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

458 The Record, commenting on these facts, said : " This is only a specimen of the incredible recklessness with which Oude was annexed, and of the equally incredible carelessness of the Local Government of Calcutta to whose tuition Lord CANNING was intrusted 'Alen Lord DALHOUSIE retired. These we not the speculations of men writing at a distance from the scene of government and ignorant of the secret springs of action. They are facts resting on no doubtful evidence, and backed by the over whelming authority of Sir HENRY LAWRENCE, the Resident at Lucknow, the man who, having done so much to place the Punjaitii in security, was entreated to delay his return home in order that he might reorganize Oude. But with such a Local Council as that at Calcutta, and a Go vernor so vacillating as Lord CANNING, Sir HENRY LAWRENCE was nearly powerless. He could point out the mistakes committed. He could suggest the remedies. But he could not disarm Oude or conquer the red-tapeism of those who had laughed to SCOTH Sir CHARLES NAPIER'S prediction that we should have a mutiny of 40,000 or even 80,000 sepoys, that some calamity would come as a thunderbolt,' and find them unprepared." Surely, then, if our title be not altogether clear, and if our enemy be formidable, the clearest dictates of policy would lead us to be moderate and temperate in our demands. And this leads us to the second great fact in the case. 11. LORD CANNING'S PROCLAMATION. After the view we have just taken, what shall we say of the prudence of that Governor-General who, the moment the capital city is taken, issues a proclamation of the following tenor ? " The time has come at which the Right Hon. the Governor-General of India deems it right to make known the mode in which the British Government will deal with the talookdars, chiefs, and landholders of Oude and their fol lowers." " Therefore the Right Hon. the Governor- General hereby declares that (six persons named) are henceforward the sole hereditary proprietors of the lands which they held when Oude came under British rule, subject only to such moderate assessment as may be imposed upon them." " The Governor-General further proclaims to the people of Oude, that, with the above-named exceptions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British Govern ment, which will dispose of that right in such manner as it may seem fitting." Thus, the English, having fought their way into Lucknow, and having in Oude some 8,000 or 9,000 British bayonets, while the rest of the kingdom, with its 246 forts, is in the hands of the insurgents, thinks it wise and prudent to declare and publish a general confiscation of the whole land of the country, with the exception of the estates of six persons ! If this be prudence and policy, we should like to know whether such things as rashness and temerity were ever seen in the world ! The Irish did rise in rebellion in 1798, and again about ten years ago. Had they succeeded, in either year, in driving the English, for a time, out of the country, a force of 25,000 would soon have been organized in England, which force would have landed and taken Dublin. And what would have been thought of the prudence, or the justice, of their imm ed iately issuing a Pro clamation, declaring the forfeiture and confisca tion of all Ireland, excepting six estates? Would not the English Minister who could have advised such a measure have been '4lought deserving of impeachment? And why! 'should the same act be deemed defensible because committed on the other side of the globe ? But, we are sometimes told, that we are de ceived by a phrase ; for that "confiscation" in Lord CANNDIG'B Proclamation does not mean " confiscation," but something else. If this be true, Lord CANNING should have taken means to insure the publication of the document in Eng land, with a proper translation, or with explana tory notes. But this is pitiable trash. If the Proclamation means anything; if it be not a heap of unintelli gible phrases, it means this,—that six persons, named in it, shall keep their estates ; and that all the other proprietors or landholders shall lose their estates. THE PRESS, MAY I's, 185, A journal avowedly friendly to Lord Cmasu (the Guardian) says : "We must say that in point of justice end humanity we do not see how this proclamation is to be defended, except on the plea that Lord CANNING does not mean what his words expsess. Oude is an extensive country, with a large popu lation, of whom but a small proportion can either have had the •• • irtnnity of ' supporting auk assisting British • • cers,' or have taken any item in resisting them. A general sentence of confis cation, intended to be acted on, would 'in such a case be a 'flagrant iniquity. Accordingly the defence is that it is not intended to be acted upon. We have seen it suggested that the confiscation means only a seizure of the dominium eminens— the paramount lordship of the soil—which would give us the same powers as the defunct Govern ment had against the actual tenants. But this is a mistake. Those powers we had already; the Proclamation deals, not with the Oude Govern ment, which has been extinct for years, but ex clusively with the talookdars, chiefs, and land holders and their followers, and ends by holding out the hope that those " rights " may as a matter of grace be " restored " to some which it had begun by taking away from all. What is confis cated, therefore, is the rights, whatever they were, of the holders of land. The resistance of the inhabitants is the crime, the confiscation of the rights of the inhabitants is the punishment. Nor does it matter by what tenure they hold ; what they have they are deprived of—no confis cation could do more." We return, then, to the broad fact:—Our gallant troops have fought their way into Luck now, which they hold. Outside of Lucknow they possess just so much of Oude as they stand upon. The country is hostile; the mutineers are abroad. And yet this is thought to be the time, and these the circumstances, in which to inflict the heaviest punishment, short of death, upon all the land owners of the whole realm ; and thus to make tens of thousands of armed men our determined foes ! And this brings us to the next question, which is— 111. LORD ''S DESPATCH. So soon as this extraordinary step, on the part of the Government of India, came to the know ledge of her Majesty's