The Press. — London, England, 1854-07-08 00:00:00

JULY 8, 1854. or revolution had been effected which brought such lands under our sway, all anxiety on the part of the holders of them terminated, and the increased security and consequently in creased value of their lands as property reconciled the owners in a great degree to the loss of the political power that before attached to them. A change of rule in India was like our English Revolution of 1688—the Sovereign was changed, but the possessors of estates under feudal tenure remained in undisturbed possession. By the old school of Indian statesmen, and even by the modern school of conquerors, Sir CHARLES NAPiER included, this plan of preserv ing the feudatories, while we punished with dethronement the treachery of the Sovereign, was held to be an act not only of justice to the great proprietors, but n measure of the most vital benefit to ourselves. The interest of the Sovereign being thus separated from the inter eats of the whole of the influential classes in his dominions, the fate of the former was soon forgotten, and no extensive intrigues in his favour could be got up. While the feudatories found a compensation in the increased value of their properties, the moneyed classes were re conciled at seeing their loans and mortgages secured, and the mercantile people found i n the retention of a wealthy class of proprietors a sure basis of industrial prosperity. It was a strict attention to this system that made our conquests so comparatively easy, and our hold on every successively-conquered province so secure. It was an attention to this system that made Sir CHARLES NAPIER so affectionately regarded by the Belooch chieftains whom he conquered, and enabled him in the first Sikh war to denude Scinde of its soldiers, and trust for the tranquillity of the province to the fidelity of the newly-conquered race. It may be that such a system somewhat reduces our land revenue, but the loss is made up to us tenfold in other ways. Nor can there be a greater mistake than that com mon fallacy of revolutionists that the plunder of the nobility really enriches the State. If all the landed property iu England were con fiscated to-morrow the Treasury would be poorer. instead of richer, for the transfer, as by such acts the springs of the prosperity of a country are dried up. Nor is the result in India different. Resumption progresses, but the land revenue decreases as it goes on. One province that, to its native proprietor, produced nearly two hundred thousand pounds annually is, in our hands, only pro. ductive of loss; while, with confiscations to the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually in the Punjaub (two.thirds of the whole proprietary), the land revenue is less than it was in the time of RUNJEET SINGH. The present chief of this new school of policy is the Governor General ; and resumptions to the extent of about a million sterling are the fruits, so far, of the plan. Meantime, the commissions of inquiry into titles are pushing their measures actively, and a law has been passed which will entirely extinguish all pro perty of this kind at no very distant period. The most violent hostility has been shown by the natives to the system, and not unnaturally, though our power is at present sufficiently strong to put down opposition. But, at the same time, it cannot be doubted that a spirit is being engendered in the minds of the most influential class in India and of all the hun dreds of thousands who depend on it, which, whenever fortune turns, will be most dan gerous to our rule, and that, in ruining this class, we are pulling down those who, in every country, are the main pillars and best supporters of the Crown. The upholders of this new school of policy are very plausible in their reasoning, but their doctrine amounts simply to Socialism under a very thin disguise. They argue that all the land in every country belongs indefeasibly to the community, and that the Sovereign, as trustee for the community, has no power what- ever to alienate it; that if former Sovereigns in India have violated their trust that is no reason why we should do so; but, on the con trary, that it is our duty to re-enter into possession as soon as we can find an oppor tunity, in the badness of title, or, if the title be good, in the death of the present holder. It does not, however, appear how the communi ty THE PRESS. at large is to be made richer by the transfer of the revenues of their nobility to the East India Company's pockets. But such is the doctrine asserted by the Government of Lord DALHOUSIE, and the ques tion is,—whether it will be approved by the Legislature and people of this country ? For our own part we conceive it to be no less reprehensible as applied to India than it would be if applied to England. That many grants have boon made by the Crown in both countries during successive reigns improperly is a fact too notorious to be disputed ; but in such cases good has in the end come out of evil, and the transfer of the vast estates held by the Crown and by the Church before the Reformation to private hands has been in truth the mainspring of all the wealth and grandeur and prosperity of England. If we would have India follow in the same path we must begin by widening, and not by destroy ing, the foundations of property in that country. Nor have we been so successful in the treatment of our own serfs there hitherto as to make it desirable to add to our domains in this unscrupulous fashion by resuming the estates of the native princes and nobility, men who hold their properties by what, till Lord DALHOUSIE went to India, was as good a title as that by which he holds his own estates— feudal grants by former Sovereigns, supported by prescriptive right and immemorial custom. FRENCH STRICTURES ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. IT is not unnatural that our French neigh bours, used to their peculiar form of executive, should occasionally fall into mistakes on the practical working of the English Constitution. In turning into ridicule the weakness of Lord ABERDEEN'S