The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

the bulk of the population. There were excep tions, no doubt, both among our native subjects and among the native princes connected with us by relations of friendship and by treaties--excep tions highly honourable to those who remained faithful to their allegiance or their alliance ; but these very exceptions, by the high value set upon them, go far to prove that disaffection, or at the least absence of affection, was the rule. Nor, if we consider the social attitude hitherto assumed towards the native population by the great body of Europeans in India, can we feel surprised at this. THEODORE Hoox's amusing portraitures of bilious old uncles, possessed of fabulous wealth, surrounded by troops of outlandish attendants and menageries of beasts, birds, and creeping things—with minds concentrated upon the flavour of curry and mulli , ratawney, and with frames which required the breezes of the punkah to keep life's breath from coming to a dead stop—were caricatures, it is true, but there was a foundation of truth in them ; and the selfishness and arro gance, the despotic indolence and sensuality, which were real in them, were characteristics not calculated to win a place for the Anglo-Saxon race in the Indian heart. It would be the height of injustice to lay at the door of the East India Company the excre scences which grew upon the European charac ter under the influence of Indian circumstances and habits. It is bare justice to that body which raised for us an empire unparalleled in the his tory of conquest and colonization, ancient as well as modern, to remember that at all times those directly engaged in its service constituted the more respectable portion of Anglo-Indian society, and that unremitting, and not altogether unsuc cessful, efforts were made by the governing body at home to instil a higher tone of feeling into the Indian service. But there was, inherent in the very nature of a commercial corporation invested with the attributes of sovereignty, a vicious ele ment tending to corruption. The whole of the dominion acquired by degrees over the vast In dian peninsula was, in fact, a gigantic mercan tile speculation ; the relation in which the go verning power stood to those employed by it, or settling and trading under its protection, was in the nature of a money bargain. Men went out to India in the Company's service, or under its patronage, with the idea of amassing wealth on a larger scale and in a shorter time than was attainable by any other employment or enter prize. To return home as rich Nabobs, and spend the residue of their lives in the enjoyment of all that money could purchase, was their chief, if not their sole, ambition. As servants or pro teges of a private company, they had no public feeling to inspirit them, no national interests to sustain. John Company's sceptre was a source of wealth, not a " fountain of honour." All this flowed so naturally from the very con stitution of the body by which India has hitherto been governed, and whose business strictly it was to govern India for the benefit of the proprietors of East India stock, rather than for the welfare of the populations of India, that there is more reason to feel grateful for the amount of good which the Company's rule has done in India, than to find fault with abuses and vices inseparable from a rule resting on such a foundation. And, whatever may turn out to be, in other respects, the advantages or disadvantages of the measure which has made the possessions of the East India Company an integral part of the British empire, there can be no doubt that in this one particular It will prove a great gain. The nature of the change effected by this transfer in the relations between the native Indians and the Anglo- Indians is pointed out in a few words, and with masterly simplicity, in the speech of the Minister of the Crown :who is responsible for the future government of India. Different races cannot be brought into contact with each other, as Asiatics and:Europeans are in India, and remain in a state of Indifference, of neutrality of feeling, towards one another. Feelings will and must be engendered between them ; and those feelings must be either of a friendly or of a hostile character. If the dominant race evinces feelings of ignorant and insolent contempt towards the conquered races, these will retaliate by prejudice and deadly hatred, which, in the absence of power and of opportunities for open display, will take the form of insidious treachery. Such has been the case in India. The natives felt, and had abundant cause to feel, that they were regarded and treated THE PRE S S, DECEMBER 18, 1858. as beings of an inferior order, and that the object of those who came from the far West to rule over them was simply to make merchandize of them and of their country. It is not the intention of the Queen's Government, and of the Noble Lord to whom the administration of Indian affairs is specially committed, that this state of things should continue. India is henceforward to be governed, like every other part of her Majesty's dominions, for the good of the governed them. selves. The improvement of India, the develop ment of its resources, the elevation of its inhabitants to a higher rank in the moral and intellectual scale, not the dividends upon a par ticular stock, are the objects to be kept in view ; and to the attainment of those objects the united efforts of the representatives of British power and of the Anglo-Saxon race will have to be directed. The " Upper Ten Thousand" Anglo-Indians will have to bring to bear upon the more than ten times ten millions of native Indians the moral and intellectual ascendancy of Great Britain, and this they can only do by the display among them of superior qualities of head and heart. It is not by withholding from the natives the sympathies of our common humanity, not by denying them the rightful claims of even-handed justice between man and man, but by concilia ting their affections, and respecting their rights, that the power of Great Britain must establish its moral title to rule over millions of Indian sub jects. And to do this, it is not enough, as Lord STANLEY 80 well pointed out, for those who are administering India in the name of the British Queen, to make themselves masters of the lan guage of India ; they must observe native habits, study native ideas, learn to understand the native character. Thus will they best qualify them selves for exercising a beneficial influence upon the natives, and establishing between them and their British rulers that mutual goodwill and reciprocal attachment which is impossible where there is neither sympathy of feeling nor identity of interests. These