The Press. — London, England, 1856-03-29 00:00:00

V 290 person or property, actual or reversionary, of custom or of moral obligation, expressed in writing or understood? Will the eighteen hundied thousand pounds, for instance, in vested by the King i n Indian public securities, not be confiscated as was done in the case of the Rajah of Coorg? Will the interest be paid punctually t 0 him and to his heirs ? Will the rest Of his Alsjesty 's personal pro perty, his treasures and hisjewels, be left to him—propel ty which is as much his own per soLal right as the jewels purchased by the Esterhazy family out of the rents of their principality, or the diamonds bought by Lady LONDONDERRY from the produce of her estates? Will the property of the other members of the Royal family be confirmed to them also, including the possession, as private individuals, of their various houses and lands 9 Are the public functionaries and the servants of the Crown generally to receive fair compensation for the abolition of their offices, unless in cases where their offices happen to be retained by them under us? Will the various pen sioners of the State continue to be paid by us. and will the claims of the public creditor be respected in case there be found to be an 3 public debt in Oude? As regards the nobility and jaghiredars or feudatories of the kingdom, will the same honours and privilegesibe confirmed to them under our Government as they enjoyed under the King's ? Will their estates be continued to them intact; and will such estates, as were in practice, if not in form, estates of inheritance be allowed to descend in perpetuity to their heirs? Will mortgages on the land be recog nised by us in eases in which the estate may he resumed ? Will the zemindars be con Called in possession of their lands at the ex. istiug rents ; and will all Enams and rent-free grants and dues chargeable on the land revenue in favour of individuals or of heads of villages, or of templ , es, colleges, and mosques, be held sacred as if the King still ruled? Will the several claims by custom of the rural population be respected? Will no new taxes be introduced, or will not the ryots be com pelled, as in the Punjaub, to commute their present corn rents into cash rents fixed arbitra rily by the Government surveyors against their consent? Will the only increase to the land revenue be sought in the legitimate mode pursued by a Government truly anxious for ine welfare of the people,—that is, by giving fresh inducements to cultivation, and so in creasing the area liable to rent? Will no flight of human locusts be let loose upon the people, and set to devour their sub stance in the shape of the offscourings of the revenue and police official underlings of Bengal? Will such seeres of torture be enacted as have always been rife through out our whole territories in India, though only exposed officially at Madras ? Will European supervision, admitted to be every where else so ineffectual for the protection of the people, be a reality only in Oude ? Will the scandal of corrupt and inefficient courts of justice, rife elsewhere in India, be there unknown? Will the oppressive salt tax remain long a stranger to the people, with all the staff of informers, the inquisitorial pryings. and the monstrous penalties which are the unfailing accompaniments of this most cruel and inhuman tax? Will the opium monopol.% not be introduced into Oude, or the tob;ceO tax, or the drug tax, or the enormous tax on justice, raised by compelling every petition, atfi 'avit, and exhibit of every kind, to be on • stamped paper, when application is made foi justice to the Company's courts? Will the duties on spirits not be imposed there; and will not, as throughout the rest of the Com pany's territories, the rural population be led on to drunkenness by the establishment of liquor-shops in every village, in order to in crease the revenue to the uttermost obtainable from this source ? The defenders of the annexation say that the revenue is to be quadrupled : will they tell us from what source the money is to come, unless it be from those which we have here described? If the Preiiiiient of the India Board can answer these questions satisfactorily, we shall be able .to see bow far an anxiety for the welfare of the people maybe allowed to outweigh the grave con siderations adverse to this enormous public _ THE PRESS. jobbery, the confiscation of Oude. If, on the other hand, he is unable to do this—and we are very sure lie will pot dare to attempt it — then we can only leave the public to judge for itself of the amount of iniquity exhibited in the perpetration of this monstrous wrong. For our parts, we look upon the hypocrisy of the act is a flagrant addition to the injustice of it. Inv what nen be more base than to turn the most'sacred feelings of humanity to such nefarious ends? The Governor-General would cover an act of the most shameless spoliation by a pretended regard for the very classes who will most suffer by his misdeed ; for the King will at least have his pension to live upon, while beggary, misgovernment, and con fiscation are the probable blessings that the extension of our rule will introduce to the people of Oude. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND. Two classes of public reasons compel us to continue our exposures of the Sadleirites. We wish, in the first place, that the con duct of the agents who overthrew Lord DERBY'S Administration should be mani fest to all, and upon that head we shall have some facts to adduce which will astonish those who still believe in the purity of the Peelites. But we desire, also, that the enormous social mischief caused by the official alliance between the Sadleirites and the Duke of NEWCASTLE'S party should not pass without redress. Commercial feelings on this subject have been outraged, and we are not surprised that on 'Change and in the " City" generally people eagerly ask, what manner of men were the Sadleirites in Parliament? Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH, it is known, was bred to the Bar ; he was made a Queen's Counsel, and appointed successively to the two first Crown Offices in Ireland. A man qualified to hold such pre ferment ought to be gifted with the highest qualities. He ought to have a sagacious insight into character, and he ought not to be imposed upon easily. It is certainly very strange that Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH, if really qualified for an Attorney- General (which we doubt), did not see into the real characters of the Sadleirs, and did not hesitate about committing his " confidential " affairs to an EDMUND O'FLAHERTY. Many other persons, it is true, were deceived by them ; but then Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH had eloscr opportunities than other people for fathoming their real dispositions. and he had experience as a practitioner at the Bar. He chose them for his intimate friends; he se lected them for his political confederates; they were not related by ties of blood, though there were some congenial strokes of charac ter in the whole group that a common parent age might have been attributed to them all. Yet so completely lulled were the suspicions of the Attorney-General for Ireland, that, though living within earshot (so to speak) of the forgery-factory of SADLEIR and his gang, he never caught a sound of its muffled ma chinery for fraud. He never dreamed that there were dark chambers in the hideous pile where horrid deeds were plotted and perpe trated. In the whole of the pecuniary and political proceedings of " the party " nothin4 ever aroused the suspicions of Mr. Attorne3 - General. If he were qualified to stand by his talents at the head of the brilliant Bat of Ire land, then it is most strange that he should have been so completely hoodwinked by his associates; hut if he be not intellectually fit for such a position as he now occupies, then the other question remains, why was such a man ever appointed to so great a post? We shall proceed to illustrate how far the se lection of Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH for his .great promotion was justified by his professional antecedents. With his private character we hive nothing to do. and if we make errors on facts we arc pen to their correction. It is right to know how his career has contrived hitherto to escape public exa mination. The fact is, that when the late SATURDAY, Mr. LUCAS brought serious charges anin WILLIam KEOGH, in 1854, the House of Commons was wearied with the brawl s of the Brigade, and the subject was in judiciously enviro tied with sectarian considers (reridviempgoesse Corn. The Parliamentary j ur y b e i ng tired, the accused was let oft' on the bail of th e D u k e otifienNEb,,s;l to r. C U ABTLI N : .V. ILL BIAU3t acta we 1 x f uoon p plaint Committee, Report House of C ommons, vol. viii., 1854) which we have a right to quote. Mr. KEOGH, it seems, was called to the Irish Bar in 1840. In some qualities lie was well suited for success as a practitioner before juries. He was a stunning browbeater, with a voice of thunder, and a fierce aspect. Declamatory talents lie unquestionably pos. sessed, with a great show of personal assu rance. But in his speaking there was no va riety, no strokes of grace, no fille imagination, and he was deficient in scientific logic. When opposed to a skilled dialectician, lie could not unravel secundong artem a coil of sophistry, and when attempting to cut through it, he often awkwardly exposed himself. The valuable faculty of protracted attention he did not seem to possess, and mental as well as moral causes perhaps helped to contri bute to his mutability. His style was essen tially suited for the invective of the platform. To overpower by bluster was in his eyes to over come by argument; and to cow a weak antago nist by his air of menace, was to triumph in debate. In short, he was like a "Bully Egan" revived, hoping to be mistaken for a Con naught Mirabeau. The first appearance in politics of Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH was at Claremorris, in the county of Mayo. It was upon the occasion of a political dinner given to the Repeal repre sentatives for that county, the late Sir WILLIAM BRABAZON and Mr. DILLON I3ROWNE. On that occasion Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH made an enthu siastic harangue in praise of DANIEL O'CON NELL. At that time (1840) the Whigs were still in office, and Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH praised Lord MELBOURNE'S Ministry as " the most " paternal Government Ireland ever had." He was taunted in 1848 by Sir GEORGE GREY with having made that display, and called to account for his inconsistency, when he pleaded that he was always •a non-Repealer; yet he went (by his own admission) to a Re peal dinner, and lauded to the skies the fomenter of Repeal! A few months rolled by. The Whigs were down, and Sir ROBERT PEEL and the Conser vatives came in with their majority of ninety one, and the Whig cause seemed hopeless. "In 1842 or 1843, I really forget which, said Mr. KEOGH to the Privileges Committee (Evidence, p. 288, et supra), " I was retained " by the Conservative party to manage their " registry in the borough of Athlone." Mr. WILLIAM KEOGH then came before the world as a " Conservative Catholic," and took up his ground with apparent firmness. He drew his pen against the O'Connellites, and lauded the Ministry which utterly crushed the political personage whom Mr. KEOGH had pancgyrised shortly before; and it will be here ne cessary to mark the striking difference between his conduct at two different periods. For, if Sir GEORGE GREY, Mr. M. J. O'CON NELL, Mr. JOHN REYNOLDS, and other Members of Parliament, had reasons for taunt ing him in 1848, what would they have said if they could have foreseen that he would have afterwards led the Pope's Brass Band, and, after pledging himself to an independentcourse , would have been one of the first to rush into office ! When our readers shall have seen what all the Sadleirites actually did during the last days of Lord DERBY'S Administration, they will feel the same difficulty as ourselves in using appropriate language. In 1847, Mr. KEOGH was returned for Ath lone ; and he has himself made revelations on the subject which, taken in connection with subsequent events, are of a startling che meter. We shall state them consecutively. It appears, according to his own accou nt ! that in trying to carry the Conservative elec tion at Athlone, lie had expended in 1847 „ " two thousand pounds of his own money,. and he also received "a certain amount of " pecuniary assistance." The notion of an Irish barrister quitting his profession and 1 4