Ministers, they were ne cessarily forced to adopt some course—to express some opinion. That they could approve of what had been done was clearly impossible. That they should wait, weeks or months, to hear explana tions lirom Lord CANNING, would have been a paltering course. The document was clear and distinct enough. It required no explanation. That " the proprietary right to the whole soil of " the kingdom is confiscated to the British Go " veniment" is a sentence of the plainest and simplest kind. No one could have any difficulty in comprehending it, or in forming a judgment upon it. The Government at once disapproved it. But surely the course taken was not a rash or violent one. They did not order the Governor- General at once to recal and rescind his procla mation. They were content to state to him the different views they took, and to desire him " to mitigate in practice the stringent severity of " the decree of confiscation." We give the chief passages in this Despatch—a document upon which we have no doubt that all who have been concerned in it will look back, years hence, with real satisfaction:— "We cannot but express to you our apprehen sion that this decree, pronouncing the dismherison of a whole people, will throw difficulties almost insurmountable in the way of the re-establishment of peace. " " The landholders of India are as much attached to the soil occupied by their ancestors, and are as sensitive with respect to the rights in the soil they deem themselves to possess, as the occupiers of land in any country of which we have a knowledge. " Whatever may be your ultimate and undis closed intentions, your Proclamation will appear to deprive the great body of the people of all hope upon the subject most dear to them as indi viduals, while the substitution of our rule for that of their native Sovereign has naturally excited against us whatever they may have of national feeling." 7" Other conquerors, wh en t h ey have succeeded a overcoming resistance, have excepted persons as still deserving of punishment, .have, Alb a generous_ pshcy, extend e d t h eir cy enen to the great body of the people. " You have actel upon a different principle. Yon have reserved I, few as deserving of special favour, and you have *ruck with what they feel as the severest of punishment the mass the 41habilluits *the try, ' "We eann•ot brit Think that the precedents from whie4 yok have departed will appear have been conceived in. a spirit_ of wisd om superior to that which appears in the precedent you made. "We desire that you will mitigate in practice the stringent severity of the decree of confiscation you have issued against the landholders of Oude. " We desire to see British authority in India r€ upon the willing obedience of a contented people there cannot be contentment where there - general confiscation. " Government cannot long be maintained any force in a country where the whole people rendered hostile by a sense of wrong; and, ' were possible so to maintain it, it would not consummation to be desired. " Against this Despatch of Lord ELLENBO ROUGH'S, the Pahnerstonian journals, Globe, &c., are now levelling their most furious assaults. Yet, strange to say, the very ' before it appeared the Times itself wrote it very same strain. So soon as it had seen CANNLNG'I3 Proclamation, the Times felt exactly as Lord ELLENBOROUGH had felt, and it thus : " The people of Oude, as a body, cannot thought to have offended us very deeply. conduct of their chiefs amounts, no doubt, Governor-General states, to a 'great crime, might warrant a just retribution,' but their cannot be likened to the guilt of the mutineers. We must have shown distinctly enough now even for popular apprehension r'• we are superior in strength, and that we do resort to conciliation to escape the risks of N All that we have to forego is the opportunity retribution actually at our command. There remains nothing now to conquer but public giving—nothing to be won except the goodwill and confidence of the people. Victory in case will be no less honourable than in the but it must be earned by policy and forbearance, not by inexorable rigour. "In Oude the rebellious spirit seems to been confined to those landholders who what we should call 'a stake in the country•, who have thought that the annexation province was but a prelude to the dispossession of themselves. Why, then, should any of countrymen act as if they thought every inhabi• tant of India a rebel and an assassin ? practices, if not checked, will lead to so open feud between the Englishman and the Asiatic will vastly increase the labour of governing empire after it has been reconquered. " Oude is a conquered country, and nothing more; because its inhabitants took advanto of the sepoy mutiny to assert again their . lost independence, there is no reason that should look upon them as monsters without claim to pity, or pursue them with the geance which may justly follow the treacherous sepoy. This being, as we think, a fair view the case, it would well become the Government to recommend in its next despatches a greater discrimination in the infliction of punishment the seat of war. From all accounts it appear that the authorities, military and especially the civil—do not err on the side lenity." Thus, singularly enough, the whole tribe Palmerstonians are now opening in full against Lord ELLENBOROUGH, for having writ with reference to Lord CANNING'S Proclamation , almost precisely what the Times itself wrote, " seeing that extraordinary production. So stood the case ten days ago. But remains one more point— IV. THE PUBLICATION OF LORD ELLEN• BOROUGH'S DESPATCH IN ENGLAND• Ten days ago the whole case was known to the British public. how I it, then, into the public view at all? Mi thus :—The Times newspaper sends an ceed e d a few t, but dr de- ncipl e . special ey will lass of :edents ear to Iperior u have Iractice cation Dude. ha rest oeople; re is a aed by eople is ad, if it of be a LENP.O- - furious ry day in the a Lord exactly wrote snot be The , as the ie,' and guilt sepoy gtinctly in that do not of war. inity of There iic !nig- oodwill in this other, arance, o have D have o'and f the session of our inhabi- Such open a iatiC as ng the iothing vantage r lately hat we ;hout a ie yen- .therous view of rnment greater nent at would civil — side of vibe of 11 cry rritten, nation, ote, on t there [LEN- D. Ls un - came Merely agent 111