The Press. — London, England, 1854-10-14 00:00:00

--~~ The Earl of Mornington was the head of a family which in his generation did more to illustrate the councils and the arms of Eng land than any single generation of any of the illustrious families whose names adorn our annals. He had early distinguished himself at Eton, being a better Grecian than even the celebrated Porson, and he had made a very successful debut in Parliament. The intimate friend of Pitt, he was chosen by that great Minister to fill the post of Governor-General at a period when the war with France rendered danger to our Eastern possessions peculiarly imminent ; and of such importance did Pitt feel it to have a man of the highest energy and ability at the head of affairs there that, — as we have heard the late Lady Wellesley state, on the authority of her husband—he had at one time thought of going to India himself, placing his friend the Earl of Morn ington in the Cabinet of England. Of course such intention could have had but a momen tary existence; but it shows how important in his estimation was the crisis, as a similar idea uttered half a century afterwards by Welling ton to Napier showed in like manner what the great duke thought of the danger then im pending over our Eastern empire. In selecting Wellesley for the governor generalship Pitt certainly selected one who was only second to himself, if at all inferior, in the qualities fitted to make or adorn a states man. With a wonderful grasp of intellect, and a courage which no danger could dismay — with an extraordinary sagacity in the selection of instruments to carry out his views, and that facility of attaching great minds to him which seems an inherent element in the characters of truly great men—fired with an ambition in which all was pure and noble, and into which no particle of alloy entered of what was sel fish and base—the very soul of honour, and formed by nature to stamp something of his own glorious spirit on the members of • iery service with which he might be con nected--there could not, perhaps, in all Eng land have been chosen one more fitted to purify and elevate the character of the admi nistration of a dependency which had been so entirely leavened with grovelling principles and habits of the grossest personal corruption. It was Wellesley who instilled into the Com pany's services in India those noble instincts which have never since departed from them. Under Wellesley the empire which Clive had founded was consolidated and enlarged ; Tippoo Sahib was conquered, and his territories partitioned among the British and the allies ; Oude, which had loin s been a source of danger to the Company, was reduced to a state that rendered it ever after innocuous ; the Nuwab of Surat, the Rajah of Tanjore, and the Nuwab of Arcot were deposed, their conduct having rendered their existence in their then state incompatible with the stability of British rule. But Lord Wellesley, though never hesitating to prefer the safety of our empire to the convenience of the native princes who were inimical to us, was influenced by no sordid considerations in these and similar proceed ings ; but, on the contrary, while depriving them of the powers of government—or, in other words, of mischief—conferred on them and their families personal privileges and • personal incomes at least equal to those which they had enjoyed in their former state In 1802 Lord Wellesley sent in his resigna tion of the governor-generalship, in conse quence of the Court of Directors having, to use his own words, offered him " the most " direct, marked, and disgusting personal in " dignity which could be devised.' They had, indeed, grounded their interference with his arrangements on a pretended desire for econo my and regard for the public good ; but the real cause of their enmity was one as base as it was personal. It was, that, in opening the trade of India to Indian-built vessels, ho had " . interfered with the profits of that fraction of the shipping interest which was connected with the Company, and who were the most powerful members of the body. In fact, he ,had committed the crime of preferring the interests of England and of India to the rigid enforcement of their monopoly in its most odious and most injurious features, and so furthering, at the expense of both countries, the interests of the proprietors private trade. THE PRESS. But the dangers to England were too imminent at that period to admit of his resignation being accepted by the Government, and he still continued at his post. To enumerate half his services, even in the briefest manner, would occupy ten times the space which we can afford to this passing notice of Mr. Thornton's work. Suffice it to say that the result of a series of brilliant military operations undertaken by Wellington and Lake was to fix on the Peishwah, the Rajah of Berar, and Sindia, subsidiary treaties of a nature similar to that which had been already concluded with the Nizam, and which, while giving a vast increase of revenue and territory to the Company, placed the military and poli tical supremacy within the States of those princes entirely in the Company's hands. Lord Wellesley thus reduced these princes to a position in which, if they dared to disturb the peace, their territories must surely and speedily fall into our power. If aggression ou the part of native princes in India has ever since been followed by speedy ruin to them, the facility with which they have been succes sively subdued has been entirely owing to the wise foundations of policy which the far seeing Marquis Wellesley laid. Nor must it be omitted to be remembered that it was in his time that the Emperor of Delhi, the recog nised Sovereign of the whole of India, fell into the hands of the British, having been pre viously a prisoner and a puppet of the Mah rattas. Thus was obtained for British domi nation a stamp of reverence and authority similar to that which in England constitu tionally attaches to the possession of the Great Seal. Lord Wellesley was succeeded by Lord Cornwallis, who, old and enfeebled as he was, ought never to have been solicited to return to India; but his services were called for; he was too highminded to refuse them; he obeyed at once the order of his Sovereign ; and in the performance of his duty this amiable and excellent nobleman died. After him came Sir George Barlow, an ignorant, self-sufficient, and mischievous ruler, but a great favourite with the directors, who strove to retain him in his position, from which it required a