The Press. — London, England, 1857-10-17 00:00:00

1010 bhai bunt's of the treacherous Ramghurriane. They have promised upon oath, before our gallant assis►ant commis• soicner, Captain R. T. Leigh, to continue faithful and to fight against the rebels. May God dispose them to keep their promises ! Assistance is coming from Cuttack, and we expect some t►oops also from Rajpore. When they arrive, we shall be able to make a good stand against the enemy. Martial law has been declared in this district. Preparations have been made for an opposition. More anon. The following hurried lines have been received from our correspondent at Sumbulpore. The letter is dated the 18th instant : We are very, very uneasy here on account of the muti neers from Hezereebagh, who are now coming towards Sumbulpore. We expect a bsttle here in the course of a few days. If I survive I shall let you know all. We are girdled by the Mahanuddy, and canuot Sy. Eicuse this short epistle. THE PRESS, OCTOBER 17,1857. the crisis. The crisis is indeed a severe one, and the cry from India is,—Give the direction of affaits to the party who alone have all along manifested a real interest for the government of the Hindoos —namely, the Conservatives—or else the empire of Clive is hardly to be reconquered. Let me begin with a sentence, mournful, indeed, but nevertheless true to the letter. India is fast slipping from your grasp. The reckless policy, the shameful indifference with which the British people left one hundred and sixty millions of human souls on a distant shore a prey to a greedy mercantile cor• poratioo, whose all-in-all is money, has at last pro duced its fruits. Virtually the Government has DO native army now. All the sepoy regiments, whether of the Bengal, Bombay, or Madras army, which were from the beginning of British advent to this country the main pillar on which the immense fabric of the Indian empire rested with security, and which in aeality have won for England the thousand and one victories whose honour their whiter brethren have reaped, are almost all of them in open, and a few in disguised, mutiny. These mutinies, openly aided in some places, secretly supported in all, by a dis affected population, have since assumed the aspect of an Rimming, all-sweeping, all-destroying re bellion, in which nothing English is spared. Wholesale massacres of Europeans as the loathed, and of Bengallees as their loathed advisers, have oc curred in every cantonment and station in Northern India. A fortnight has sent more officers to the bourne whence no traveller returns than would have been despatched in twenty Chillianwallahs. The wide region between Bhagulpore and Peshawur, and from! Gwalior to the Himalayas, has been lost through an unsound army organisation and the incompetency of the Government. A belief is fast spreading, from Central and Upper India even to the seashore, that the Company's dominion is at an end. Government Securities are at a discount ; beyond the ltajmahal hills ninety and ninety-five per cent. In Calcutta the day before yesterday the Bank of Bengal wanted to sell Corn. pany's papers to the extent of sixty thousand rupee-4. At what discount do you think the stockbrokers offered to take them ? Why,—what do you fancy?— forty-five per cent ! Forty five in Calcutta! And yet I read that Lord Granville assures the British Parliament the value of Government Securities has not been lowered! All India is in a panic. Calcutta, which of all cities in Hindostan, like the Governor-General of all men in the East, should be firm and steady under all circumstances, and in the severest trials, has given way to the epidemic. All the avenues to the town are being closely guarded, and to prevent a general rising of the Mahomedans a volunteer corps has been raised to furnish the city with night patrols. And yet in the face of these stern realities we are obliged to read the nonsense of Lord Granville. I had intended, after showing the danger, to show the causes of the revolt—for it is no longer a mutiny; but I reserve that for another time. With the hope that the people of England will at length open their eyes, and, for the present at least, drive an effete and—what is more—unprincipled Ministry from power, I remain, sir, Calcutta, Bth Sept., 1537. A PATRIOTIC HINDU. THE BISHOP OF OXFORD AND MR. GLADSTONE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS. THE annual meeting of the Society for the Aid of Foreign Missions was held at Chester on Monday, the Lord Bishop of the diocese presiding. The meeting was held in the Music-hall. The attendance at the mid day meeting was large and respectable, but In the evening the hall was crowded in all parts to inconvenience. Shortly after two o'clock proceedings were com menced. The Lord Bishop welcomed the Bishop of Oxford to his diocese, and thanked his lordship for his consent to advocate the claims of the Foreign Mission Society. Some formal business having been disposed of, The Rev. Canon BLONFIELD proposed the first resolution, which recognised the claims of the society upon Christian benevclence. The Lcrd Bishop of OXFORD, in an eloquent and argumentative speech, seconded the resolution, and spoke at great length on the beneficial results of missionary• labours in all parts of the world. Refer ring to the Indian mutinies, the right rev. prelate said our duty in the present crisis was clearly to hold India for the regeneration of her people. Alluding to the