LIBERALISM VERSUS EMPIRE?

The British Empire was built upon a contradiction: justified as a benevolent liberating mission to many millions of Asians, Africans, and other non-Europeans enslaved by ignorance, oppressive traditions, and misrule, it depended at the same time upon the subordination of these millions to the authority of the small ruling British elite. This contradiction was highlighted by the workings of the legal systems the British established in their possessions. The single most important exemplar of the claimed beneficence of the Empire was its system of laws, and by the nineteenth century there was great pride in spreading the benefits of English law around the world. Perhaps the best-known principle of that law was the equality of individuals – that all were equally subject to its strictures, and that all could equally claim its protection. This had been established for the Empire as early as 1774, when in the case of Campbell v. Hall Lord Mansfield declared that “an Englishman in Ireland, Minorca or the Plantations has no privilege distinct from the natives.” A century later the noted political thinker and legal adviser to the Government of India Henry Maine observed that the Government “is bound, by the moral conditions of its existence, to apply the modern principle of equality, in all its various forms, to the people of India – equality between religions, equality between races, equality between individuals, in the eye of the law.