The Press. — London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

INDIA. INDIAN REFORM LEAGUE. A uoliwzNo contemporary on Wednesday published a deUtiled report of the public meeting held at Calcutta on the 26th of August last, for the purpose of con sidering the propriety of drawing up a petition to the Home Government praying for a change in the dministration of Indian affairs. Mr. LoNouk.vu.LE CLARKE presided, and in ex plaining the object of the meeting alluded to the paragraphs of the notice eonvening the meeting as follows: The first paragraph says:— it is proposed to organise an association for the purpose of promoting the improvement of the political condition and go vernment of India in connection with British interests, and to encourage British enterprise and the employment of British capital in this country. - - - - - -•— - -- • The proposition, in short, is to establish an Indian Reform League. The second paragraph of the notice says:— These objects cannot, in the opinion of the originators of the League, be attained unless the government of British India be removed from the East India Company, and there be established in this country the direct governrueut of the Crown, and an open legislative council of Englishmen. - - • • . - - That is the principle of this our petition, and the business of this meeting will be to consider what details, what pro. ceedings we should adopt to cam out this great object. The notice continues:— The primary object of the League will be, to urge upon the attention of the British Parliament and our countrymen in England, by all legitimate and constitutional means, the advan tages that will accrue to Great Britain and India by the placing of British India urder the direct government of the Crown, in- dependent of the Colonial-office, and the constitution of a legis lative council, to be composed of indepen.lent persons chosen from the British community of India, in place of the existing council, solely composed of nominees of the Court of Directors and other official persons. - - - - - Besides this radical change, had I penned this, I should have added some words. I should have said, " This be neficial and glorious change " in the government of India the following measures will be advocated :—The uniform and due administration of justice on the principles of English law—the laws of Hindoos and Mahomedans in matters of inheritance and contract being administered in civil cases in which they may be defendants. All courts to be presided over by properly-trained lawyers—feeling, when I say that, it is a privilege conceded to all conquered nations, by every conquering power who have not forgotten justice or hanianity, to be governed by their own laws in matters of inheritance and contract. That is a privilege which was given to Hindoos and Mahomedans by charter more than seventy years ago, and God forbid that there should be any Englishman willing to take it away. It is theirs, let them retain it. The notice proceeds : The office of Ju Igo to be held during pod behaviour instead of during the pleasure of the Government, and the English lasguage to be the language of the court. Another measure of reform to which the League propose to direct its efforts, is the abolition of stamps and all other taxes on the administration of justice, and the improve _ - - Rvatem. The meat of the police system. Tin. next paragraph of the notice describes another object of the League to be:— The revision of the present fiscal regulations, with a view to the adoption of a system which, while making provision for the requirements of the itate, shall nut operate as a check upon industrial euterprise. Many gentlemen who hear me know more of those fiscal regulations than I do, but I have seen enough to know that they are so much abused that there must be some ground for devnauding their revision. The tenth para graph of the notice defines another object of the League to be : The throwing open of all civil employment to all Europeans, without distinction, who may possess the necessary qualiftea• tions of character and education to hold them. I shall conclude by reading to you the last paragraph : It is conftdeutly expected that it these measures are carried out, additional safeguards will be given to life and property, and that they will, by affording in their results better security than at present exists fur capital employed in the interior. lead to a vast improvement in the facilities for transport by railway. Mr. MACKINLAY moved : That a society to be called the Indian Reform League be formed upon the basis of the prospectus now read. Mr. DAYNE, in seconding the motion, said : It is proposed to establish a Reform League ; and I have no doubt that that step will be fully attended with the results which we all desire. It is for us to collate and furnish facts b 3 which to enliyhten the extraordinary ignorance and stimulate the indifference of people at home with respect to India. Sure lam that if any person who has kept a chronological list of the outrages that have been perpetrated since the time we first heard of the outbreak of the mutinies, and of all that the Government has done and left undone, and I believe there are many such amongst ns, should send those statements home to any one who has a voice in the British Parliament, and who would digest them, and plainly lay before Me house the results at which he arrived, nothing more would be needed to determine the question whether this country should continue to be under the East India Company's adminis tration or whether it should be placed under the govern ment of the Crown. This, gentlemen, I believe, will be one of the moat important employments of the Indian Reform League, and to which I hope every one of you will contribute something. The resolution was put from the chair, end car ried unanimously. 