The Press. — London, England, 1854-10-21 00:00:00

986 The experience of contending nations has taught them that they cannot be at one and the same time upon terms of commercial amity and deadly strife. After war was de clared, our Government, although recognising to an unprscedented extent the rights .Of neutrals, seemed reselveci to maintain tilt, es tablished rule of the law of nations respecting commercial intercourse with the enemy. On the 12th of April last Lord CLABENDO!4 in reply to a comninnication addressed to him obi the subject, stated officially that all trade with Russia, whether direct or indirect, was illegal. Three days afterwards an order in Council ap peared authorising to any extent the importa tion of Russian produce in neutral vessels. We remarked at the time that, had that order issued from St. Petersburg instead of Windsor, it could not have more effectually promoted the interests of the Czar. Experience has already shown that we did not exaggerate the truth. If, therefore, we really desire to cripple the • resources of our gigantic enemy, the order in • Council of the 15th of April must be forthwith repealed. Until this is done, our Baltic block ade is a farce. We merely shut up one outlet of Russian commerce, while we open up an . other ; and we complain of the fraudulent neutrality of Prussia, instead of the incompe tence of our own bewildered rulers, who are really responsible for the frauds of which we hear so much. We need hardly add that the repeal of this order, through which Russian property of every description is freely admitted into England, would not at all affect the pre vious royal declaration, which proclaims the security of the neutral flag in the present war : that is entirely a separate question, although the two are often confounded. To acknow ledge to their fullest extent the commercial rights of neutral nations may be justifiable under certain circumstances ; but by what process of reasoning are we to arrive at the conclusion that it is wise to encourage the trade of an enemy, and thereby to add to his • wealth and strength? The only possible reply to this question is, that by shutting out his commerce we may inflict greater injury upon ourselves than upon him. But this extrava gant assumption is contradicted by the coin. mon consent of nations. It is contradicted more especially by the history of our former war with Russia herself in 1801, which was brought to a successful termination in the course of a few months, by the simple expe dient of annihilating her commerce. But this is not the only novelty of the pre sent war. The noble Premier, in his recent , address to the good people of Aberdeen, took credit to himself for bringing about another •• most important change. "We have," he said, " by our example, put an end to privateering— " a most dreadful relic of a barbarous age." What did his Lordship mean by giving utter ance to such a boast? Has he forgotten that, in reply to the French and British declarations ' of the 28th of March, the Emperor of RUSSIA was wholly and ominously silent on the sub ject of privateerino Did he not by that silence reserve to himself the unquestionable right of issuing letters of marque, should he see fit to do so ? Possibly L o rd ABERDEEN may have overlooked this little incident; but he cannot have forgotten the utter failure of his negotiations with the Government of the United States upon the same subject. He cannot have forgotten that, in reply to his pro posal for a total suppression of privateering, ' Mr. MARCY, in a despatch of the 15th of April last, addressed to the Minister of the United States in London, distinctly stated that his Government "is not prepared to listen to any " proposition for the total suppression of priva " Wring. It would not enter into any convention " whereby it would preclude itself from re " sorting to the merchant marine of the coun ' " try in case it should become a belligerent • " party." Surely, therefore, Lord ABERDEEN overstepped the bounds of common decency in eliciting a cheer from the provost and bailies of Aberdeen, under the egregiously I false pretence of putting down this " most dreadful relic of a barbarous age," which it is evident both Russia and the United States are ready to revive whenever it may suit their purposes to do so. _ _Alba i .. THE PRESS. MORE INDIAN CONFISCATIONS. IF British India, under the rule of the Direc- tors, makes slow progress in most things, it is certainly making a very rapid advance in the art of bp,nfiscation. Nagpore has been an nexed; the Nuwab ttOORSHEDABAD has been despoiled of the privileges appertaining to his rade; nod the Nizam has been called on to make.concessioh‘ inconsistent with his rights as a Sovereign. The Mandate is pretty sure to be met by resistance, while resistance, of course, will furnish the excuse now want- ing for the confiscation of his kingdom also. But these are not all the confiscations in embryo, or lately carried to completion, by Lord DALHOUSIE. GOOLAB SINGH is dying : his nephew has announced himself as a pre tender to the succession, in preference to his son. We support the pretensions of the ne phew, and are naturally looked upon with no favourable eye by the son, whom we avow the intention of disinheriting. The son, in turn, is proclaimed by the Government organ to be disaffected to our rule ; and the virtual annexation of Cashmere —we taking the power and the revenues, and leaving a pension and the shadow of sovereignty to our puppet, the nephew—is treated almost as a fait ac compli. This might be considered a pretty good list of spoliations for one mail to bring us intelli gence of ; but the list is not complete. The kingdom of Oude is rich and, at the same time, powerless. It is encircled by our dominions, and incapable of resistance, and on it the Company have long cast an eye of covetous . ness. We are bound, to be sure, by the most solemn treaties to defend and maintain it ; and on the faith of those treaties the Sove reigns of Oude have long since abandoned their own military establishments beyond such as are required for the maintenance of internal order, ceding to the Company the districts, amounting in value to some millions sterling annually, which had been assigned, on the feudal