The Press. — London, England, 1856-07-19 00:00:00

674 said his Lordship emphatically, " is different." In the oue State there must be no interfer ence to maintain the authority of the Pope; but, in the other case, there should be inter ference to put down the authority of the King. This was the position assumed by 1.,0rd Jens RUSSELL throughout his entire speech ; and it was to answer his plea in favour of inter ference that the argument of Mr. DISRAELI was addressed. The discussion has settled one principle, so far as argument or reason can settle it. Our diplomacy in Italy must be con fined to the primary object of all diplo macy—to maintain friendly relations with the de facto Governments of independent States; or, adopting a policy of Constitutional Propa gandism, it must be prepared to support its representations by armed force. As it is, our foreign policy—irritating but fruitless—only excites jealousy against our Government, and deprives this country of the influence which its commercial intercourse and political exam ple would otherwis() Ipfallibly exercise on the life of other States. ITEMS OF INDIAN INTELLIGENCE. THE Indian mail which has just come in brings with it some items of intelligence the India-house will find it hard to digest, but at which the habitual readers of this journal will be by no means surprised. A financial crisis has occurred at Madras ; the prosecution of all further public works throughout India has been put an end to for want of funds; an insurrection, likely to prove a very troublesome one, has broken out among the Hill tribes on the northern frontier of Madras; the Santhals are again in rebellion, and have been joined by the Koles, a people whom on a former occasion it took us a couple of years to put down. Finally, the annexation of Oude appears to have been as yet a mere annexation upon paper, so far, at least, as any but the King and Court are con cerned. The zemindars. when called upon to pay their rent to us, decline, it appears, to attend . to the summons ; and the Rajah of TOOLSEILPOOR, one of the principal of them, invites us to come and take it from him if we can. A brigade of infantry, with some cavalry, and three pieces of cannon, have marched upon his stronghold, and there, with what men he can muster, he purposes, it is said, to give us battle. In the meantime the rest of the Oude zemindars are quietly waiting to see what turn the affair takes, their intention being to follow the lead of the Toolseepor Rajah, if the game he has undertaken to play should prove successful. It is admitted, in short, that the real cause of the annexa tion being carried through so quietly at the outset was that everything was yielded by our Chief Commissioner out of which a conflict could arise. It seems, there fore, that we have still the country to con quer if we are not prepared to make an enormous abatement in our revenue demands. We lbeg since predicted that the surplus of two millions anticipated by the Times world prove a myth, and it now appears that we shall not even get the income obtained from the province by the ex King without having to pay an almost equal amount in the shape of the military charges which coercion must ne cessarily involVe. To complete the picture of this Indiatt'Arcadia, our loving subjects of Rangoon hare been amusing themselves by trying to set fire to our newest settlement there, and plotting the massacre of the Euro• pean authorities en mane. To be sure the attempts have been happily unsuccessful ; but they may be taken as unmistakeable symptoms of the discontent of the people. It is all very well for the habitual sup porters of the Indian Government to set down these things as mere matters of course, or to lay the blame of them upon the usury of moneylenders, the provocation afforded by petty native officials, the ignorance of the people, and things of that sort The true cause is to be found, as we have incessantly pointed out, in the rapacity which the Indian Government has exhibited of late THE PRESS. years, and its utter disregard of the interests of those whose destinies have been placed by PROVIDE? have more than once del between the new and the pursued in our Indian what results ttic change ng about. Under the old was applied solely to thd `le new it applie4 equally to people. Under the old system curt was compen sated for men of influence in the co. ich drew towards us a support tn.— ire than neutra lised the opposition the former Sovereign could bring to bear against us. Jaghires' pensions and endowments of every kind were respected by us, and the holders of them saw a new and additional security for their fortunes in the stability of our rule. Finally, the Ministers who had previously carried on the Government of the country for the native Sovereign, continued to do so under another title for us. We realised, in fact, the theory that BONAPARTE had formed of govern ing Spain through the Spaniards, which the hostility of the Spanish priesthood overset. Let any one turn to the account of the settlement of Mysore by the Duke of WELLINGTON, then Colonel Wellesley, and ho will gather more readily than he could from whole columns of our explanations precisely what we mean. Our present system is the very opposite of all this. It is in vain to tell the natives that it is a more enlightened one, for no subject peopla will ever appreciate the value of a superior enlightenment that reduces the nobility to beggary and deprives the people of bread. True civilisation is the child of plenty, and not of penury ; and it is in vain to hope to spread Christianity and education among nations whom our Government has condemned to a perpetual struggle for the merest necessaries of life. A sufficiency for the absolute wants of the body must precede in all cases any active cultivation of the mind. There is no reason why the Indian Government should not abandon its present sordid system of rule, and revert to princi ples more in harmony with those on which we elsewhere govern. The result would be infinite benefit to its subjects and equal profit to itself. The papers, for instance, which bring intelligence of these insurrections, in form us that, in two out of the three in stances, the country where they