The Press. — London, England, 1858-01-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JANUARY 30, 1858 Nittraturt. The Rise of Our Indian Empire. Extracted from Lord Mahon's History of England. London : Murray. British Rule in India. A Historical Sketch. By Harriet Martineau. London : Smith and Eider. Ar a time when public attention has been directed to our Indian possessions by a series of events wellnigh sufficient to take away from the calmest mind all power of unbiassed judgment, we are glad to have the opportunity of recommending to our readers two works like those which we have placed at the head of this article. It is just now peculiarly in structive and interesting to peruse a narrative written, as the former is, without reference to contemporary circumstances, and liable to no suspicion of wresting facts or arguments to a foregone conclusion. We regret, indeed, that the labours of Earl Stanhope should extend no further than 1783, and that the latter half of British Indian history should not have been illustrated by his clear method, his lively style, and his impartial judgment. And to separate half a dozen chapters from a long historical work, and place them before readers sharpened by unwonted interest in the topic of wch they treat, is to subject them to a very severe ordeal. But " The Rise of our Indian Empire " bears this test exceedingly well, and, as far as it goes, gives a clearer idea of the matters comprehended in it than can be gained from any work of a similar kind. Miss Martineau's book is written to suit the present demand. She has brought to bear upon its composition the vigorous understand ing and rigid sense of justice for which she has always been distinguished, and we observe a constant and generally very successful at tempt to throw herself imaginatively into some of the periods which she describes, and to form pictures helping us to realise the aspects of Indian life and manners as they might have appeared to observers of a century, or half a century, ago. The power of the English in India developed itself, as it has done almost everywhere else, not according to any settled plan, but as it was guided by the current of circumstances. The process of its growth resembled that by which the doctrines of the Church attained, in early ages, their distinctive form. As, in the one ease, heretics, in attempting to set up on the ground left vacant by the founders of Chris tianity the anomalous productions of indi vidual opinion, forced the orthodox party to self-assertion and the elaborate promulgation of a definite creed —so, in the other, the rivalry of enemies, and the vicissitudes of Oriental Intrigue, compelled men, whose only wish was to pursue a peaceful commercial occups lion, to resoi tto measures of self-de once, to assume an active policy, and to set in motion the whole complicated machinery of diploinaey and war. From the year 1600, the date of Queen Elizabeth's first charter, to 1640, at which time the present site of Madras was purchased, the Company was obscure and not prosperous. Twenty years afterwards, the town and island of Bombay were ceded to Charles 11. as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza; and iu 1698 the English trans ferred their• factory from Hooghley to Chutta nuttee (Calcutta), and built Fort William— not the present, but the old one—to pro t .ict it:— Thus then before the accession nf the House of Hanover these three main st ttions,—Fort William, Fort St. George, and Itombay,—had been erected into Presidencies, or central posts of Government • not, however, as at present, subject to one supreme authority, but each independent of the rest. Each was governed by a President and a Council Of nine or twelve members, appointed by the Court of Directors in England. Each was surrounded with fortifications, and guarded by a small force, partly European and per ly native, in the service of the Com pany. The Europeans w e r e e ith er recru it s en li s t e d i n England or strollers end deserters from other services in Amonglndia. these the descenda n t s o f th e o ld settlers, especially the Portuguese, were called Topasses, —from the tope or hat which they wore instead of turban. The natives, as yet ill armed and ill-trained, were known by the name of sepoys,—a corruption from the Indian word sipahi, a sol.lier. But the territory of the English scarcely even led out of sight of their towns, nor had their will, try peva: items :1•7 other object thfut the wlttioleste4 enjoyment of their trade. Far from aiming at conquest and ag4randisement, they had of en to tremble for their homes. So lately as 174 the " Mahratta Ditch " was dug round a part of Calcutta, to protect the city from an in road of the fierce race of Sivajee. But a different era was approaching. Between 1744 and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the French and English settlers in India had already come into collision, and after that event the quarrels of the Deccan and Carnatic princes were not long in giving them another opportunity. It was Dupleix, the Governor of Pondicherry, whose attack on Trichinopoly gave occasion for the first great exploit of Clive. That "heaven-born general" diverted the French attack by surprising Arcot, in which he was subsequently besieged, and which he defended with the greatest suc cess. Numerous desultory operations followed, and in 1755 Clive, who had been at home two years, came out again as Governor of Bombay. We here quote an