are the lessons which, as lessons to be collected from the events of the last two years, the Noble Lord the Secretary for India has so well summed up, for the benefit, not of the cadets of Addiscombe alone, but of the whole Indian service, which will henceforth be the Queen's service in India. To the whole community of Anglo-Indians he has given notice that it is not by English superciliousness soaked in Oriental luxury and vice, but by the sterling virtues of the English character heightened by a sense of the deep responsibility attaching to our relations with Oriental nations, that the British Government is to be represented, and its administration carried on, in India. The restraints imposed by the pro fession of the Christian faith and by the princi ples of English society are not to be shaken off, as they have been too often by our countrymen in India, but are to be maintained with tenfold strictness, in the presence of a population whose love and respect is to be won by the exhi bition of the English character in its most favour able aspect. Next to the admirable Proclamation that heralded to the natives of India the great political change which their relation to this country has undergone, the new Secretary of State, to whose hands the future of India is intrusted, could not more happily have inaugurated his administration than by pointing out with so much clearness and wisdom the change that is required in the social relations between Anglo- Indians and natives. Let us hope that his counsel will be appreciated by the former in its full weight and significance, not the less so because of the apparently incidental nature of the occasion on which it was given, and the unas suming language in which it was couched. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF IRISH CONSPIRACY. " WHAT is this Phoenix Club like ? " is a question asked with interest, and answered in a great variety of ways. Some pooh-pooh it, others " cannot tell," and many think that it is a serious conspiracy. The fact, certainly, that a secret society of a considerable extent, with ramifi cations north and south in Ireland, and con prising classes ofa kind far superior to the Ribbon men, .is no trifle, and the subject demands in vestigation. .We have taken some pains to 1227 ascertain the circumstances connected with the Phcenix Club, and we shall endeavour to elu cidate some of its aspects. The Society, we have reason to think, may be traced to an American origin. The Irish in America have lost much of the vogue which they possessed in former years, and the zeal with which the Roman Catholic clergy have worked in the States has caused a general repulsion of the Irish influence. The Irish in America, there fore, have internally concentrated their re sources, and they leave the course more narrow and less diffusive than was the case with them some time since. After the Cabbage Garden conspiracy of 1848 had exploded in ridicule, the Irish in America ceased to be political, and took no interest in popular movements; but after the " Know Nothing " Society had exercised its power throughout the States, the Irish in America were again swept into a reactionary political movement, and for the last five years there has been amongst them more or less of political work going on, which has been care fully kept back from the public eye. It must be remembered that the Irish demo crats in recent times have undergone extraordi nary changes. All faith in the Irish Platform has ceased. The jobbery of Agitation has ruined the trade of the Irish tribune more effectually than the proclamations from the Castle, or the transportation of SMITH O'BRIEN and his col leagues. The " patriotism " of the shop, the spouting of heroics, and the pocketing of salary— the invectives against the Saxons and the in triguing to gain the Saxon's good-will—the noisy hypocrisy before " the people," and the sleek flattery in the antechamber of the Minis ter,—all these features have become positively hateful to the popular mind in Ireland. The Dublin Platform is dethroned from its power, and the survivors of the Stock Company at Con ciliation-hall are in official position, certainly for their own, if not for their country's, good. I But though agitation is extinct, democratic activity survives, and a large body of Irishmen arc not ready to subside into tame acquiescence 1 with the results of the movements of recent years. The lower range of the middle class in Ireland still offers fine materials for political conspirators to work with. Sectarianism and the spirit of religious propagandism will not satisfy • I the minds of men who love the bustle of political movements, and who wish to have exciting ideas and brilliant visions of the future " splendid phantoms" dancing before their vivid Celtic fancies. In the political working of the Ame rican States there is a considerable amount of active secresy, aided by the machinery of the Vote by Ballot. The " Know-nothing Society " was secret in its operations, and we cannot be surprised that the Irish democrats should think fit to copy American examples. The Irish in America, also, suppose that their influence and consideration will be greater in the States if it be generally thought that they are not an isolated body of emigrants, but that they have still power and connection in the old country. The question now arises, " At what do they aim, and what is it that they expect to effect by this Phcenix Club." Their first objects are to organize and to keep up Irish democratic sentiments of a revolutionary kind, as opposed not only to Con servatism, but as antagonistic to Whiggery and to "respectable Cawtholics." Many of the new disturbers have been bred up in the school of O'CONNELL and of GAVAN DUFFY ; they have something of the political artifices of the first, and of the peculiar talent for organizing of the last. They recollect the preparatory machinery which O'CONNELL put in force to distinguish his Repeal year of 1843. There had been a most careful rehearsal in 1842 of the political drama which was offered to the imperial public in 1843. The Agitator and three of his colleagues each took up a province in Ireland in 1842, drilled it for the part it was expected to play in the ensuing year, and accordingly the world was amazed with the multitudinous displays of the Monster Meetings in 1843. O'CONNELL used to be asked, " Did he really think that Repeal would come b 3 such means," and he used to say nothing, but with a wink tell his cautious friends " that something great would come from it • " and, beyond doubt, the Agitator himself believed that even if he failed in procuring Repeal, he would achieve "something great" by it. In his admirable novel of" The Cantons," Sir Alli