more than ordinary exercise of Minis terial power to oust him. Removed, however, ho was from the Supreme Government, and sent to Madras. There he gave cause, by his incompetent and oppressive conduct, to a most formidable mutiny, which narrowly es caped merging into a general insurrection of all the Company's troops in that Presidency. The directors still for a time supported him, but he was eventually recalled. He was suc ceeded in the governor-generalship by Lord Minto, a respectable and efficient Governor- General, if not a very great one, and one by whom many important affairs were undertaken with success. Order was enforced in many petty States in which it had been violated ; the Seik chiefs east of the Sutlej were taken under protection; and a treaty was made with the then ruler of the Seik nation, Runjeet Singh. It was during Lord Minto's Govern ment that Mr. Mounstuart Elphinstone's mis sion to Affghanistan took place, and Sir John Malcolm's first embassy to Persia. Under his Government, too, piracy was effectually re strained in the Persian Gulf, while Java and the Isle of France fell before the arms of expedi tions fitted out under his orders in India. He showed his sagacity as regards internal reve• nue arrangements by endeavouring to intro duce the principle of Lord Cornwallis's " permanent settlement" into Madras, an en deavour in which he was overruled by the Court of Directors. The system had received the hearty approval and concurrence of Corn wallis, of Pitt, of Dundas, of Lot•d Grenville, and of Wellesley, but it has ever been opposed by the body which rules in Leadenhall-street. In 1813 Lord Wellesley observed in the House of Lords that every Governor of India had acknowledged the justice and policy of the principle of the permanent settlement, and he was satisfied that every person qualified to be a Governor of India must do the same. It formed the corner-stone of the Government of India, and the eitet • sion of the principle to the conquered provinces would form a solid basis for that Government to rest upon. Yet what such men in such terms advocated it is left for us in 1854 to plead for, and plead for, unless Parliament shall interpose, in vain• SATURDAY, Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings, succeeded Lord Minto. He was a personal friend of the Regent, and of course went out with all the prestige which such personal intimacy and the support based on it was cal culated to confer. His reign was one, from the beginning to end, of brilliant triumph. It was under his Government that Ochterlony raised for himself an undying name in India as the hero of the Goorkha campaign. Cutch and Kattywar were pacified, and the disturbances at Hyderabad put down. Various local insur rections occurred, but all were met with prompt vigour. But the most useful, and perhaps the most brilliant, service of the Governor -General consisted in that series of splendid combinations by which the predatory career of the Piu darees, or organised armies of plunderers, was put an end to,—men who had long been the terror of the village population throughout the provinces of India, which they had made periodically their prey. It was under Lord Hastings' Administration also that the battle of Kirkee was fought, which resulted in the Peishwah surrendering himself as a prisoner, and the transfer of Poona and its dependen cies in the Deccan to our rule. Under his Government, too, was fought the splendid battle of Mehidpoor, which decided the fate of Central India; and under his instructions the arrangements were concluded with Holkar, Scindia, the Nagpoor Rajah, the Nizam, the Guicowar, and the Rajahs of Jeypoor, Joud poor, Jessulmere, and Cutcb, which reduced the provinces of these respective princes to the condition of subordinate dependencies of our empire in the East. His Government like wise effected the settlement of Singapore, which, thanks to the sagacity of its first go vernor, Sir Stamford Raffles, has been so immensely beneficial to British interests and to British commerce in the Eastern Seas. The Administration of Lord Amherst, who succeeded the Marquis of Hastings, is chiefly remembered for the unsatisfactory war with Burmah which took place under it, and for the glorious capture by Lord Combermere of Bhurtpore. After Lord Amherst came Lord William Bentinck, whose name will be revered as long as the most sterling honesty, the most unaffected virtue, and the most entire abnega tion of all selfish interests or purposes shall be held in reverence by man. He was a worthy d e scendant of that bosom friend of the great King William whose excellent qualities of head and heart the pages of Macaulay so beautifully depict. By Bentiuck suttee was abolished, and the foundation laid for the removal of all restrictions on the press—acts alone enough to crown with perpetual honour the head of any Indian statesman. Metcalfe succeeded tem porarily to the helm after the resignation of Bentinck, and established by law that freedom for the press which Bentinck had in practice from the time he first became Governor-Gene• ral accorded. Metcalfe was soon succeeded by the feeble Auckland, by whom the war fatal w in Affghanistan was undertaken , a war which, after humbling our arms to the lowest point, was destined to terminate gloriously under the hands of the Earl of Ellenborough. Of this nobleman's administration of India it would be difficult to find terms too laudatory. A friend and pupil in the art of government of the Great Duke, he had , under the Welling ton Administration, performed the duties of President of the India Board, and performed them, not as mere routine work, under the tutelage of the clerks of the office, but really as they should be performed by one who is the responsible minister for India. Having thus had an opportunity of forming a more intimate acquaintance with the affairs of India than per haps any statesman who had previously under taken the office of Governor-General, he was appointed to that post on the accession of the Conservatives to power in 1841. His views on accepting the office were views of peace; but his wishes were doomed to be disap pointed. The first news that greeted him on his arrival in the roa ds of Madras was the utter annihilation of our army at Cabool; and on his arrival at Calcutta he found the direst panic filling the breast of nearly every European throughout the land. How ably he restored our lost prestige the deeds of Nott, and Sale, an d Pollock, acti n g under his direct instruction s, bear witness.