general neglect of the social wants of the country, he said he did not regard them as faults of intentional commission, but with respect to our honestly and boldly maintaining Christianity in the face of the native heathenism, he did believe that we had been "habitually, consistently, and shamelessly timid." In conclusion, the right rev, prelate ob served : I for one firmly believe—firmly—that God will give us one other trial in India. I believe the crisis of England's greatness—the crisis of her own possessions, of her own Christianity, 861 depend upon the manner in which she uses that trust, if again it be committed to us. And there. fore I say, I desire every one of you, as Christians and Englishmen. to study this matter over, and to be ready to take a positive attitude of resistance, if God blesses our arms, to the resettlement of the Indian question upon any. thing but a Christian basis. And let there be no mistake amongst us upon this point. By a Christian basis Clod forbid that I should teach you to understand that we should use one iota of force or fraud or earthly favour to draw one man into the profession of the faith of Christ. Our duty seems perfectly simple. It is, that we should maintain, in the first place, peace, truth, and quietness— that we should say, no man shall suffer for religion, be disgraced for religion, or be punished for his religion ; but, having declared that, we should declare, with just as bold a front, that we are the servants of the Crucified. It is our duty—it is our blessing—it is our birthright. We desire to see converts to our faith, because that faith, and that faith only, will elevate them here, and save them hereafter. We are Christian men administering a heathen nation. We will not attempt by force or favour to draw a single heathen man over, but we will make no secret of our own Christianity—our belief that we hold our power on this condition, that we should use it for God ; and with this responsibility, that it will be taken from us if we use it fox ourselves. The resolution was adopted. At the evening meeting, the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE moved a resolution to the effect that the crisis in India called for an extended effort to spread the Gospel. The right hon. gentleman, who was received with loud and continued cheers, after some preliminary observations, in touching terms alluded to the sufferings this " great visitation " had inflicted upon us : Now, my lord, I think, if we read the manner in which Divine judgments come upon man, we may perceive in these great national affairs lessons of the Divine purposes conveyed to us. Unfortunately, if over there was a people who had cause for great national humiliation in respect of a great national crisis, I do not hesitate to say it is the people of England at the present moment. But here again I must avoid going into a question of who is to blame and who is not to blame. That is not a question to be settled here. It is perhaps a question difficult to be settled at all. India has been governed upon a system and a principle originally devised by the British Parliament— a system by which it was thought necessary to dissociate the government of that country from the popular institu tions of this country. The effect of this most curious contrivance for governing in India was that it mide it to us as a foreign country ; and I do not hesitate to say that no man in England knows or can know India unless he has made or chooses to make it a subject of special study, as he would make the affairs of any other foreign country. England knows nothing of India. Our public men even know nothing of that vast empire, unless, indeed, they devote their time and labour in acquiring a knowledge of its affairs. As they would learn the affairs of Russia, so must they learn the affairs of India, because we have con tinued a system of government fur India which interposes an impenetrable screen between the ordinary and habitual and daily routine of government affairs in England and the administration of Indian affairs. Therefore, Ido not at all presume to enter into the question who is to blame, or whether any one is to blame. It may be that it has been our own fault, the fault of our divided responsibility, the fault of our system of absolute secrecy; it may have sprung from the difference in the system of administration in this country and that administered in India; but what ever the cause of outbreak, you may search the records of history far and wide before you come across an instance of so vexations and extraordinary a failure on the part of a governing power in the administration of its political trust. And when we asked ourselves whether we had dis charged as efficiently as we might have done the great trust we undertook in the country, the question would not be whether the government of India was better than in the former times of bloody-minded tyrants and ferocious conquerors, but whether we, as a Christian people, had done all that we might and ought to have done—whether we acted as unselfishly as we ought to have acted—whether we gave to the natives the full benefit of Christian example, and whether we set before them a pattern of moderation, and truth, and justice, and mercy : I frankly own. I fear upon that score, when our account is made up, we shall have but a sorry story to tell. lam afraid, even at the present moment, when we are humi• hating ourselves before God, and