The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-15 00:00:00

''''''.--"*......"'-`46.....-..--...-•-••••,..••••• 4/4e .. ~..• .•.. ~.. r ...e. • ipe r i ti6l . , .:: . . LONDON SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1857. STAMPED ... SIXPENCE. UNSTAMPE.D..FIVEPENCE. No. 224.—V0L. V. gkt rtss. LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1857. THE telegraphic despatch from India has now arrived, and, as we had anticipated, Delhi has not fallen. On the contrary, General BAR NARD had deemed himself unequal to the assault, pending the arrival of reinforcements from the Punjaub, which were on their way to meet him. These, it may be interesting to those who are for a wholesale crusade against all in India who have native blood in them to know, are under General CORTLANDT, who is not a German, as the Ministerial papers tell us, but a native, being the son of an English officer by native lady. Nor is he a general in the Com pany's service, but one of the old generals of RUNJET SINGII. On the dissolution of the Sikh State he took service with the British, and is the real hero of almost all those achievements for which Major EDWARDES received in 1848 so much credit. It is amusing to see the people who would exterminate every native, placing its best hopes on a native in its hour of peril. The Punjaub generally is said to be quiet so far, and the people are described as willing to be enrolled ontthe side of Government. But those who know the Punjaubees will attach little weight to either statement. As to arming, a Punjaubee is always ready to receive arms and rupees from any one who will give him them, even though lie may intend to turn them against the donor at the first con venient moment. And, as to rising, they are too practical a people to rise for nothing ; they only rise when they think that resistance will materially improve their position or benefit their pockets. The time for testing the loyalty of the Punjaubees will be the period when the Government has to call upon them for its rents and taxes. If they prove loyal then by not taking advantage of these troubles, we shall place more faith in their protestations of zeal for us than we do at present. As regards the progress of the mutiny, it appears that the troops at eight more military stations have ,joined the rebels, one of them being the station that has hitherto held in check the powerful Mahratta sovereign of Indere. Of the Madras army no regiments appear to have actually revolted, saving the Cavalry Contingent Corps, of which we heard by the last mail. But on the rest of the cavalry there, it seems, no great dependence can be placed; and we hear of symptoms of distrust on the part of tha Cominandenin-Chief at Bombay; for the native guards over his house and person, and over those of the Governor, have, on that avowed ground, been replaced by European troops. We kr ow not what reason ho has for this display of suspi cion towards an army which we should have hoped to see remain loyal; but the display has been made, and excited so much com ment, that we think it right to notice it. On all hands, indeed, we observe symptoms of alarm at the state of things which the measures of the Government seem calcu lated rather to increase than to remove. LATEST EDITION. Trade is at a standstill, the Government Securities are almost unsaleable at any price, and money is not to be had; while, by way of adding to the general gloom, the Legislative Council has passed a press-gagging act of a nature so stringent as to be unparalleled by anything we have witnessed in the most despotic of European States. The keeping materials for printing or lithographing by any, whether Europeans or natives, without a licence, is made punishable on a summary con viction before a single magistrate—with fine to the extent of five thousand rupees, or impri sonment to the extent of two years, or both. In other words, taking the circumstances of Indian printers and the nature of the climate into account, with ruin and death. Against a magistrate's decision so given there is to be no appeal. Premises may be entered in search of printing materials at any time. The Government may affix such conditions as it pleases to the granting of a licence, and the violation of these in any particular is to entail the (penalty aforesaid. Licences may also be revoked at any moment without cause assigned. Nay, more, an index expurgatorius is established, and the importation or circula tion of any book or paper prohibited in it, no matter where printed, is made punishable, without the intervention of either judge or jury, with the awful penalties we have described. Such is the monstrous course that the Go vernment is pursuing in India towards men of our own colour and of our own blood—men whose acts have given no shadow of a ground for it, and of whom it was in the utmost degree desirable to secure the cordial support. And this at a time when