any given
number of Santal, Punjabi, or Tamil children, and on the other hand the
cost of providing efficient petty tribunals in the same localities, numerous
enough to be accessible to everyone without the loss of a day’s work, to
listen patiently to every story, to clear up honest misunderstandings, and
to detect and punish wilful impositions, and all this without court fees or
other expense to the parties. I am much mistaken if they do not find the
latter plan (which we may call the mere remedy, or the more direct prophy
lactic) both cheaper and more certainly efficacious for its immediate
purpose; and I am not at all sure that it would not also be more
educative. The right end at which to begin is to teach people in a
practical way what fair dealing is, and how it can be enforced \ the less
important lessons that occupy the attention of school inspectors will follow
in due time. In dealing with the prophylactic view of State education,
this matter of relative cost is fundamental. In spite of my preliminary
caveat, several speakers, including the Chairman dwelt on the smallness of