Ministry, the Journal des Dibats of last Tuesday confounds the ordinary nature of a Cabinet with the exceptional and passing character of a Coalition. It is very just in its strictures upon the weakness of our present Ministers, and it gives a catalogue of their defeats with admirable precision. But we cannot agree with the Dibats' arguments against our mixed Constitution drawn from the too obvious infirmities of a Ministry that violates all our parliamentary traditions. The Debats scoffingly asks, how can fifteen Minis ters carry on a war ? And it sneers at our Cabinet as a little Parliament in itself, with its antagonisms and discordance. On this subject we must remind our con temporary that forms of government are not necessarily to be condemned on account of the incapacity of ephemeral statesmen. Be fore an able Cabinet, existing in sympathy with parliamentary habits, the weakne sees described by the Debats would disappear. There was no change in our Constitution when CHATHAM took the place of NEWCASTLE, or Mr. Pirr succeeded Mr. ADDINGTON. The best tools are useless with bad workmen, and brave armies have been destroyed by imbecile gene rals. A Coalition is the rare disease, rather than the regular habit, of our free Govern ment ; and its very defeats cited by the Dibats show that it exists in defiance of general opinion. " Never has there been so wholesale " a massacre of the innocents ! " cries the Debats while it records the Ministerial failures at portentous length. The facts, but not the conclusions, of our contemporary are indis putable. When Lord DERBY was in power the external form of the Cabinet was the same as now, hut it worked harmoniously in its various parts. The peace of Europe was pre served, the French alliance was begun and perfected, and beneficent reforms were accom plished. It is not to the British Constitution, but to a Cabinet existing in defiance of its leading principles, that we are to trace the evil of a Ministry divided among themselves and distrusted by the Legislature and the country. ,627 THE MAYNOOTH DEBATE. MINISTERS had a very narrow escape of being beaten on the Maynooth question. A majority against them had been reckoned upon, but several members had left the House, anticipa ting a protracted debate. A division was dex trously forced on by the silence of the Minis terialists, and a transient triumph gained by the small majority of sixteen. A striking change of sentiment has already taken place on this subject. Several influen tial members who had supported Sir ROBERT PEEL'S endowment opposed it, this week, with their votes. We regret that many of these distinguished gentlemen had not opportunity for explaining their more mature views on this important question It would not be very difficult for them to find overwhelming arguments to justify the change of their opinions. External circumstances in relation to Maynooth have altogether changed. The toleration of Protestantism has been treated by Popery with contempt.. Open aggression has succeeded to abject whining. An endowment of thirty thousand a year for a sacerdotal institution has been followed by a Romish hierarchy. We were asked to repair Maynooth in Ireland, and we found that our liberality was misapplied to building a new Vatican for England. Sir ROBERT PEEL in his simplicity talked of "a message of peace," and the " Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster" answered with a Papal bull. Numerous other reasons might be quoted by those who have adopted Protestant and national opinions on the Maynooth endow ment. It is felt that a stand must be made against further aggression, and that the " Libe ralism " which shut up the Bible and patronises the Pope must be disclaimed by all who are anxious to preserve true religion and genuine freedom. The number of converts to the anti-Papal view of Maynooth, as shown in the late division, will have an animating effect upon public opinion throughout the land. The proposal of Mr. Sergeant SHER to rob the Irish Church, by taking a hundred thousand pounds from its annual revenues, is too monstrous to discuss. The question is one, as Lord DERBY said twenty years ago, "of principle, not arithmetic." Sir JOHN YOUNG stated only the truth in saying that " parties " now viewed the Irish Church as a settled " question ;" and the facts and arguments ad duced by Mr. NAPIER and Mr. HAMILTON in their excellent speeches on the progress of Protestantism, the exodus of Romanists, and the new social phases of Ireland, render it a moral impossibility that a Cabinet could be found with such temerity as to propose in Parliament any measure for injuring the " United Church of Great Britain and I " Ireland." MASTER SPINNERS, &c., REPORT. WE have in this document an abridged history of the late Preston strike, with references to similar dis putes of older date; one especially is mentioned which took place eighteen years ago, and commenced, like the last, with a demand for ten per cent. increase on wages. It lasted three months, cost upwards of 100,0001., demoralised the operative population, and ended in the introduction of self-acting mules, by which many labourers were thrown out of work besides those whose place had been supplied from a distance. An instructive comment on the laws which regulate prices was furnished by subsequent events. The operatives had failed to gain ten per cent. by combination; yet within a few years in creased demand for labour raised their wages more than twenty per cent., without objection or resistance on the part of the masters. In the late contest a total loss was incurred of 533,0001.; of which the masters lost 165,0001.; the operatives, in wages, 250,0001.; tradesmen and con tributors to the strike fund the rest. The committee hence infer, perhaps not with sufficient ground, that only the consciousness of being right could have in duced the masters to resist at such cost to them selves. But the same argument applies with at least equal force to the men ; in other words, it proves nothing on either side. The report dwells at length, and in a tone indicating alarm, on the I - J