The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-01 00:00:00

DECEMBER 1, 1855. THE WIDOWED QUEENS OF NAGPORE. HOWEVER imperfectly the Company may at times do its work where men are concerned, it has always made a root-and-branch affair of it where it has had to do with women. It plays the amiable to the Affghans, who are in a position to hold its friendship and its enmity at equal value, and is not above trying the soothing system with the savage Santhals ; but from the days of SHERIDAN'S Begum speech to the present its policy has been uniform where helpless Princesses of India are in question. These have always formed at once the richest and the safest prey of its bow and spear. The Crown of England conveys to the wearer a power limited by the laws, but the Act ,establishing the Company gives them a sovereignty more unlimited, whether by law or public opinion, than that of the Sultan or the Czar. The proceedings of the late Torture Commission, and the matter now brought under notice, show that in some cases at least it is more tyrannically abused. We have been led to make these observa tions by the perusal of a printed petition to the Directors from the widowed Queens of Nagpore. It details the wrongs to which they and.; theirjeountry have' been subjected ;—and greater certainly would appear never to have been perpetrated even in India, and in the worst of times. Of course their petition to the Directors will be treated as waste paper ; for never yet was remedy for wrongs obtained from that quarter. But we should hope, for the character of our country, that Parliament and the public will not prove deaf to it; for nations cannot suffer deeds of this kind to be done by their delegated authorities without themselves suffering eventually the penalty which sooner or later overtakes misrule. At the same time, however, we think that no con sideration of that nature will be required to stimulate public opinion in a case of this sort. There are certain kinds of proceedings from which the sense of everyone revolts the instant they are made clear to his !apprehension; and such we think is this proceeding towards the widowed Queens of Nagpore. The country, it will be remembered, was annexed some time ago, when the matter was cursorily commented on in this Journal, but the mode in which it was annexed, and the proceedings adopted towards the widows, are more fully detailed in their petition to the Directors, an extract con veying the most material part of which we here transcribe. After detailing the position of the family, our various treaties with it, and its rights under those treaties and according to both Hindoo and international law, it states that on the death of the late Rajah, and his widows' adoption, agreeably to law and custom, of a successor to whom the Throne should, con formably to treaty, have descended, — without instituting any inquiry into the case, or affording any opportunity to your Memorialists, or the people whose rights and interest are involved in the issue, to offer any remonstrance or explanation, the British Government of India have seized upon and confiscated the Sovereignty of Nagpore, thereby depriving your Memorialists, and in their persons the whole of the Bhorlah family, of the privileges and territories guaranteed to them in perpetuity by treaty, and annihilating the rights enjoyed by the people of Nag pre under native rule. That, in pursuance of this manifest violation of justice and national engagements, a military force, without any previous notice, entered the city of Nagpore on the I:4th of October, 1854, and, surrounding the palace, carried away the treasures ani jewels of the late Maharajah, which sail valuables were sent off with an escort to Calcutta: that they had previously taken forcible possession of the elephants, horses, camels, rich cloths, shawls, and all other available property, and exposed them for public sale, to the grievous humiliation of your Memorialists : that the whole of the treasures, jewels, and other personal property thus seized are estimated at the value of two millions sterling : t tat great changes were made in the military and civil establishments of the State : and that, to obliterate all t aces of the native rule in the common concerns of bust n 335, all the Nagpore coins were with lrawn from circula tion, and the Company's coins substituted, occasioning t tereby much loss and inconvenience to the people. Tbat your Memorialists have been and continue to be .'posed to the cruellest personal indignities and privations: that they are not allowed to hold any intercourse with any or the friends or advisers of their late illustrious lord : that some of the most devoted servants of the Bhorlah family THE PRESS. have been, since the 27th January last, arbitrarily subjected to close confinement, under the orders of the Commis sioner, which circumstance was brought under the notice of your Honourable Court, in a communication dated 18th April last, inclosing the original order for their confine ment, which is still in the possession of your Honourable Court: that a European officer has taken up his residence in the palace, where guards are placed to overawe and con trol their actions, thereby rendering them literally prisoners in their own apartments : that they are not allowed money to defray the expenses of those religious celebrations and ceremonies which have hitherto been uninterruptedly observed by the Bhorlah family : and that so great is the humiliation to which they are reduced, that they are not even permitted to appropriate the products of their lord's own gardens, which have been sold away by contractors. Such is the statement of the shameful I treatment to which they are subjected, made by these unfortunate Princesses, the widowed Queens of one of the justest, best, and most enlightened rulers who ever occupied a Throne in Hindoostan. He spoke English thoroughly, was a warm and sincere ally to us, and ruled his country so mildly and so benefi cently as to make his loss irreparable to the people subject to his sway. He is dead now, and this is his family's reward. For confirmation of the truth of their state • ment the widows appeal to Mr. MaNsELL, the late Resident at Nagpore, and who is, we believe, now in England—his testimony, which is unimpeachable, being thus within our reach. We may also add that all our Indian news papers and letters confirm their tale. If it be true, we can only say that—setting aside the question of annexation altogether, which we will not here discuss—the atrocities proved by the Torture Commission