The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-15 00:00:00

9. We cannot but in justice consider, that those who resist our authority in Oude are under very different cir cumstances from those who have acted against us in pro vinces which have been long ander our government. 10. We dethroned the King of Oude, and took posses sion of his kingdom, by virtue of a treaty which had been subsequently modified by another treaty, under which, had it been held to be in force, the course we adopted could not have been lawfully pursued ; but we held that it was not in force ; although the fact of its not having been ratified in England, as regarded the provision on which we rely for our justification, had not been previously made known to the King of Oude. 11. That Sovereign and his ancestors had been uniformly faithful to their treaty engagements with us, however ill they may have governed their subj,cts. 12. They had more than once assisted us in our diffi culties, and not a suspicion had ever been entertained of any hostile disposition on their part towards oar Govern ment, 13. Suddenly the people saw their king taken from amongst them, and our administration substituted for his, which, however bad, was at least native; and this sudden thane of government was immediately followed by a summary settlement of the revenue, which, in a very con siderable portion of the province, deprived the most in fluential landholders of what they deemed to be their property ; of what certainly had long given wealth, and distinction, and power to their families. 14. We must admit that, under these circumstances, the hostilities whioh have been carried on in Oude have rather the character of legitimate war than that of rebel lion, and that the people of Oude should rather be regarded with indulgent consideration than made the objects of a penalty exceeding in extent and in severity almost any which has been recorded in history as inflicted upon a sub slued nation. J 5. Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of punishment, but have, with a generous policy, extended their clemency to the great body of the people. 16. You have acted upon a different principle. You base reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you have struck with what they will feel as the severest of punishment the mass of the inhabitants of the country. 17. We cannot but think that the precedents from which you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a •spirit of wisdom superior to that which appears in the pre .cedent you have made. 14. We desire that you will mitigate in practice the , stringent severity of the decree of confiscation you have issued against the landholders of Oude. 19. We desire to see British authority in India rest upon !the willing obedience of a contented people ; there cannot ibe contenteatnt where there is a general confiscation. 20. Goverment cannot long be maintained by any force ia.a country where the whole people is rendered hostile by a sense of wrong; and if it were possible so to maintain it, it would not 'be a consummation to be desired. THE PRESS, MAY 15,1858. people of England did not know the truth in regard to the government of India. Not more than a year ago a widespread rebellion broke out in India, and they heard of their countrymen, countrywomen, and children falling victims to an indescribable fury on the part of the natives, the reason assigned being that we had treated the natives with too much kind ness. God forbid that he should ascribe what had occurred in India to any party, military or civil ; he ascribed it solely to a system. Almost the first native gentleman that he met in India, on being asked what was the cause of the rebellion, said, " While the English Government was just and honest God gave them prosperity, but when the Government became unjust and severe God afflicted them with adversity, which generated discontent and rebellion." Ho asked the same question of a young native, who said that the mutiny had arisen because the Government had become immoral. The extent of the rebellion was much greater than had been represented to the people of England. The letters of Colonel Millman proved this fact. He was told, in• deed, that some of the native princes had been faithful to us—such as Holkar and Scindia ; but had their troops been faithful to us ? And what were those troops? Not, as in England, the idle portion of the popula tion, who by becoming soldiers cut themselves off from the community, but they were men who, after a certain period of service, looked forward to return to their homes, their farms, and their villages. The rise, therefore, was not from any military cause. If the natives were loyal, as had been asserted, why did not the Government dare raise a native regiment to put down the mutiny ? He might be asked what object the Indian Government could have in deceiv ing the English public as to the cause and extent of the rebellion. To the best of his belief the reason was, that when the mutiny first broke out the civil servants committed themselves to the assertion that it was merely a military mutiny, and they afterwards would not retract that assertion ; but there