interesting passage (though we do not vouch for its correctness) from Miss Martineau, on a subject to which a far less considerable space would have been de voted a year ago : The first notice of sepoys in British pay occurs in con• nection with the early history of Bombay. The first occa sion on which they are mentioned with honour is the de fence of Arcot, when Clive inspired all his followers with the military spirit which made him a hero from the mordent when he left his desk for the field. The sepovs were delighted to see him back again at Fort St. David, and were ready to do anything under his command. At that time none had been enlisted but men of high military ' tribes—part Mohammedans and part Hindoos, the latter chiefly Rajpoots. They were small men (from five feet three to five feet five), active, strong, patient and brave in temper, and temperate in diet, but while possessing most of the great qualities of the soldier, requiring peculiar management. As long as no suspicion was awakened in their minds, they were devoted, trustful, patient, and even upright under stress; but when once their high honour was touched, or they suspected deceit or ridicule, they were enemies for ever, as implacable and vindictive as devils. Every mistake on the part of the English, every lapse into forgetfulness that English methods alone will never answer with Asiatic soldiers, has been marked by a mutiny, for about a century past. An order to go round by sea to Bombay produced a mutiny, the natives having an extreme horror of " the black water," as they call the ocean ; whereas, when an officer whom they knew told them that he and his European soldiers were going on an enterprise overland, and needed a force of volunteers, thero were always enough ready to go. An order to shave is never obeyed, for reasons of native feeling which no commander should be ignorant of; and an attempt to enforce the order has repeatedly induced mutiny. Very few persons in England have any idea of the number of sepoy mutinies which have occurred between the defence of Arcot, which opened our military history in India, and the present calamity, of which the entire series should have forewarned us. It would be too much to say that on all these occa sions the British were totally wrong; but it may be safely declared that a sufficient knowledge of the native mind would have explained to us how it was that the mutineers alwa3s were vehemently persuaded that they were right. Some promise was supposed to he broken, something was required of them which they could not do, some insult was offered to their pride or their affections, or some novelty was introduced to which they could not commit themselves till they understood its bearings. They would serve with out a murmur while their pay was two or three years in arrear ; they would endure famine and other hardship with unsurpassed generosity of spirit ; but they required peculiar consideration from their peculiarities of retina and training. It way for the English to consider whether it was worth while to make soldiers of them under such con• ditions; brit neither party is to be blamed for the existence of the conditions. It might be burdensome to have to cultivate the language, and leant the mind, of the native soldier ; but he could not be a trustworthy soldier on other terms. Such pains have always been found to answer. Clive succeeded entirely with them ; so did Sir Eyre Coote ; and so did many more good commanders, during a long settee of years. They had them well in hand. They did not waste their authority in making a point of shaven chins and compulsory sea voyages; but they allowed no hesitation or question about such eiders as they gave. They carefully studied their men ; and they took care that their men should know them. The consequence was that a native officer here and there—such as Mohammed Esof, Cawder Beg, Sheik Ibrahim, and several others, rose into companionship of fame with distinguished European officers, and that officers who were fit to command them, from Clive and Coote to Lake, Ochterlony, and Christie, could do anything with them, and had little other difficulty than to restrain the enthusiasm of their obedience. What ever may be the issue of the present mutiny, the memory of a better time will be preserved among the sepoys in two sacred forms—the native traditions of the deaths and funerals of popular European officers, and the monuments —the " regimental shrines "—which grateful rulers and commanders have from time to time erected or counte nanced, to the memory of heroic native officers. The Madras aepoys hold the first rank during the early history of our Indian dominion. Those of Bombay were of a different kind, and applicable to a different service. They were recruited from all available sources.. Not only were Mussulman and Hindoo thrown together, but the Hiodoos were of various countries and castes, some being soatsely superior in rank to the i l tirithson the Cerontauki coast. There were a few Christians also, and many Jews; these last being found to make the very best soldiers till they grew elderly, when drink usually degraded them. One great advanta4e of the admixture in the Bombay force was that it was more available fur foreign service than that of Madras. It was, in fact, scarcely possible for high-caste soldiers to undergo a voyage without loss of caste. A few did undertake the necessary self.denial when invited by popular officers to volunteer; but a positive