are not a whit more disgraceful to the Indian Government than such dark deeds as these. We do hope, there fore, that the earliest opportunity will be taken of eliciting from the President of the India Board whether he has received the petition, and what he has done in reference to it. That Mr. VERNON SMITH is more weak and incapable than even the weak and incapable Indian Minister whom he succeeded was always known ; but tolerance for such incapacity must have its limit, and if such fruits as these are really arising from it in India, it will be the opinion of all men that this limit has been reached. LORD STANLEY ON EDUCATION. THIS patriotic Nobleman has recently made another appearance in the field of Educational - - Reform. The views which he has already pro. pounded in Lancashire, Herts, and elsewhere, he has reiterated in a letter to a gentleman in Norfolk on occasion of his late absence from the educational meeting in that county. He has, however, here given us a more distinct elucida. tion of the cardinal point in his theory, viz., that education, to be of any permanent avail, must take in the parents as well as the children. Those conversant with the habits of our rural population will readily acknowledge the justice of Lord STANLEY'S views, even though they may be inclined to question the possibility of giving them effect. Schooling is looked upon by the bulk of our peasantry merely as a good way of filling up an idle hour, or getting rid of a refractory child. Children too young to work may go to school all the week round, and the elder ones may drawl through a spelling lesson, or learn their [collects on a Sunday—it pleases the clergyman or the squire, and can do them no harm. But as for looking at it in the light of a necessity, or even a luxury, they are about as likely to do that as to sigh for the wings of an eagle, or the speed of an antelope. The consequence is, that the little which the children learn at school they immediately for get at hon e, and that generation after gene ration grows up as ignorant as the beasts of the field. But were it possible to encourage in the parents themselves anything like a taste for intellectual culture, we might hope—thinks Lord STANLEY—that not only would they he willing to sacrifice something to their chil dren's acquisition of knowledge, but would also be to some extent enabled to fan the flame of learning, and prevent their boys from entirely forgetting the lessons of the schoolmaster when sent to the fields or the factory. 1135 The scheme looks likely enough, but it has been damned with faint praise by the Times. People, it is said, won't read books if you lend them, and, besides that, they are being educated by the war and the newspapers. It is a novelty, certainly, to be tuld that war promotes education, that being usually esteemed one of the special blessings of peace. But we do not despair of our contemporary changing his mind. And we should not be sur prised if " a safe and honourable peace " were soon to be recommended on the ground that war, among other bad effects, is such a hindrance to popular education. There are, however, certain remarks in the commence- ment of the article to which we are referring which are pregnant with instruction, and prove, we cannot but think, a little more than the writer intended. What is the best pre ventative of crime ? Education. What of intemperance ? Education. And so on. But does the Times really intend us to believe that the perusal of its Correspondent's " letters will mitigate such evils as these? As is well observed in the Daily News, a very large pro- portion of our criminals are what is called well-educated men. But it is precisely be cause their education has been of this descrip tion that they are criminals. The mechanic, who instructs his fellow citizens about the war and the papers on Saturday night, and reads his " penny serial " on Sunday morn ing, in which the vices of a "bloated aris tocracy" are exposed, has undoubtedly a kind of education—and a kind of education which the Times thinks it impossible to change. But does any reasonable man consider that this is the sort of knowledge which is to check intemperance, sedition, or robbery? Fortu nately, these publications circulate but little in the rural districts, or it would soon cease to be optional whether they should have a police or not. There are undoubtedly difficulties opposed to the realisation of Lord STANLEY'S views, from the physical condition of the great body of our labouring classes. When a man has been working ten or eleven hours in the cold, heat, or wet, and returns to his scanty fire, and still scantier supper, is he likely to feel much inclination fur intellectual improve ment? Let not, however, Lord STANLEY and his friends despair. Reading is not education, any more than knowledge is virtue. And the mere conviction of the fact that the gentry are striving to elevate and assist them will do more for the improvement of the poor than the most erudite lectures on the pump or the steam•engine. Education is not merely the stowing a certain amount of material into a certain receptacle called the brains. It is also the culture of the moral part, the discipline of the passions, and the training of the affections. The conviction among the working families of a district that means of improvement have been placed within their reach will not be without its good effect, and in nearly every district it is proba ble that there will be a few persons disposed to avail themselves of the advantages open to them, and to make some sacrifices for the pur• pose. In this way a little leaven may go far to leaven the whole lump ; and at least greater facilities will be afforded to those of our labour ing classes who, 'possessed of more ability or more perseverance than their fellows, desire to elevate their condition, and to rise by the fair exercise of such faculties as they possess. CABINET CLAPTRAPS. THE Parliamentary showman at the head of the Cabinet has moved on another slide in his magic lantern. Convulsions of laughter have followed in witnessing the impish figure of the Duke of ARGYLL succeeded by Lord HARROWBY ; and poor Mr. BAINES has looked very ludicrous while clambering after the sprawling President of the Board of Trade. The new appointments have all the grotesque of Dutch caricature, and this time Lord PAL: NIERSTON has really succeeded in making every one laugh. He wanted to strengthen his Ministry, and accordingly the Premier made Mr. M'CULLIIM MORE a Postmaster-General ; and then, to gain additional political sinew, he