have arisen is less known to us than the interior of Africa, because less explored. But who is it that prevents every part of India from being pene trated by our capitalists or their agents but the East India Company itself? How often have Europeans offered to embark money in the clearing of these jungles and in the improvement of these wastes, if the Com pany would only give them free liberty to make their own bargains with the inhabitants of them, and guarantee that it would not come in afterwards and lay claim to the land as lord paramount—a claim it is obvious an 'individual would be powerless to resist? Many of the Indian jungles are filled with elephants, and a large profit can be and is made by the European sportsman from the ivory alone. The wildest parts of these jungles, too, are the most admirably adapted for coffee plantations, and there is nothing but the opposition of the Company to prevent large investments of capital in these most fertile fields for it by retired officers and others. It is by such means that other lands have been brought within the pale of civilisation, but who will be found to devote his life to the clearing of wastes with claims of universal proprietorship like those of the Company hanging over his head—claims by the en forcement of which all the wealth, and all the labour he had invested in his estate might at any moment be totally swept away? It is only by respecting the rights of native princes and proprietors, and by opening the path freely to European capital and enterprise, that we can ever hope to fix our footing firmly in India, and put an ead to these constant outbreaks. That was the opinion of one of the greatest statesmen India ever saw, the late Lord METCALFE, and men may be disposed to bow to his opinion who would not defer to our own. SATURDAY, LORD CLARENDON'S DIPLOMACY. THE speech of the Secretary for Forei,oi Affairs on last Monday in relation to Italy exhibite4 the peculiar defects of Lord. C LA. RRNpoN's nature. in the ;.‘ower House a co n . sidemble time watt occneied by the Prime Minter in using 'Rimy words for the purpose of saying nothing, as if Ile meant to indicate a policy of doing nothing, in contrast to his mischievous activity in former years. The speeches of Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Mr. DIS RAELI were very different in tone and political sigaificance, but both of them had breadth of view, and exhibited thoughtfulness as to the exigencies of the question of how Italy should be governed? Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S speech was in that style of Whig foreign politics which was fashionable in days when the " Holy Alliance " was in existence. It was redolent of tribunitian artifices, but still it had a measure of power in its language, and repre sented skilfully the vague aspirations of those sentimental sympathisers who fancy that there is "a great Whig party" in Italy. The speech of Mr. DISRAELI was eminently practical, and went directly to the root of the question. The Member for Bucks showed that Austria was the sovereign power in Italy, and that if we interfered at all, our policy should be real. We should avoid stirring up passions to no purpose, as France and Austria had as strong a right as ourselves to interfere, and we should not forget the swarming secret societies of the peninsula. Let us now see, on the other hand, the weak and flimsy insincerity of Lord CLARENDON'S speech, which was the worst address on that night in either House of Parliament "It has " been, my Lords, my disagreeable duty for " the last two years to meet with official re " serve strictures " on his foreign policy. That is a maladroit admission, as the words " dis agreeable duty " suggest that there is secret sympathy struggling against national engage ments. He then significantly alludes to their Lordships' custom of " making allowan:;e for " official reserve ;" and, in a few minutes after wards, admits that " there is so much that is true " in Lord LYNDHURST's charges, while he clenches that sentiment by announcing on the part of Government " a great desire ' to see Italy emerge "from the condition to which " she has been reduced by bad Government." Surely that is strange language from one who talked so much about " official reserve ;" and the Noble Earl uttered many other sentiments which contrast strongly with the language of the Premier elsewhere We may be told that Lord CLARENDON, as the Times hinted some time since, is " no orator,"—an assertion established positively by his speeches, and almost the only thing ever clearly proved by them. The ambiguous regrets about the "disagreeable duty" of " official reserve " mark one aiming at ambi dexterous effects. Such a style of speaking is neither frank and manly, nor guardedly reti cent. In point of fact, the speech of Lord CLARENDON does commit his Government awkwardly with Austria. It shows a willing ness to wound, if it also reveals a timidity to strike; and when taken in connection with the Blue-book revelations about the Foreign Enlistment Bill it helps to confirm the charges universally made about Lord CLARENDON S want of sincerity. His Lordship cannot yet have forgotten Mr. GLADSTONE'S dissection of his elaborate method of making Mr. Caamprox a " scapegoat;" and we sincerely trust the Italians will have no reason for becoming familiar with the least favorable side of his Lordship's character. No fault, indeed, in a statesman's character is so great as insincerity. Unlike other de fects, it exercises a prejudicial influence over colleagues and subordinates, as well as over avowed adversaries, or lukewarm friends. Officials serving in the same department be come timorous in action, if they cannot place confidence in their chief. His fluent promises to aid them in danger or difficulty will not be relied upon. They will fear his reticence, and a large deduction will be made from the vehe ment verbiage in which fidelity is promised. ENCE in i►.s han is. We 3picted the difference I e old 'system! of rule 'empire, and allowed I must necessarily bring system confiscation wa Sovereign ; under the to both Sovereign and pi tem hostility to the Cot nr by a liberality to all r onquered province, whit upport that far more