The Press. — London, England, 1854-03-11 00:00:00

232 painfully indiscreet, and committing their parties by their sallies. It is very curious that each should have given to the world such disparaging character isation of the other. If asked our opinion as to the merits of this present controversy, we should be tempted to say that the three parties in it appear to disadvantage. Moore's charac ter is further darkened by charges of corruption, and systematic duplicity of conduct being successfully fastened on him. His own suicidal journal revealed only a portion of his petty meanness. On the other hand, it is a terrible spectacle to witness the truculency of Mr. Croker in trampling on the grave of Moore. In such a case, • " Thou art dead, Alonzo, So is mine enmity," should be the sentiment of a brave and lofty nature ; and if self-vindication were needed it should be performed in a different temper from that shown by Mr. Croker. With Moore as a man we have no sympathy, but such a fierce posthumous assault as that before us is un called for. On the other hand, the con duct of Lord John Russell is quite inexcusable, and exhibits his characteristic rashness. With such an adversary as Mr. Croker he surely should have been more courteous. The rash ness of Lord J. Russell has undoubtedly been the immediate cause of this unpleasant ex posure ; nor can we avoid censuring the pain ful vacillation evident in his tone. After first bitterly assailing Mr. Croker, and then re ceiving a contemptuous and rattling reply, his lordship takes up a tone of apology—" I " may add an expression of my regret that at " your age and in your present state of health " you should have been annoyed by the publi " cation of Moore's Diary ; ' and four days afterwards, in letter No. 4, the noble lord says in an equivocal manner—" Mrs. Moore has " several letters of yours to her husband ; of " course I should not think of publishing " them without your permission "—to which Mr. Croker again replies in the language of contemptuous defiance. Lord John Russell's whole conduct in relation to the publication of Moore's Diary has been extremely blame- worthy. He assisted to bring into circu lation a work crowded with offensive pas sages, that have given great pain in many quarters; his lordship never condescended to peruse them; and he then deprecates allharsh criticism upon the poet and his proceedings, lest it should give pain to Moore's surviving wife ! Of the relation that subsisted between Moore and Mr. Croker during life, notwith standing the correspondence before us, we might perhaps infer that it was little more than the conventional kind—half friendship, half acquaintanceship, that springs up between literary belligerents in hostile camps. It was for the advantage of both parties that they should remain on good terms. More formidable foes than Mr. Croker had been made to wince under Moore's pen; and, on the other hand, it was well for Moore that he should be on amica ble terms with an active quarterly reviewer. Accordingly we find that during life Moore never satirised Mr. Croker, and, on the other hand, the Quarterly Review was extremely lenient to the author of " The Twopenny Post Bag." It is hard to say on which side the balance of advantages lay. It is enough to say that both were under obligations to each other. The most remarkable passage in the whole of the lengthy postscript is the part relating to Moore's desire of selling his Government office at Bermuda : " turning the appointment to more account than T have ever been able to do hitherto. Would it be possible, do you think, to procure the office for any unobjectionable person, who should make it worth my while to resign in his favour? If this rere possible, it would materially serve me ; and though I have no right, nor indeed much inclination, to ask a favour from any of your present colleagues, yet, if You could manage this matter for me, I should feel it to be the act of &friend, and be made easy and comfortable in more ways than one by it." I have no copy of my answer. I dare say I was unwil ling that even a copyist should see such a proposition ; but it appears from Moore's reply that I endeavoured —by supposing that he meant an exchange and not a sale of aeoso—to shut my eyes to the real drift of a pro=l *0 WNW t• a pawn Pt say Acid situation. THE PRESS. however, did not at all appreciate the indelicacy of his proposal, or the delicacy of my evasion. His reply was as follows : " Friday, 22nd December, 1809. "My dear Croker,—T feel most gratefully the readiness with which you answered my letter, and should not write now to tease you with my importunities, but that you mistook a little the manner in which I wished you to as sist me. I had by no means the audacity to expect to exchange my Bermuda appointment for another at home. What I wanted to know was simply this—whether if the deputy I should appoint would make it worth my while to resign in his favour (i.e., in plain placemen's language, would consent to purchase the appointment), you could have interest enough to get him nominated my successor, as by that means I should get rid of the very troublesome medium of a deputation, and have a good large sum at once in my pocket, without waiting for the slow process of annual remittances, accounts, &c. J know this sounds very like one of those transactions which we Patriots cry out against as unworthy o f the great Rumen and Algernon Sydney." These latter allusions to " the great Russell and Algernon Sydney" read with great comic effect. The rest of the correspondence con tains petty proofs of the insincerity of Moore towards Mr. Croker. But we were already in possession of his own journal, which has given literally volumes of evidence of his utter levity of character and absence of principle. Here in the sixth volume of his memoirs is a passage recording his opinions of the Whigs : The insight I got into the views and leanings of the party during my last visit to town has taken away much of my respect for them as a political body, and changed my opinion of some as private men. I am convinced that there is just as much selfishness and as much low party spirit among them generally as among the Tories ; with- out any of that tact in concealing the offensiveness of these qualities which a more mellowed experience of power and its sweets gives to the Tories. There are a few men among them who have the public weal, I believe, most sincerely at heart ; and these are easily numbered,—Lord Grey, Lord Althorp, Lord John Russell, and Lord Lana downe ; but even these are carried headlong through a measure, of which in their hea.