"You English imagine that liberty means the same thing in all parts of the world, aiid that all mankind equally desire it. You canid not make'a greater mistake. Liberty with you means that yon have a right to govern your-solves, and that it is tyranny to govern you. Liberty with an Asiatic means that he has a right to be-governed, and that to muke him govern himself is tyranny. If the people of India were Your equals yon would not be here—Your mission is to govern them; and You must govern them well, or they will cut your throats." So said Geueral Jacob, a really able Indian officer and as Fraser naively remarks upon the saying, "cartloads of sonorous des-Patches from the India Office contain less wisdom than this single sentence." It seems extraordinary that men should miss fallacies so obvious as that exposed in the above sentence, bat there can be no doubt that a loose use of the word "liberty" has been the cause of some of the most serious mistakes in our intercourse with the natives of Oriental lands, The root idea of the present day is that everyone's rights should be respected, and-a nobler or better idea never existed; but if this idea 1s to be anything save 'a misleading will-of-the-wisp, it must be regulated by a just comprehension of what rights are. The Anglo-Saxon race have established with singular firmness and energy certain broad principles of freedom, which they' understand, and on which their constitutions, systems, and municipal institations ave based. They mast have the right to elect delegates to the common council or Witan of the nation, they must control the imposition of taxes etc. Now these principles are utterly incomprehensible to the Eastern mind. The Asiatic has no legitimate ambition to have a say in the Government of himself and his compeers, witha view to the general improvement. He has no craving for freedom in the broad sense of the term. Ambition he certainly has, but it is the ambition not to be a free citizen bot to be an uncontrolled tyrant, i.e. to have authority to exercise a capricious power over some district, city, or province. We are quite prepared to believe that even in China, amongst the most stolid race of haman beings that ever existed, there is grent uneasiness and discontent with the present order of things but no person who examines the subject of Chinese character with attention, can affect to believe that there is any' deep anxiety for improvement. The oppressed Oriental is uncomfortable under the yoke, but it is not because he is debarred from the blessings of freedom himself, but because the yoke happens at times to gall too severely. The idea which isinseparably associated with the word "liberty" when an Englishman use sit, is that of the posse: ample opportunities to improve yourself and those about you, without vexatious restraints and irritating interrupt ly. tions. An Oriental has no sound iden of liberty, because he has no conception of the equal rights of man. He con-neets government with profit and show, and the right to banish and oppress his inferiors. We see this illustrated in Chinese history. There have been repeated rebellious, but none of them have ever attempted to develope republican or liberal forms of Government. In the Middle Kingdom as in Tarkey, an Amurath an Amurath succeeds." The ambition of a mandarin or wazeer indaces him to aim at the throne, and the land is deluged with blood in his struggle to drive out the original oveupant. The promises of, reform and relief which are indispensable on every hustings in England are never even dreamt of, for the newcomer knows they would excite neither interest nor belief. In the West, of course, platform speeches are often specious and delusive, but the necessity for them is a proof of a healthier state than we ever find in the East. That we need despair of Oriental lands, however, is by no means a sequitur from what we have suggested. The power of education and of that healthy friction against other minds which the intercourse of the East with the West is likely to occasion, may in time pro-dace marvellous changes; but in this present year of grace 1871, it is madness to decade oneself into' the belief that either Hindoo or Chinaman have even a faint conception of what li-betty in the European sense means. Until we can infuse into the Oriental some principles of self restraint and self respect, some sense of the responsibilities of office and of the rights of others, we shall not find it possible -to remove the strong hand without serious danger to ourselves and to the natives.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.