The Press. — London, England, 1856-01-12 00:00:00

26 the Principalities should be erected into a neutral State, interposing between the empires of Russia and Turkey ; but the policy is ques tionable which would continue mighty war for the sole sake of giving to this 'Jew State a slight increase of terqtol and a iltinpiful tier. If other points c,.#4 satitfaAtorily f(d justed, this one ral4 - 01 by this ingenuity itt Austrian diplomatiOs will scarcely be con sidered by the nation of Vance gAci Engla344 a satisfactory ground for the continuance Of hostilities. THE NEW THEORY REGARDING INDIA. THE rise and fall of nations aro much more dependent on the principles of policy pursued by them than is by many supposed. So with conquests : battalions make them, but they can only be long retained as dependencies by following out a spirit of government firm without showing itself apprehensive of danger —and at the same time frank, honest, tempe rate, conciliatory, and wise. Such is the policy which more than our arms secured for us the empire of Hindoostan. In our dealings with the natives it was early seen that the people and princes of India were a very diffe rent set from the Canadian savages or the Incas of Peru. At the time when we first made their acquaintance they were as far ad vanced in civilisation as ourselves, and in many of the arts stood long before us. The three centuries which have elapsed since then have, to be sure, illimitably increased our supe riority over them, but they have, nevertheless, been by no means stationary, and probably the worst governed native State in India is much better governed than is any province of the Turkish empire at present. When, therefore, we began to conquer India, we dealt with the princes and people of it generally as men who were to be conciliated rather than coerced to our rule. In the outset, if we dethroned a sovereign who was inimical to us, it was gene rally to set up a more friendly member of the family in his stead ; and when afterwards we began to appropriate kingdoms and princi palities to ourselves, we did so with as little alteration of internal arrangements as we could help. The jaghires or feudal estates of all existing holders were guaranteed, and even new ones were granted out of the Crown domains to those who had in the struggle taken our side. All free gifts of lands to mosques, temples, holy men, and men of science, or others, were equally con firmed. It was the same with the civil list ; the pensions, customary gratuities, and other disbursements of that kind—all were con tinued by us as fully and completely as if the dynasty had not been changed. These formed, to be sure, a considerable charge on the treasury, or rather a considerable deduction from the revenue received ; but, on the other hand, the system disarmed opposition, con fined the quarrel personally to the sovereign, and made all who would have otherwise been most interested in supporting him fast friends and zealous maintainers of our rule. With their estates, pensions, dec., fully guaran t3ed to them, their feelings and prejudices re spected, and their laws maintained, there was nothing left them to fight for worth a tithe of the risk that in rising against us they must. have incurred. Thus State after State was ab sorbed—one battle with the army of the sove reign, as if for honour's sake, deciding the question, when all the chiefs and nobles of the empire, as a matter of course, submitted and came in. It is not too much to say that our earlier conquests were followed by scarcely greater internal changes than followed the ex pulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of WILLIAM 111. to the crown of these realms. Every possible right of property, and every possible vested interest, were religiously re spected, and the only difference the natives saw was the transfer of the power of the Crown to men of a foreign race. India was, in fact, left to the Indians. All we did was to divert to our own Exchequer that portion of the income of the counts) which we could take without robbing any one, as being the fruit THE PRESS. neither of extortions nor confiscations, but simply the unappropriated revenues of the va cant thrones. Such was the ql4 Wory regarding India ; such the policy by *lnch that empire was won; the 'principles by which the posses sion o 0 has Often sq successfully maintained. The new theory IS as ppposed to it as possible, and up less tl4e pub' voice in England bq Taise4 go strongly it as to compel the India Government" 'retrace its steps, there can be no doubt t, - 0 the result will be a struggle between the natives of India and our selves far more deep, more wide-spread, and more determined, than has ever so fur threatened our existence. Already we see unmistakeable signs of the coming storm. May Heaven grant us a fitter pilot than we have now at the helm to meet it ! _ The new theory is that our whole conces sions to the natives in the shape of principali ties, feifs, estates, and pensions, are an entire mistake. We have conquered the country, and ought to have all the revenues intact for ourselves. To give twenty-five thousand a year to a govermr-general, with fifty thousand a year more for house and travelling expenses, is a wise liberality, but it is the extreme of foolish goodnaturedness to allow anything, even his hereditary property, to a native noble or a native prince. It is true that in most cases these hold a written, and in all have a moral, contract with us, that whatever might have been done in the outset, the rights which they have so long enjoyed ought to be now untouched. But the new theorists say that a contract wrong in principle from the beginning can never be binding afterwards, and that all contracts are wrong in principle which have in view the alienation to individuals of any part of the lands or revenues of the State. It is in vain that the natives plead that it was only by such concessions in the days of our weakness that we have acquired our present strength. Such arguments are deemed an impertinence by the descendants of men whose abjectness outdid even Oriental subserviency when they were endeavouring to obtain the right to es tablish factories from the then great Mogul. Proceeding, then, on this plan, the natives are publicly informed that native rule, native pro petty- in land, native pensions guaranteed on the revenue, and, in fact, vested rights of all kinds, are as soon as possible to cease. To Hindoo princes the right of adoption, a right by many Indian lawyers held to be indefeasi ble, is flatly denied. If the heir yields, the country is annexed ; if he opposes us, we recur to the argument of the sword. To Mahome tans we deny similarly the right of collaterals to succeed, or, in other words, refuse to them a principle of inheritance sanctioned by their own laws and customs, and according to which estates and property are daily inherited among ourselves. Pensions guaranteed in the mass iu perpetuity to families in lieu of lands we now cut into detail, and confiscate the share of each member of the family on the death of the existing holder. Commissions are set at work to investigate titles, and as the public records of few of the provinces of India are entire, many of them having in our wars been burnt by ourselves, it is not very easy for any landowner to make out such a title as a commissioner anxious to confiscate will be pleased to accept. Long possession, our guarantee as given in our proclamations at the conquest of the district or upon its annexa tion, go for nothing, and men are daily turned out of their estates as beggars after an unin terrupted holding under our own rule—setting aside their previous possession—for a period of above forty years. Lesser tenures are even more summarily dealt with, under the plea that the only landlord in India, and therefore the only pc wer that can grant a lease, is the Crown. The result of all this is that all outlay on land is put an end to, and estates, like estates in Chancery, are on every side allowed to go to rack and ruin. The landlords are beggared, but the Company is in no degree bettered by the act, for when it gets possession the more respectable tenants have departed, and there remain none but pauper squatters, without cattle or capital, to stock the land. The holders of mortgages on such lands are on our entry told that their mortgages are waste paper, and thus the moneyed interest is SATURDAY, involved in one common ruin with the pro prietors of the land. The public may, perhaps, think our state meat of these mattor4 exaggerated, but a Par liamentary inquiry would show that our t assertion*, as in ref ect tit the torture case, are far within, in* d 9 1 being over, th e truth. I* it wonilerb , tllO, that we should feel anxlinis for the Stay* of India when, in addition tq what may lio done by external eneniks, we have the 4mbers of universal con flagration thus smouldering on every side be neath our feet? There is but one way to save the empire, and that is to reverse this shame less policy, to rule India again on principles of truth and equity, and turn our hundred and fifty millions of subject enemies into so many subject friends. Unite their interests with ours, and we may defy the world, if arrayed in arms against us. But the plan of grasping everything too often ends in having nothing; over-rapacity defeats itself everywhere, and in no part of the world is it more likely to do so than amid the once luxurious, but now beggared, nobles and warriors of Hindoostan. MR. COBDEN'S FUNERAL ORATION. As a damned poet always appeals to posterity, BO Mr. COBDEN, sinking as a politician, pre tends to the office of a prophet. When a talkative tribune turns pamphleteer, we may be sure that the platform is breaking under his feet. A demagogue without dupes, a de claimer without an applauding audience, are as ridiculous in their failures as they would be mischievous in their success. Mr. COBDEN'S career exemplifies both these characters ; he has ceased to be a popular leader, and, from a railer against the aristocracy, the Member for the West Riding has now turned into a cynical commentator on the people of England. He has appeared in public this week with the help of Mr. RIDGWAY. Fifty closely-printed pages of letterpress, containing a farrago of tiresome tautology and strange contradictions, are a serious infliction on those who are compelled by duty to peruse them. The pamphlet in argument is an outrage on common sense; in its unpatriotic tone it is an affront to the national spirit ; in its practical purpose it is a " Hurrah" for Russia. Its excessive stupidity will save it from doing serious mischief. In fidel writers, without the wit of VOLTAIRE or the eloquence of ROUSSEAU, are rarely infec tious. Their sophisms, like the fallacies of Mr. COBDEN, being neither decked in the lan guage of genius, nor animated with brilliant vivacity, soon shrivel, and are swept away like the last autumnal leaves. And in his politics Mr. COBDEN might be looked on as a sort of political infidel. He has no loving veneration for the glory of his native land. He does not repeat the ritual of her time-honoured patriots ; his heart does not swell with the pealing anthems heard in every household ; he does not believe in the spirit of England, and prefers to bow in an abject money-worship, far more debasing than the most perverted desire of martial glory ever can become. Yet we rejoice that this production has appeared. It effectively silences those rumourmongers who for sordid objects circu lated malignant reports that some members of the Conservative party sympathised with Mr, COBDEN. There is not, we can undertake to say, a solitary Conservative in the Queen's empire who would give the faintest approval to these views of Mr. COBDEN on the war. There is a broad and palpable difference between the sentiments of statesmanlike lovers of the peace of Europe founded on a recognised balance of power, and the fanatical cant of a peace-at-any-price faction. Our natural feel ings revolt while reading this pamphlet of " What Next, and Next ?" Mr. COBDEN forgets that, to a great extent, the present con test is a war which no man in Europe did more to promote than himself. To a great extent the war is his own. His absurd peace theories sowed mischievous delusions here, and fostered wild presumption at St. Peters burg. NICHOL&B of all the Russian accepted u true prophecies the oracular assertions of