-Is they must see the danger, by an impulse of party spirit which supersedes too much every other consideration; and as to the herd of their followers, any few grains of patriotism there may be among them are so mixed up with an overflowing portion of se(f as to be diluted away to nothing. Yet the writer was the person who was then vilifying the Tories, of whom he knew little, although he thought so meanly of the Whigs, with whom he lived habitually! He says again, elsewhere : I spoke pretty freely my opinion of our friends the Whigs; of their vile practice of canvassing enemies and friends. As for myself, I said, so long had it neglecting _ been manifest to me that this was their system, that I had for many years (luckily for my own peace of mind) given up all hopes of their ever thinking of doing me a service. So far did this pocacurastimin of theirs extend, that, even in the trifling article of franking, not one of them ( though knowing how much I had to do with printers in the way of transmitting prook &c.) ever offered, when in office, to be of any service to me ; and I have always gone on (when I could) with my old frankers : with Croker while the Whigs were last in, and with Greville during their present Ministry. And there is another strange passage in which ho expresses at length his fears of Reform : The people have received an impulse (I might have added received it in a great measure from this bill ): and there never yet has been an instance known of a people stopping in such a career where they ought to stop; " a downhill reformation (as Dryden says) rolls on fast." Taking this view, whether right or wrong, of the present course of affairs. I certainly cannot help feeling grave at the prospect that is before us. Were I a young man, it would only brisken up the spirit of adventure within me, as I might then hope to outlive the storm, and enjoy the advantage of the calm ; but not being young, and wishing the remainder of my course to continue on the same level as heretofore, I cannot bring myself to dance down these first steps of the precipice so gaily and sanguinely as I see others do. Here we have a voluptuous indifference to principles candidly . expressed, and these latter passages from his journal confirm the charges of want of high personal honour and dignity of character brought home to the poet by Mr. Croker. It is very painful to have the spectacle of such meanness revealed in one who like Moore was amongst our modern► literary celebrities. From contemplating the paltri ness of his worldly nature, how cheering it is to turn to the example of modest worth and pure existence afforded by a man like Southey, toiling in comparative poverty to the last, nei ther grovelling like a parasite towards the peer age, nor pandering to the party passions of the hour! •••=I•••• SATURDAY, Public Works in India: their Importance: with Suggestions for their Extension and Improvement. By Lieutenant-Colonel A. Cotton. London : Allen and Co. Ix is quite impossible for us, in the narrow space assignable to a topic far less interesting than it ought to be to the English people, to attempt a full criticism, or even an analysis, of Colonel Cotton's admirable treatise. Me thodical, concise, full of detail, yet dealing conclusively with the largest questions of principle intelligible to all readers however ignorant of Indian finance, and capable of in structing those most familiar with its working, the writer has not only thrown new light on his subject, but furnished a model of the style and manner of handling best adapted to the treatment of complicated social questions. The moral of the book is twofold—first, to enforce the spending of more money on Indian public works ; secondly, to direct attention to the necessity of care and science in its invest ment. Colonel Cotton complains, with truth, that, though particular local improvements have been eulogised, or the want of them de plored, by previous authors, no man has attempted to deal with the question as a whole—the only way in which it can ever be satisfactorily settled. He instances the Cal cutta Railroad as a sample of the haste with which projects of the greatest moment are carried out under directorial sanction. A cer • tain amount of traffic is reckoned on—Colonel Cotton thinks reasonably—the railway is laid down, and it has been forgotten or overlooked that, when complete, it can only carry one seventh of the tonnage on which profit has been calculated. An oversight so glaring as this we can hardly suppose to be real ; but it is actually the fact that, as our author com plains, " railroads have blinded the Govern ment." The idea of rapid passage communica tion along a few great lines has been taken up at the cost and to the utter neglect of the humbler but more productive task of opening innumerable minor roads. In this instance, as in a hundred others, the radical vice of an alien Government is felt. The English func tionaries who plan improvements think, first, of the pleasure of being able to reach the Himalayas in six or seven days from Calcutta; secondly, of the military advantages of rapid transit ; and only in the last place, and as a means of part paying the expense which such an undertaking necessarily involves, of the result producible upon the trade and agricul ture of the country. Works of this kind are decreed and proceeded with, the cost being thrown on the general revenue, so that no clear return of profit and loss can be made out. Frequent changes of Administration in terrupt their progress ; it is nobody's interest in particular that they should be done well ; and the result is, as in Madras, that three or four times the necessary amount is expended. from sheer apathy, ignorance, and deficiency of proper supervision. Then comes a reaction : the Governor-General, or the Board of Control, or the Directors, seeing a waste going on, and seeing no other means to stop it, stop the work too. It is not thus that an empire should be administered. Colonel Cotton urges the es tablishment of a department of public works —the commencement of these on a great scale—the borrowing of money for that pur pose, or at least the non-repayment of money already borrowed (it being manifestly unfair that the present generation should pay the whole cost of works intended to last for all time)—and, lastly, the keeping of an account by this department altogether separate from the general revenue and expenditure account of India, that thus the public may more clearly know what is being done, and under stand the profitable nature of the operation. He laughs to scorn the idea that we are re lieving India by taking off taxes with money which ought to go in enabling her to pay equal or increased burdens, and illustrates his meaning quaintly as follows : With respect to the notion, that there is no way of re lieving the country but by paying off the debt, let ns suppose that we met a poor famished coolie fainting under a load o 201b5., from want of food, and we have it in our power either to carry his load for him, or by feeding him restore him to his full strength, and enable hiin to carry 801bs. with ease ; which woltia be the beet thing to do for bim ? leen if we were