order to go to sea was sure to produce mutiny. There was no such diffi culty with the Bombay force, while their attachment to their commanders could not be exceeded. It was always a well-weeded force, from the circumstances of its Position. Discontented recruits could always abscond into the neigh bouring Mahratta territories, and those who remained were thereby proved superior to the temptation. Tippoo could never induce any of the hundreds of them whom he held prisoners to enter his service, though he offered every possible inducement, and punished them bitterly for re fusal: and when at length they and the European prisoners of war were on their weary march to Madras, in order to be sent round to Bombay, some of them nightly eluded their guards, and visited their officers (by swimming tanks or at other risks) to bring them money or food, saying that sepoys could live upon anything, but that Englishmen needed mutton and beef. This was truly a spirit not to be trifled with. There are several instances on record of the deliberate intervention of these men to save their com manders from the certain death which they drew upon themselves. They thought all was explained, when they pleaded that officers' lives were worth more that sepoys. As for the Bengal native army, it originated with the few companies who attended Clive to Calcutta, in 1750. The first battalions raised in Bengal were called after the names of their commanders—each company by that of • its captain; each company having its own stanelari - 1 of tho same ground as its facings, and a device derived from its snbadar—a crescent, a sabre, &c. In 1760 the British officers in Bengal were 18 captains, 28 lieutenants, and 15 ensigns, all 'inlay in organising battalions, consisting each of ten companies of 100 men each. In half a century, the Bengal Native Infantry were not fewer than 60,000, commanded by 1,500 European officers. The soldiers were of the proudest classes of natives—Mohammedans and high-caste Hindoos—a large proportion of them Raj poets, the very representatives of Hindooism—an order come up, as it were, from the depths of the past to show the modern world what sort of men Hiudostan &as once full of; a stalwart soldiery of tall stature and unmixed blood : men believing nothing, and insisting upon every thing they were accustomed to; with no faith, but plenty of superstition ; servile to power, and diabolically oppres sive to helplessness : prone to self torture, without any power of self-denial ; bigoted to home and usages, without available affections or morality; smooth in language and manners, while brutal in grain ; incapable of compassion, while disposed to good-nature ; good tempered in general, with exceptions of incomparable vindictiveness ; timid for a twelvemonth, and then madly ferocious for a day, or heroically devoted for an hour; frivolous and fanatical; liars in general, and martyrs on occasion ; scoundrels for the most part, and heroes by a rare transfiguration. Such were, and such are, the Rajpoots of whom our Bengal army has always been largely composed, and who have been the perplexity of plain-witted Englishmen for the hundred years just closed with the Delhi atrocities of 1857. The next epoch is that of the capture of Calcutta by Surajah Dowla (18th June, 1756), and the atrocity of the Black Hole—the re sult of which was to summon Clive to Bengal, where in the imbsequent year he gained eternal honour by fighting the battle of Plassey, and almost equal disgrace by his bad faith towards Omichund. Clive's internal adminis tration was not so successful as his military exploits, and the confusion which ensued enabled Parliament to lay its first hold upon the Company, and appoint a Governor-General and judicial officers. The first Governor- General was Warren Hastings. On his policy public opinion is by this time tolerably agreed. He was boll and honest l but his treat ment of the Rohillas, of .Cheyte Singh, and of the Bcgums of Oude are points in his career which his wannest admirers must be unable to defend ; while it is impossible to approve and equally impossible not to admire his successful audacity in the destruction of Nuncomar. Under Miss Martineau's guidance—for that of Earl Stanhope here ceases—we pass over the first great contest with Hyder Ali, and arrive at the establishment cf the Double Government in 1764, substantially the same as that which is in operation at the present day. Lord Cornwallis was the first viceroy under the new system, anal his administration is remarkable for the first application of Euro pean industrial ideas to Indian matters — known as the " Permanent Settlement "—by which the zemindars or middlemen ,vere made proprietors of the soil, as against the ryots or cultivators of it. The rival scheme to .his was Sir Thomas Munro's—known as the " Ryotwar System"—by which the rent of the land was received directly from the labourer, and the landholder was virtually eliminated. Fur cri ticism of these methods, neither of which it-towered verfoetly, wo nuttit reter loz) SWAM, if LIM ierritory 01 tne nngnsn I were mussuiman and Hindoo thrown together, but the I itsnuitottter was vtrtuatty ttism scarcely esten led out of sight of their t owns , nor h a d t h e i r Hiodoos were of various countries and castes, c o m e heir)," ticism of theso methods, r will, try brava: items o 7 other object that the Wlitictleilte4 sesruely superior IR to IO tbe f i totolis on the Cgronssutlel IHOwerod verfoetly,