principle, for• their support. It is also true that, in one of the greatest emergencies in which the Government of India was ever placed, a predecessor of the present Sovereign of Oude made a voluntary present of a mil lion sterling to the Company in aid of its necessities, and shortly afterwards made a second gift to it of another million for the same purposes. It is true that on the out break of the present war with Russia the actual Sovereign of Oude made an offer to the Governor-General to 'raise, equip, and main tain at his own cost a force of twelve thousand men, with a brigade of artillery, to be at the entire disposal of the British during the war. All this is true—all this is undeniable ; but the Sovereign is rich, and, at the same time, helpless, and by the representative of the Company, which affects, when it suits its pur pose, so scrupulous a faith, the Sovereign is doomed. Even his last noble offer• to maintain . for us so large a number of troops cannot save him, though the offer was made, not at a time when Bomarsund had fallen and the victory of Alma been gained, but when our oldest European allies were trimming their sails, prepared to be wafted to either side, according as might blow Fortune's gale. It may perhaps, under• these circumstances, be supposed that this Prince has been guilty of some atrocious secret crime against us to warrant the infliction of such a fate; but there is really nothing of the kind. His country is very rich; that is, in truth, his only crime. His territories, to be sure, are said to be badly go verned ; but that is an old cr•y, and some of the most eminent servants of the Company have :testified in refutation of it that they are not nearly so badly governed as our own. His ,ministers also occasionally resort to force to compel payment of the revenue, but ours in Madras resort to torture ; and the very paper that brings this news from India reports that in the Punjaub they were about to send out, for a precisely similar purpose, a regiment of infantry, a large detachment of cavalry, and a couple of guns. Indeed, to give this as a rea son for annexation comes with a particularly bad grace from a GovernOr-General whose SATURDAY, quarrel with Sir CHARLES NAPIER arose in the first instance out of the indignant language in which the latter denounced the employment of troops in the wholesale massacre of villagers at Kohan and the burning of their villages, by way of punishment for withholding their rents—a . Governor-General who, moreover, reprimanded Sir COLIN CAMPBELL, one of the lierdes of Alma, in no measured terms for refus ing to be a party to the similar employment, on requisition by the Punjaub employes, of the force itt Peshaw ur under his command. Sir Colas is alive ; we speak of what we know on his own authority, communicated to us personally by his own mouth ; and we have no hesitation in asserting, without fear of contradiction, that he resigned the Peshawar command on the very ground of refusing to allow, without the express and written orders of the Commander in-Chief, atrocities of this kind on our Punjaub frontier, ten . times greater than any that have ever been perpetrated by the Ministers of the King of OUDE. But, even were the case otherwise, we have the power by treaty of interfering in the King of /DUDE'S affairs, and enforcing good government if ho neglects it. If there is bad government, there fore, in OUDE, it is Lord DALHOUSIE who is responsible for it, and Sir CHARLES Woon , and those high officials and the Directors] are alone to blame. To neglect their duty, and then to make the consequences of their neglect the ground of confiscating the King of Ounes domi nions, is a proceeding which we have no hesita tion in denouncing as the most Machiavelian and infamous that has been practised by any ruler in any country. So far we have treated the question as relating to the King of OUDE personally ; but another and a much weightier consideration remains behind. By far the largest portion of the sepoys in the Bengal army, and a very considerable portion of those in the Bombay army, are natural-born subjects of the King of OUDE. Their lands are in Oude, for the sepoys are mostly of the agricultural class ; their families aro in Oude, and when their time of service has expired it is to Oude that they return to pass the remainder of their lives. That these sepoys, accustomed in Oude to the rule of men of their own colour, caste, and nation, would view with any feeling but that of the deepest resentment the transfer of their homes to the withering blight of the Company's domination is not to be suspected. They like the pay of the Company and the advantages to be obtained in its military ser vice, for they are the Swiss of India, but they have no wish to see their families become ryots of the Company, or, in other words, transformed from comparative freemen into serfs. That the transfer of Oude to the Company will be the signal for resistance by these men we cannot doubt; and it is a re sistance which, if made, must endanger our Indian empire. We hold India by the swords of these men, and if we once turn their arms against us the few Europeans in India, would be powerless to resist them, and the fabric of our dominion might receive a shock from which it would never recover. The arrogance of a DALHOUSIE and the imbecility of a Woon may not shrink even from the risk of such a catastrophe ; but we look for calmer wisdom and deeper conscientious ness at the hands of those who in such a crisis must be the nation's reliance,—the representa tives of the people of England. STORIES FROM THE BALTIC. SEVERAL rumours have been put in circulation , chiefly in Paris, as to alleged councils of War in the Baltic fleet. In such mere on (Zits We cannot place much confidence. It is certain that NAPIER wished for gun-boats, and it is certain that he did not get them. Neither was there an expeditionary force given to him in time with which he might have attacked Cronstadt. With respect to the propriety of bombarding Helsingfors or Sweaborg, it is plain that their destruction would not mate rially weaken the influence of the Czar, and their subsequent abandonment would only be an acknowledgment of the futility of such I•miolissialllMMlNElNll MIIIM