could be no doubt that this was a far wider movement than that of a military mutiny. The greased cartridges might have afforded a pretext, but the causes of the outbreak lay much deeper, and had been operating for years. Two causes chief( were assigned for the rebellion by persons with whom he had conversed at Benares—viz., the annexation policy and the treat ment of the natives. It was his conviction that the system of annexation had been the great moving cause of the present mutiny in India. He was told that the Government of India did not recognize annexation as a fixed policy, and a portion of its system; but he denied that assertion. When Sir Richard Hamilton placed Holkar, who was a minor, on the throne, he was reprimanded for doing so, as it prevented the Indian Government from pursuing a course of annexation which it had laid down to itself. Between the years 1851 and 1856 Lord Dalhousie annexed no less a popula tion than 10,558,943, and an area consisting of 146,000 square miles. These figures were according to a return made to Parliament; but it was a fallacious return, as it did not contain the assigned districts, such as Hyderabad, Sattara, and others. He could safely state that Lord Dalhousie had annexed terri tories containing 15,000,000 of inhabitants to our dominions in India. One of the most important of these annexations, and one from which they had most bitterly suffered, was that of Oude. He need hardly call the attention of the meeting to the well known despatch of Sir James Outram, in which an account was given of his interview with the King of Onde, when that Sovereign, after alluding to the fidelity of his family to the British rule for many generations, placed his crown upon his knees, and said that he bad no more hope in the justice of England after having been told that a treaty which had existed for twenty years, and which he con sidered to be good, lawful, and binding, was no longer binding, because it had been disapproved by the Court of Directors. He would not dwell upon the fact of dispossessing the landed proprietors of Oude; but this he would say, that nations never committed great crimes without ultimately suffering from them, and Oude might be to India what I'oland and Hungary had been and were to Russia. The hon. gentleman then adverted to the non-observance of treaties by the Indian Government with the native Princes, particularly instancing the case of the Nizam and of Nagpore. A native Prince once said to him—" Is there one way or two ways of reading a treaty? You make it only one way, and that is your own." In regard to the system of annexation, one objection was, our territories would be so extended by it that we should not be able to govern them. Prince Metternich once observed that we had not the material power to do it. How were they to govern 180,000,000 of people that were now under their sway ? Another evil result of annexation was that they were obliged to employ military men in the civil service, and thus leave the regiments without officers. Another griev ance of which the natives had to complain was the appointment or the Commission of Emans, as it was called—a sort of inquisition into the titles of men to , their property. If the parties could not show a tide hr one hundred years the property was taken from tb"'n altogether. No country in the world would t°, l ertle such a system. The parties were told that they bad a right of appeal, but how could those unhappy men go to Bombay to enforce that right? It was a nlocasry. In this case the Indian Govern ment had gone agsinst the very principle of the law, which said that no man should be a judge in his own cause. Why not appoint an Indian commission to investigate these titles ? He remembered hearing a young man state that he ought to have promotion because he had been the means of getting 80,0001. for the Government by means of these inquiries into titles. It might be said that it was only the great barons who suffered, but that was not true. The pea santry and all those who lived by the expenditure of the owners of these properties equally suffered. The last cause of discontent was Lord Dalhousie's procedure in regard to converting the five-per cent. loan into a four-percent. loan. The natives said to Lord Dalhousie, "You have ruined our faith in your credit, and you are now ruining our faith in your jus tice." He admitted that the East India Company had done well. Their arrangements were good, but the Government of the East India Company had not made a prosperous or happy people. The faith of the natives of India in us had broken down. It no longer existed. Lord Dalhousie was accused of having been the chief cause of this. Certainly the principles of government upon which he acted— whether he or the country were responsible he cared not to inquire—but the annexation of Oude and the confiscation of the estates of the people had been the cause of the rebellion in India. When he asked any natives a question in which the name of Lord Dal housie occurred, they held up their hands and said, "For God's sake don't speak of him." When that nobleman left the shores of India there were no ad dresses of congratulation