imploring pardon of sin and a blessing upon English arms in India, our hands are not altogether clean. lam bound to admit that for the last twenty five )ears, during which I myself have taken part in public affairs, I have observed grievous instances of policy in respect of our Indian empire— measures undertaken without a shade of justice, and a perfect scandal to English history ; and no page of that history has fouler blots upon it than that which refers to our Eastern policy. The right hon. gentleman then discussed our obli gations in this great crisis, and expressed his belief that the duty of England was to maintain her hold of India, and for the future to abstain from either force or fraud in respect to the propagation of the Gospel. At the same time the Government should separate itself from any remaining practices by which it appeared to be in , plicated in the acknow ledgment of the prevailing false religions and false THE RAJAH OF PUTTEEALA. A letter this week calls attention to the fidelity of the Rajah of I'utteeala, an independent State near Umballah : The territory of the Putteeala Rajah is of considerable size—l believe as large as Yorkshire, if not larger—and he maintains a body of troops which may almost be called an army. About three years ag o he wished to visit England with a large retinue, and my brother was the officer appointed by the Governor-General of India to accompany him. Some of his attendants actually came over, and it was one of them who is mentioned in a letter that lately appeared in your columns as having been heard to say, while guarding a post near Delhi against the insurgent sepoys—" Ali ! they would know the power of England better if they bad ever been in Vere-street, Oxford street." The Rajah himself did not proceed farther than Calcutta, as, for reasons which it is not necessary now to mention, be abandoned his intention to come to England. In a letter which I have just received from my brother at Umballah, he says -- " The Rajah has shown himself such a stanch and valuable ally that I ant only doing hint justice in endea vouring to bring hint before the British public. It is a well-acknowledged feet that if it had not been for the Rajah of Putterala none of us in these Cis.Sutlej States would now be alive. " On the first news of the Delhi and Meerut massacres I sent for him, and called for his aid, which he furnished in the most prompt manner. The presence of 1,001) or 1,800 men was essential to our safety here, and he gave the men at once. Since then he has been foremost in taking all the onerous duty of guarding the out stations, furnishing escorts for convoys of stores, protecting the country, cutting off stragglers, and even in recovering districts which had fallen into the hands of the rebels. Moreover, he has lent us 40,0001., and will give more as we require it. His princely generosity to the survivors of the Hansi and Hisser massacres deserves to be publicly known. He not only sent out men to hunt for fugitives, and cover their retreat, but on their arrival in his territory he furnished them with everything—money, food, clothing, &e.—and gave a general order that whatever they should call for was to be at once supplied gratis. Common gratitude would make ua anxious to do anything to serve our ally, and I very willingly now take up his cause. He has no grievance to be redressed, but, as in these days people are ton apt to suspect every native of hostility to us, it is not surprising that disparaging remarks should now and then be made, and one or two suspicions of his fidelity have found their way into print, and greatly disquieted the Rajah. He is most anxious to show his friendliness and to have it believed. He has been conferring with me, and expressed great fear lest through the representations of his enemies he should suffer I have done my utmost to reassure him, and have promised to do my utmost to place before the British public a statement of his services." The writer also refers to the conduct of the Rajah of dimend, a relative and neighbour of the Rajah of Putteeala, in terms of high praise. He says :—" This chief, though of lesser note, has done his duty well and nobly, and held the country to the rear of our camp from the commence ment of our attack on Delhi." He, like the Putteeala Rajah, is a Sikh ; but their territories are at the eastern extremity of the Cis Sntlej States, and therefore they are peculiarly accessible to the influences at work in the north west provinces, from which, indeed, the Putteeala Rajah is divided by a merely imaginary line. Altogether, the news by this mail, though satis factory so far that it does not contain intelligence of any fresh massacres or serious defections, is by no means of a nature to increase our sense of security. MINISTERS ON INDIA. TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS." Sir,—lt is pitiable for us to read the Ministerial speeches on the present Indian question—how the rulers of England are resorting to every shift to delude the people into a belief that India is not in very great danger. Situated as we arc, we are the best judges of the matter. Either the Ministers are ignorant of the facts or are wilfully lying. Both ways considered, they are unfit to exercise power at this trying crisis. Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Disraeli, accused of exaggerating the danger to serve the in tereats of party, are the only men who comprehend