Estimates pared by the Military Department, confidently re- Error in War commended by it to the Financial Department, and adopted by the latter without misgiving, were utterly worthless and will be indefinitely exceeded. . . . The public scandal and reproach of it must, I fear, fall directly upon myself, and indirectly upon Sir John Strachey; and although I hold that we are both of us blameless-for I am unable to conceive how either of us could have anticipated or prevented it-yet I can scarcely complain of the popular verdict I anticipated, for of course the external responsibility of the Government of India cannot be subdivided. . . Ever since the commencement of the first campaign in Afghanistan I have laboured without ceasing and under great difficulties to keep down military expenditure. . . But I have always carefully refrained from questioning or interfering with the final estimates framed and passed by the responsible departments for sanctioned charges. Any other course would have involved tampering with the public accounts by the head of the Government, and been destructive of that established sense of personal and departmental responsibility which is the best, and indeed the only, guarantee for the conscientious preparation and verification of estimates by the authorities properly charged with that task. . . . I cannot help feeling, with considerable bitterness, that the powers of military darkness, against whom I have been maintaining single-handed for four years such a fatiguing, and till now not unsuccessful, struggle, have in the last hours of my administration contrived to give me a croc aux jambes which no vigilance on my part could have prevented, and which no explanations on their part or on mine can now solve.' CHAPTER XI VERNACULAR PRESS BILL IN the Spring of 1878 an important measure was passed by Lord Lytton's Government to deal with seditious publications in the vernacular press. This measure was reversed by his successor only to be brought back in a different form by force of events, after twenty years of deliberate refusal to face a growing evil had led to the murders at Poona, the prosecution of Tiluk, and the incarceration of the Natus. Then the policy was reconsidered and the law altered in a direction differing from Lord Lytton's scheme, in so far as that aimed at preventing while the new law aims at punishing seditious writings. Since 1835 the law on the subject of the press required that every printer and publisher should register himself, and that on every issue of a paper the name of printer and publisher should appear. During the Mutiny of 1857 a short-lived Act was passed placing restrictions on the press, but these were, as a matter of fact, directed against the papers published in English; the vernacular journals did not at that time attract attention. Some five or six years afterwards the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal (Sir Cecil Beadon) arranged for a weekly abstract to be prepared of the more important articles in the native press and caused them to be circulated among officials The History of the Act and made available to the English press. growing license of the vernacular press was probably the cause, while the revision in 1870 of the Penal Code afforded the opportunity of inserting in the law a section directed against seditious writing. The section had originally been drafted by Macaulay and his co-operators, but had for some reason, apparently through inadvertence, found no place in the code when first passed into law. The section, however, introduced in the Penal Code of 1870 to the effect that writers attempting to excite feelings of disaffection to the Government should be punished was so hedged round by legal definitions of what could or could not be called disaffection, that both before and after Lord Lytton's time the Government of India were advised by their law officers not to prosecute, even in very flagrant cases, because the view which might be taken of the law was uncertain, and the law therefore practically remained a dead letter. 6 We find Lord Northbrook's Government issuing a warning (unofficial and outside the law) in 1872 to a Bengali paper the 'Som Prakásh.' The next year the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal (Sir G. Campbell) called attention to the growth of the evil and urged on Lord Northbrook a much more stringent law. In the particular case the registered' printer and registered' proprietor of the offending newspaper were college students of eighteen and twenty years respectively, so that a successful prosecution would have been of little value as an example, but Lord Northbrook's Government saw no necessity at that time for altering the law. The correspondence, however, had two useful results. It showed the position of registered printers and proprietors, and it led to the weekly abstract of the native press being made henceforth History of the Act Lord Lytton takes up the subject, September 1877 a confidential document, at which the vernacular press exclaimed that it was oppressed and its influence seriously curtailed. The next move came from London. In 1875 the Secretary of State (Lord Salisbury) informed the Government of India that his attention had been drawn by writings in the 'Pall Mall Gazette' and another paper to various articles in the native press 'which are not only calculated to bring the Government into contempt, but which palliate, if they do not absolutely justify as a duty, the assassination of British Officers.' He added that the unchecked dissemination amongst the natives of articles of this character could not be allowed without danger to individuals and to the interests of Government. The Advocate-General was consulted. He advised that in his opinion there was an offence under Sec. 124 A. of the Penal Code, but a conviction will depend so much on the tribunal charged with the trial of the case and the view which the presiding judge may take of a law not yet judicially interpreted, that I feel myself unable to predict the result of a trial.' On the strength of this the Government of Lord Northbrook replied to the Secretary of State that in the present state of law it was not desirable for the Government to prosecute except in the case of systematic attempts to excite hostility against the Government. It was left to Lord Lytton's Government to deal with this difficult question, and it was not till September 1877 that Lord Lytton himself took it in hand. As an illustration of Lord Lytton's methods it is worth while to trace the steps by which he reached and gave effect to his final decision. First in 1876 he had an historical note prepared 1877 in the Secretariat, the writer of which indicated the Lord Lytton takes up the Irish Act as a possible guide. This Act allows the subject, executive authority, after warning given, to confiscate September, the plant &c. of the offending paper, but it allows the proprietor to sue for damages if he can show that his publication was not seditious. The question was reviewed by the then legal member of Council, who, partly on the ground that the English press in India was as violent as the vernacular press, and partly on general grounds of the value of a free press, advised against any action being taken. So for a year more things remained as they were. In the autumn of 1877, when Lord Lytton was planning his famine inspection journey to Southern India, Mr. Eden, the LieutenantGovernor of Bengal, dealt with the subject in a speech and subsequently wrote to the Viceroy strongly urging legislation. Lord Lytton prepared a Minute giving the recent history of the matter, dwelling upon the obvious futility of the existing control by registration, showing what was thought by experienced officers on the danger of the spread of sedition, but dwelling not less strongly upon the injury done by the use which the press made of its power to intimidate native officers, and to blackmail native chiefs. This Minute, together with an appendix containing the sample extracts from the Bengali vernacular press which Mr. Eden had sent up, was forwarded for the consideration of the members of the Council and of each Local Government and Chief Commissioner. The result was to show that every member of the Council, and, with the single exception of Madras, every one of the ten different Local Governments and administrations consulted, was in favour of the principle of taking legislative action. The prepon 1 33 & 34 Vict. c. 9 s. 30. |