the Ministers are over and over again declaring that the affair is simply a Sepoy mutiny, which obviously renders doubly criminal so gross a violation of those sacred rights, on the faith of being permitted to enjoy which uninterruptedly so many British subjects have settled at the Presidency capitals of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The effect, of course, has been to arouse within them a feeling of the greatest anger, and to spread among them utter dis- may. For no accounts of what occurs up the country will be deemed henceforth reliable. Nor will there be any means of remonstrance left to them against any intended violation of their few remaining rights. Their liberties may be wholly taken away, or their property may be confiscated by any act for the imposi tion of new taxes, or the suspending State payments, which an irresponsible Legislative Council may deem it convenient to pass. We have no hesitation in saying that the position of the independent European settlers in India is made by this act far more insecure in every way than that of the subjects of the King of NAPLES or of the Pope. They aro now placed at their old enemy's (the Com pany's) mercy, and we may be sure that the latter will give them no quarter in paying off ruthlessly the scores that in the freedom of discussion regarding the misgovernment of India they have run up. Any Englishman must be an utter madman who leaves his person or his property a moment longer within the grasp of the Company's Govern ment after this. Having thus stifled the press in India, and thrown off the check there which public opinion, even under such a despotism as that of the Company, affords. it is not very sur prising that an attempt should be made to run down the great exponents of their misconduct here ; in other words, that Mr. DISRAELI and Mr. WHITESIDE should have incurred the ,extreme hostility of the whole English Ministerial press. The writers who are for ever prating of the iniquities practised by the despotisms of the Continent, and striving to excite the people and the soldiery to rise there, exhibit their real love for freedom of discussion by mis representing and maligning all who are op posed to their views. If a soldier attempts to assassinate a king at Naples, there is no end to the deductions of misgovernment which they draw from the fact ; but spontaneous com bustion is the only theory on which they can account for the rebellion and atrocities of a whole army in Bengal. If some Italian noble who has had his estates confiscated by Austria enters into a conspiracy against her, it is held proof at once of the tyranny which there prevails ; but if the allies whom we have despoiled of kingdoms in India join in intrigues for our destruction, it is given as merely a symptom of the unaccountable base ness of the native mind. Finally, France and its press laws, and the Pope and his index expurgatorius, are for ever held up as objects of hatred and contempt, while a press law ten times as stringent, and an index expurga torius, are devised by our own Liberal Ministers for our fellow•countlymen in Bengal. Whether Mr. DISRAELI and Mr. WHITESIDE have a right to use the great faculties with which Gon has endowed them, and the powers which the Constitution confers on them, to expose misgovernment so mon strous, we can safely leave to the people of Great Britain to judge. The Ministry may try to ride off from all accountability fur their misconduct by an unscrupulous abuse of those by whom that misconduct has been laid bare ; but the public of this country, though deter mined to take unsparing vengeance on the mutineers, will not forget those by whose mis management the crisis has been brought about. What it wants is action against the rebels, and not attempts to stir up discussion by an atro cious press law directed against our fellow countrymen in India, accompanied by floods of the grossest misrepresentations against those who to the sagacity of statesmen add the manliness that becomes representatives of the people, and are neither afraid nor ashamed to tell the truth to the House. OUR POLICY IN THE PRINCIPALITIES. By the publication of the principal portion of that remarkable correspondence which has since appeared at greater length in the Etoill du Danube, we showed in our last number that Lord PALMERSTON—bound in honour loyally to carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Paris regarding the Danubian Principalities, which provided for the free and unbiassed expression of the Rouman people on the future organisation of the Government of their country—had, before even the British Commissioner reached his post, pronounced himself strongly against the union of these provinces, and, in conjunction with Austria, the Porte, and the Kaimakan VOGORIDES, had commenced a series of disreputable intrigues to influence the elections in Moldavia. We observed that the crisis at Constantiaople had f' A