Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎76r] (155/312)

THE BILL FOR THE AFGHAN WAR.
The silence of the ministerial journals as to the bill for the Afghan war
at last has been broken. The Times approaches the question this morning,
though it takes care not to come inconveniently close to it. " It need not,"
we are told, " be admitted that the expense of an Afghan expedition will
or ought to be borne exclusively by India." This sentence is of caution
all compact; and it is some time before the reader discovers how infini
tesimal the relief to the finances of India contemplated in it may prove
to be. To begin with, the proposition, which is apparently denied, is only
that the expense of the expedition is to be borne " exclusively " by India.
The Times has evidently never imagined anything so unpleasant as its
being borne exclusively by England. England may possibly contribute to
the expense of the war—a war, be it remembered, undertaken for purely
Imperial purposes—but she means, if the Times is any authority as to
her intentions, to get as much of it as she can out of India. But the
apparent denial of the proposition really comes to nothing. The Times
does not say that the expense of an Afghan war ought not to be charged
exclusively on the revenues of India, but only that it '' need not be
admitted" that it ought so to be charged. This is pretty much the
same as saying, If we like to make India pay the bill we have a
right to do so; but we are not bound, in discharge of the sacred duty
we owe to ourselves, to make her pay it; or, even if we should
hereafter determine that we are bound to make her pay it, we need not
admit it now. It will be time enough to say so by-and-by. Early next
year, however, even the Times concedes that " it will be for Parliament
to determine what course should be taken to meet the cost of the war,"
and it goes on to suggest a precedent on which Parliament may act.
In 1857 Lord Palmerston's Government asked the House to reimburse
the Indian Treasury for a portion of the extraordinary expenses of the
Persian War; and the arrangement made and ultimately sanctioned by
Parliament was that her Majesty's Government should defray a moiety of
these expenses. The Times is aware that this arrangement " was justified
by the Government on the special ground that the finances of India had
been grievously disturbed in consequence of the Mutiny;" but it handsomely
waives the consideration that in this case there has been no mutiny, and
proposes that, as India is still poor, the accuracy of the precedent shall not be
contested. We hardly know how to characterize a method of treating this
question which quotes a precedent dating back to the days of the East
India Company, and makes no mention of the circumstance that the present
position of affairs has been expressly and specifically provided for by an Act
of Parliament passed since that time. The Act 21, 22 Vic., c. 106, s. 55,
enacts that, "except for preventing or repelling actual invasion of her
Majesty's Indian possessions, or under other sudden and urgent necessity,
the revenues of India shall not, without the consent of both Houses of
Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation
carried on beyond the external frontiers of such possessions by her
Majesty's forces charged upon such revenues." It seems to us the plain
duty of the Indian Government and Council to insist on the observance
®f this clause. Of course, Parliament is omnipotent; and if both Houses
think fit they may charge the cost of the Thames Embankment on the
revenues of India. But the meaning of the clause is that the principle
by which the division of burdens shall be regulated is that internal
military needs shall be met by India and external military needs by
England. Mr. Fawcett's quotation from the speech of the late
Lord Derby, who as Prime Minister had charge of the bill, amply
confirms this view. " The effect of the clause," he said, " would be that
Indian troops, except for the purpose of preventing anticipated invasion,
or of repelling actual invasion, should not quit their own territory ; or, if
they did, the expense should be defrayed out of the revenues of this
country, and not out of the revenues of India." If the framers of the Act
of 1858 had foreseen the present situation they could not have more
exactly met it. Probably in substance they did foresee it. The possibility
that we might one day have to deal with the Afghan question, not in its Indian
but in its Imperial aspect—not, that is to say, as affecting our relations
with a petty frontier prince, but as affecting our relations with that gigantic
Asiatic Power which twenty years ago was known to be steadily coming
nearer to our Indian dominions—was as well though not as closely appre
ciated then as it is now. If the Cabinet of the day had said, " Now that
we are constructing a Government for India, it will be well to make it
clear that India is not to bear the expense of an Afghan war, if ever
England should find it necessary to undertake one," they could not have
put their intention more clearly. If the Afghans invade India, or are
plainly meditating an invasion of India, that is India's affair, and she will
have to pay the bill. If England invades Afghanistan, that is England's
affair, and she will have to pay the bill. We submit, therefore, that there
is no occasion to rake up the precedent of the Persian war in 1857,
when 1858 affords us what is of more value than the most apposite
precedent—a statute passed to meet the precise case which has now arisen.
Precedents are very useful when there is no statute, or when the meaning
of a statute is open to question. But here is a statute of later date than
the precedent; and unless the Times is prepared to say that the
Viceroy of India is preparing to invade Afghanistan merely as a mode of
resisting the Ameer, who is actually invading, or intending to invade,
her Majesty's Indian possessions, it cannot deny that the necessity contem
plated in the statute as justifying the employment of Indian troops
beyond the frontier at the cost of the Indian revenue has not arisen.
By the way, we should like to be told what are the "extraordinary
expenses " of a war. Not soldiers, not arms, not supplies : these are all the
ordinary expenses of a war. There cannot be a war without men to fight
and arms to fight with, and food to keep the men alive. The only
" extraordinary" expense that occurs to us at the moment is " Special
Correspondence."