'l t HE PR E S . S, OoroitEß '24, 1857. A committee, including the most wealthy and re spectable British merchants and residents of Cal cutta, was then nominated. Mr. PETERSON then proposed a resolution with reference to the subscriptions to the League, and tersely pointed out the necessity for a change in the Indian Administration. The Government, in his opinion, was made up of men whose principal motive of action was personal aggrandisement. One of the moat glaring defects in the Government of the country was the mode in which the Legislative Council was constituted : Not only is the native excluded ( and in my opinion properly), but because he is excluded the independent British adventurer is excluded also, on the excuse that you cannot have anything approaching to a popular constitu tion without admitting the native ; and as that is not desirable, it is better to exclude every European not in the services—a splendid mode of reasoning, and one that shows what is to be expected from a body constituted on such principles. We have the miserable spectacle of a Legis• lative Council, supposed to make laws for 150,000,000 of subjects, without the slightest knowledge of the principles of commerce—in fact, without any knowledge at ail save that of protecting the especial class from whom they are selected, and for whose especial advantage alone they seem to work. Had we a Representative Council constituted on a proper basis, should we have had the miserable spectacle of the whole machine stopped in times like these, simply because one of its members happened to be ill ? Is a Legislative Assembly to which the interests of this great empire are committed to be constituted on such a basis that the accidental absence of a single member should stop the remainder from working? Can any one be astonished at the working of thekiavernment machine if what is sup• posed to be its prime mover is so easily put out of order ? I ask, why should the independent British population in India, small though it be, be deprived of the power of having a voice in the government of the country—a power awarded to every British settlement? Look at what has been done in every British colony when allowed to manage its own affairs on the spot ! Look at Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other colonies. Why should we not have, if not the same representative system as they have, still some system that will allow the State the benefit of the services of those who can best serve it? One is met by the assertion " India is not a colony." My answer is. " Nor is Ceylon." In Ceylon the British population does not exceed the British population here. In that island, with its Legislative Council of independent Europeans, we find public works going on, British capital introdneed, and while the Government of India is so poor as to be com pelled to open one loan after another, the Government of Ceylon is so rich as to be able to lend money to the Oriental Bank at three and a half per cent. There is a proof of what a council having in its composition some of the inde pendent British inhabitants can do for the good of the country. If we as a race are conquerors, is there any reason why we should not be legislators as well? Had you the independent element in the Legislative Council, would you have the town of Calcutta highly taxed as it is, without a single quay or other convenience for loading or unloading its vast export and import corn metre ? Why, California, six weeks after its settlement, had in San Francisco more conveniences than Calcutta, after undisturbed possession for a century. Would you have had this astounding anomaly that land, which is the best security in every other part of the world, is worthless here ? And why? Because the laws and their administra tion are such that no man's title from day to day is safe. Under an open Legislative Council, would you have the still more astounding anomaly of the paper currency of what the Government itself calls the State Bank being refused by the Government's own revenue officers in the payment of revenue? Gentlemen, I know of at least a dozen instances in which owners of land in the Mofussil have tendered a Government rent due on their estates in notes of the Bank of Bengal, which the collector has re fused to receive in payment of Government revenue, and, I believe, estates have been forfeited, owing to the rejection. Has not every reasonable man a right to expect that something should be done to give something like an expansive currency adapted to the expanded trade of the country? Would you, under an open Legislative Council, have had the gross deception practised by the Government debtor on the Government creditor that was practised in the conversion of the Five-per-Cent. Loan into a four-per cent. loan, on the allegation of an overflowing treasury made up of false figures of unliquidated balances supposed to be in the different treasuries of the country, and the Government, in less than a twelvemonth afterwards, to come round begging, hat in hand, saying—" I have got nothing; please help me with a loan for public works," when no public works were contemplated—an act which reduced the value of the Government creditors' security by twenty per cent. at one blow? Mr. Peterson then alluded briefly to the inefficiency of the Company's courts, to the indisposition of the Company to encourage the settlement of Europeans in the country, the improvement of agriculture and commerce, to their determined opposition to rail ways, and, in point of fact, their discouragement of all progress. In conclusion he said : We are charged with hampering the Government by any expression of public opinion at the present time. My answer to that is that it is an idle assertion, made to pre vent ventilation of unpleasant facts. All public expression of opinion is gagged and prevented by a piece of the most illjudged and hasty legislation that ever issued from arbi• trary power. But they