presented to him. When Lord Canning assumed the government of India everything seemed to be in a perfect state of quietude, but he had scarcely taken upon him the reins of go vernment before the whole thing was blown up. He was surrounded by a weak Council. We had no able men—giants in their days. It was unfair to say that Lord Canning was thwarted at Calcutta. He was not. The people saw imminent danger, and every man offered himself, volunteering to sacrifice life and property to serve the Govern ment, but their offer was refused ; but he could not have known the extent of the danger, and under the circumstances Lord Canning did not deserve the blame that had been cast upon him. A great deal had been said about Mr. Colvin'a proclamation, but Sir Henry Lawrence had issued a proclamation even more merciful than that of Mr. Colvin. He did not wish to deny or palliate the atrocities that had been committed in India. God knew they were horrible enough, but they were taunted for wishing that the truth should not be spoken, and because they felt that if those horrors really had existed it would be Christian charity to throw over them the veil. With respect to the alleged cases of mutilation, after the most vigilant inve , tigation, be had not been able to find out one authenticated case. In India it was a great rising of the people, and he believed that they meant to exterminate man, woman, and child, but they did not mean V) insult or mutilate. What said Mr. Russell in the Times 1 He stated that there were 500 native Christians in Lucknow that were not molested. He would not touch upon party contentions. "For God's sake let us forget party when an empire is at stake. He would not ask whether it was prudent or wise to publish a certain document, but this be would say, that whoever was at the head of the Government of India ought to be guided by the two principles laid down in the concluding paragraph of that despatch, which ought to be written in characters of gold, and put up in every public place in India. We shall conquer India again. Our skill and science and the indomitable courage of our troops will do it; but, when we have reconquered it, what shall we do with it? There is no doubt as to the course we should pursue. Whwever may be the result, it is our duly to pursue it. It is all very well to see the statesmen of a great nation quarrelling for party purposes when they are about to lose a vast empire. You may have a Council, and must have a Council which shall control your Indian Government at home, but India itself must be governed in India. You must open your Council not only to a European, but to an Indian element. You have already done it on a small scale in Ceylon. There you have a population raised from 700,000 to 4,000,000. You have planters raised from 13 to 13(X); you have a council founded upon liberal and civilized principles, where Indians, even Buddhists, and almost native half castes, are represented. The experiment has been most sue. cessful. That experiment you must try in India. If you do, and if you lose India, it will be no dis honour and no disgrace to you that future should say that you made the people of India lized, prosperous, and happy, and, if it can be P by our example, let me add Christian. history ilia civi- effected (GA reat tourt tin* tsiasOion. The Queen of Portugal has taken leave of her Majesty .the Queen, and left Buckingham Palace for Piymenth en route to Lisbon. Her Majesty the Queen of Portugal and suite arrived at Plymouth at six o'clock on Tuesday even• ing. The military and municipal authorities were in attendance at the railway station to receive the illu,trious lady. The royal party immediately pro ceeded to the Royal William Victualling Yard, where they were met by the heads of the naval department. On her Majesty's embarkation on board the Bartho lomeo Diaz, Portuguese corvette, royal salutes were fired by the shipping in port and the batteries upon the shore. The royal squadron sailed for Lisbon early on `Wednesday morning. Vulitltal. MR. LAYARD'S SPEECH. 111Fmcriwo was held on Tuesday evening in St. James's-ball, Piccadilly, to hear an address from Mr. Layard,who had recently returned from India, on the present aspect of affairs in that country. Vis count Burg occupied the chair, and among the vast company thwt completely filled the room were noticed the folloWing members of Parliament :—Messrs. Bright, Milner 'Gibson, Black, Bruce, Ayrton, Had field, Crawford, liar E. Perry, Sir James Graham, Edward Ellice, Hodgson, Maguire, Colonel Rawlin. eon, Western, Lidull, Pritchard, Stapleton, G. G. Glyn, Lord John Hay, E. Ball, Lindsay, Sir A. Elton, Colonel Watkins, Sir John Logan, J. Wyld, J. B. Headlam, Cowan, J. Caird, Richardson, C 1 11512, Grant, and Duff. There were also present Messrs. Thackeray, Doyle, A. Otway, T. Taylor, R. 'Cobden, W. Theobold, Freeman, Ramsay, C. Lush. Angton, and S. H. Dickens, the Hon. A. Gordon, Sir Allen Macnab, Sir Duncan Macdougal, the Bishop of Llandaff, Colcusel French, and General Wilson. After a few introductory observations by the chair man, Mr. LAYMID proceeded to address the meeting. IL3 said it was his conscientious belief that the / 1