The Press. — London, England, 1858-02-06 00:00:00

'it PRESS, FEBRUARY 6, 1858._ 140 Government in the one case as in the other, and there is much more danger in wounding the sensibilities of foreign sovereigns in al liance with us here than there. Nothing can be a greater absurdity than to say that it is necessary to accord to the feelings of a Scin diah or a Holkar what we necessarily deny to those of the Emperor of Austria or of France. In point of fact, however, the whole case of the Government rests ou a pretence which is utterly false; and it is very little to the credit of Lord Canning that he should have allowed himself to be made the instrument of the Directors, and their favoured proteges the •civilian clique of Calcutta, in perpetrating such an act. The true cause of the suppres sion of the press was a desire to screen them selves and at the same time carry out a policy which they had long previously impressed upon Lord Ellenborough, but which that nobleman, with his usual sagacity, had de clined to adopt : Coupling this (as Mr. Connon puts it) with the ex treme displeasure of the Court of Directors at Sir Charles Metcalfe's liberation of the press, and with their hasty approval of the existing extinction of it, as well as the manner in which that extinction is defended, I think every one must see that the sepoy mutiny is made a mere pretence for a foregone conclusien. The free press of India is not liked, and must be pat down at all hazards — even on false pretences. We think it particularly sad that this ex tinction of the liberty of the press in India should have been so quietly acquiesced in by the public here, and we shall consider it a great proof of the degeneracy of Parliament if it be allowed to pass without some formal mark of its disapproval during the present session—not merely because the grounds for the freedom of the press in India and those for the freedom of the press in England are identical, but because this outrage on so che rished an institution in any part of our terri tories is calculated to give great additional weight to the attacks on it that are constantly being made by foreign sovereigns here. Nay more, it tends equally to cut the ground from under• our feet when any other• of the institu tions are impugned bi- them, on which our liberties are supposed to rest. It is the driving into the whole fabrio of our Constitu tion the thin edge of the despot's wedge. As regards the press in India, Mr. Connon corrects the popular error which dates its freedom from Sir Charles Metcalfe's measure. He shows that all Sir Charles Metcalfe's enactment did was to free it from the pressure of the regulation establishing a censorship, which, however, was only operative in Bengal. This regulation had the force of law there, because a subservient Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at Calcutta ,had been content to register it. But it had never been law in Bombay, because the judges of the Supreme Court there, Sir Edward West and Sir Charles Chambers, had peremptorily refused it regis tration ; and before the Charter Renewal Act of 1833, no regulation of a local government had validity at a Pres:dency which the judges of the Supreme Court there declined to re gister. The only check, therefore, on the press at Bombay before 1833 was the power of deportation ; but this extended not to men of English blood who were born in India, or to natives, and by the Charter Aet of 1833 it was wholly taken away. Thus the press of Bom bay was just as free before Sir Charles Met calfe's law as after it—its legal position being precisely that assigned to the press here by the laws of England at the period. It is no small proof of the absurdity a great man may write on a subject with which he is but im perfectly acquainted, that at the time Sir Thomas Munro was predicting such evils from granting freedom to the press in India, the press of Bombay was really free. Here is what Mr. Connon says upon this subject : While Sir Thomas Munro, then, was inditing in 1822 that long minute on the Indian press, now produced with an air as if we must all bow to his dictum on any point of Indian policy, without so much as a question, foretelling what would happen if the press became free—mutiny, insurrection, the loss of our empire, and so forth—the press at Bombay was actually free, and so continued un interruptedly without any mutiny, insurrection, or other particular trouble. till the passing of the Act XV. of NM in the month of June, after which period came our muti nies, insurrections, and so forth. Resin), I think I could make out a better case to prove that it had been the Gagging Act itself, at least so far as Bombay is concerned, and not the freedom of the press, that has led to all our public troubles; but sneh inconsequentiality of reasoning would require the power of a Government to make it pass muster, and I leave those that command that to descend to such pnerilities. Justice and logic seem the only friends left to our cause now, but with these I do not fear for the result. _ It is unnecessary for us to go into detail into the admirable ease which Mr. Connon makes out for the freedom of the press in India ; indeed, we are ashamed that in Eng land and among Englishmen thEre should be any question on the subject. We feel it a disgrace that our• Government should dare to try and enforce a principle, which if right when applied to politics must be equally right when applied to religion, and would fully justify every persecution that has been inflicted for promulgating opinions opposed to the ruling creed. But if any proof were wanted of the good which freedom of the press in India is calculated to do, and of the evils of its repression, we should find it in the in stances which Mr. Connon of his own ex• perience gives. In one case he tells us he was the cause, by the publicity he gave to the matter, of forcing on the Government an in quiry into some frauds in the collection and application of the municipal funds of Bom bay, which " led to the removal of a magis " trate of police who should never have been " appointed, and paved the way for a series of " improvements in the police, &c., of which " Bombay is now reaping the full benefit." He then shows how different must have been the result under the existing state of the law : But it may he said that if the Government had had the power then that it has now over the press, it could have made short work with troublesome journalists. It had only to withdraw their licences, and if they were still cal eitrant to sieze their property and clap them into gaol. That would have been an effectual way of ruining indi viduals no doubt ; but it is not the way to eztingnish the breath of scandal, which percolates all the more freely where there is no free press, and which in that case it is so much more difficult to meet and refute. The following is another instance of Mr. Connon's having fearlessly stood forward, at great personal risk, to expose a monstrous public scandal, and he shows convincingly how the public interests must have suffered had the present law been in existence to gag the press : It was in the early part of ISM when, as editor of the Bombay Gazette, I was led to speak of the reputation of the then Bombay Sadder Adawlut, and especially of two gentlemen, then judges in that high court, as very different from what such reputation ought to be, specifying particulars to which I would rather not now allude, as it is not to revive any unhappy qrarrels that I notice the matter now ; it was then that the Bombay Government addressed itself to those gentlemen to ascertain if the charges made against them were true, signifying that if the charges were false, it would prosecute me for publish. ing them ; but finding that they were so far correct in substance, that in the opinion of the Government's chief legal adviser, the Advocate-General, the answers which the parties could only give were not in either case suffi cient to proceed to move the Supreme Court for a writ of criminal information against me, it (the Government) thereupon said that the necessity was plain and urgent— that the highest court cf judicature under Indian admi• nistration should not be exposed to libels which could not be refuted ; that the characters of the judges should he each as to raise the court above suspicion, and give the people confidence in the justice it awards. And as those judges had shown they were not in a position to punish me, or in any way vindicate themselves in a public manner against the public defamation to which they had been subjected, Government deemed it an obvious and bounden duty to remove them from the bench of the Sadder Court, and they were removed accordingly. If I had been such a calumnious person as Lord Harris (in his minute on the proposed press law) says, erro neously, that the Larger portion of Indian journalists are, here was the opportunity to crush me that he would have desiderated and that I would have deserved. I could have been made responsible for my statements, the burden of proof could have been thrown upon me both as proprietor and editor, and on failure the act would have been penal, and no mistake. I say nothing for a Government that allowed itself to be driven to perform its admitted duty by such means ; but the facts, on the face of them, speak well and honour ably for the press. Under Act XV. of 18.57, however, while no action as regards the Sadder might have been taken, I would have been simply ruined for saying what I did, or Government, would have been shamefully negligent in enforcing the act. Would the former alternative have been justice to the public or to me—the latter, one that a Government should be left liable to ? He further on speaks of the act as one " under which those who are to be at once " judges of the law and of the fact may at the " same moment make the accusation, pro " nounce the sentence, against which there is " to be no appeal, and carry it into execution " thereupon" I am sure Lord Harris's bett er sense and better feel ings would revolt against arr an t i n j ust i ce and tyriony that. Yet such is the nonsen se th at excellent and ere: able men bring themselves to sp ea k w h en they allow feel. ing instead of judgment to get th e mastery of them, and forsake the slow but sure meth o d o f wor ki ng on first 'prin. ciples, to get at the seemingly quick meth o d of disposing of things which empineiaru promises, only to dis aypolu i or bring more and greater evils in its train. Such are some of the unanswerable argil. ments which Mr. Connon produces in support of his position, and we would strongly recom mend all to peruse his pamphlet who would desire to make themselves master of the ease. One point, however, his good nature has in duced him to omit, which, as we think it exhibits more clearly than all the rest what kind of men these press-gaggers are, we shall take leave of our own knowledge to sup. ply. The reader will have read with mu c h interest the issue of Mr. Connon's dangerous struggle with the judges whom he ended in compelling the Government to eject so igno miniously from the Bombay Sudder Adawlnt Court. He will have thought that, after all, there was some sense of honour and decency under the Company's rule. Poor deluded mortal ! he little knows the nature of that rule, or the shield that protects the culprit who happens to be of the favoured civilian caste. Will it bo believed—yet it must be believed, for it is a fact—that one of these very judges whom Mr. Cannon caused to be dismissed with such disgrace from the Bombay Sudder Adawlut Bench in 1853 is now, by the favour of Lesdenhall-street, a member of the Legislative Council of Calcutta, and was ac tually one of the very men who passed the act to extinguish the Anglo-Indian press ! No wonder at the Council's hatred of the insti tution, with such a spectacle of its power daily before them ; no wonder that they should have seized on any pretext to terminate for ever that liberty of discussion which was found to work so disastrously for themselves! But, if they had no sense of decency, our own legislators, it is to be hoped, possess some ; and with this damning fact before them, we cannot have a doubt as to what will be the decision of the House. The steps already taken by Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Disraeli are sufficient to show what is thought by the Con servatives of' this most disgraceful as well as most impolitic affair; and we cannot think for an instant that the same view will not be taken by all the independent members of the Liberal ranks. It would be a libel on these to suppose that they could sink so low as to endorse such a proceeding as this ; and we have no doubt, therefore, that when the ques tion comes on, such a demonstration will be made as shall show the Premier that there are limits to the forbearance which even the most subservient of Parliaments is prepared to accord to his acts. PERIODICAL THE magazines this month are all good. Bluckwood leads off with a capital article entitled "The Condi tion of Women," the pith of which is to expose the absurdity of bewailing the evils which civilisation entails upon women more than those which it entails upon men. The writer points out very forcibly that the governess, the needlewoman, and "breadwinners " generally of the one sex, have each their double in the other; and that the position of those unmarried ladies who, while removed by one step from the necessity of earning their livelihood, are " sickening " of a vague disease" for want of something to occupy them, is not a whit worse than that of a numerous class of young men in a corresponding situation of life. Sir Bulwer Lytton gives us one ef the most interesting instalments of his story we have yet had. "People I have Never Met" is a very facetious jeu d'esprit. One of the classes so described is " The man whose word is as good as his bond ;" " though," says the writer, " I ought not to 'Jay ab " solutely I have never met with this variety. I " have occasionally done so in the person of a man " whose bond was good for nothing. More than " this, there are men who, like Micuwber, believe that " when they have given you their I 0 U the amount "is squared. Such a man's word may fairly be " thought better than his bond." A very long article on East Africa, which looks good—two Indian ar ticles, which are not without sense and spirit, though we cannot endorse them all—and laudatory reviews of Lord St.. Leonards' " Handy Book " and that strange book, " Thorndale "—constitute a varied and Interesting number.