cannot prevent our discussing freely our grievances, and putting them in a train for redress by the only tribunal that has the power—namely, the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain. Upon that tribunal must devolve the decision as to whether Indio is 1020 to be governed on principles adapted to the present time, or whether a system is to he continued which has neither won the affections of the conquered, nor retained the con fidence of the conqmring race. Let us unite • irselves into a league for carrying out the objects which have been stated to you, and then let us see whether misstatements in Parliament will avail to prevent the introduction of an effectual reform in the administration of the country. In these unfortunate times, I hope I shall not be thought guilty of affectation when I say that the existing system fills me with horror as regards the present, and with fears as regards the future. India has now been one hundred years in our own,hands, and yet the Government has neither the confidence of the European adventurer, nor the love of the natives. If we desire to see a change for the better brought about, let us bold up to ourselves a definite motive of action . Our opponents may give to that motive the name of " self interest." We shall accept that name, for we know that our "self•interest " will cease to be such the moment it passes the line of public interest. Let us show that we are unanimous and determined in the objects which have brought us together, and I venture to say that the day is not far off when British India shall be British India in reality, and not a mere British oligarchy which represents neither the conquerors nor the conquered. The resolution was seconied, and the meeting shortly after separated. The published private letters from India this week have on the whole neither oeen numerous nor in teresting. Nevertheless, here and there some curious and noteworthy expressions or paragraphs are to be found. Such, for instance, is the remark of the Daily News correspondent upon the affair at Dinapore. Upon the night of the Ifith of August, a body of the 40th Native Infantry, in all about 100 men, who professed to remain true to their colours, were at tacked by, it was reported, a party of H.M.'s 10th Foot, the regiment which fell into the ambuscade at Arrah. Five natives were killed and eleven wounded. Sir James Outrain bad promulgated a general order expressing his " horror and indignation " at the sad affair, and in such severe terms as to brand the whole regiment with the crime. This unfortunate order, coupled with the special order from the Go vernor. General to restrict the execution of rebels, draws from this correspondent rather a remarkable expression. Speaking of the feeling of the British troops, he writes : No r one will be surprised to hear that these orders of Gove nment have risen in their minds a spirit not to be controlled; there is scarcely a private soldier between Calcutta and Cawnpore that does not look upon the Go vernment of India as the worst enemy he has : the soldiers all see the natives—men who have murdered their relatives —petted in every possible way ; their lives spared, although guilty, and in some cases honours bestowed upon them : they, on the other hand, are exposed to the utmost privations, are often without food, constantly without shelter, their most trilling fault most severely punished, and not the smallest attention paid to their requirements. All these grievances, and more especially the pardons and rewards extended to murdering rebels, have elicited a display of feeling at f►inapore, Ilenares, and even at the Presidency itself, which, it is to he hoped, has opened the eyes of Government to the danger of having a Euro. peen as well as a native mutiny. It has been long known that the British troops in Bengal have day by day been growing more and more exasperated at the wavering conduct of the Govern ment at Calcutta. It is not even improbable we may learn before many more mails have arrived that some such crisis as this writer fears has positively occurred. The condition of affairs at Calcutta is far from satisfactory. Discontent is supreme. "If one fact has made itself more evident than another during the late emeute," says one writer, "it is the utter in competency of the Civil Service to govern India." : This mutiny, •f not of their creating, is of their fostering ; they quailed before it, and feared to meet it a /a Napier, at tht commencement, until it grew to its present propor tions. The evil of having clerks in the position and per forming the duties of statesmen, was never more clearly illustrated. These civilians were well enough when they were kept, as Lord Ellenbnrough kept them, at their desks; but permitted by Lord Auckland in 18:37-4l, and Lord Canning in 1336-7—both most well intentioned, good natured, weak men—to govern the country, they speedily brought it, in an incredibly short space of time on both occasions, to the very verge of destruction. At the present moment there is but one prevalent feeling in the public) mind with respect to the Government, and that is that Lord Ellenborough should be sent out again, not as a servant of the Court of Directors, but overriding them. We should not then see our European troops discouraged anti debased in every possible way—one guard sent here, and another there, to protect a few civilians; their hearts would not feel bitter against th, it Government; they would not be made sensible every step they took that they were being wronged and trampled upon ; but they would be animated by the same noble feelings which irspired them in 1543. The position of the army is, in fact, now very much the same as it was in Lord Auckland's time. Who that saw it then would have recognised in its ranks the same highspirited men, ready for anything, who 7101001i1e4 Eyed Elleabozcough w tba camp a& Forozeposp: