The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-09 00:00:00

AUGUST 9, 1856. before the operation of the Encumbered Estates Act, but faintly portrayed the neglected state of agriculture in India under the Co►n- Pany's rule. We are told, however, by the advocates of Leadenhall•street that these evils are passing away, and that a new and more enlightened policy is now being adopted in its place. It may be as well, therefore, to examine the rules the Directors have lately enacted for letting the waste lands of Pegu. This, it will be remembered, is a province annexed to the empire by Lord Dautous►E, and which con tains some twenty-six millions five hundred and twenty thousand acres, or thereabout. Of these, nine-tenths are waste, and the re mainder are cultivated merely in the slovenly and unproductive manner that might be ex pected from a tenantry of pauper squatters living from hand to mouth. Any expectation of raising a remunerative land revenue through the instrumentality of these persons is ad mitted by the Company to be hopeless, and it is allowed that not only must capital be invited, but an addition of about four tines the present population made before there can be a suff►ciency of mere hands to till these vast unpeopled wastes. To foster im►nigra tion is, therefore, its avowed object, because without such immigration there can be no earthly prospect of any adequate return fin• its outlay in the conquest and occupation of Pegu. Under these circumstances it has offered terms to strangers which it deems to be of unexampled liberality, and we shall now show in what these terms consist. Any capitalist who chooses to embark his fortune in this enterprise is at liberty to do so on the conditions which follow : He may obtain a lease for eight years of waste land in lots of from one hundred to ten thousand acres, if he chooses to exile himself and risk the loss of health, and incur the cost of importing all the labourers and cattle and implements he may require. For four years he will be allowed to sit rent free —in the fifth year he will have to pay a third of the ordinary full Indian rent for land under tillage—in the sixth year he will have to pay two-thirds of this rent—and for the remaining two years of the term he will have to pay the full re►►t that would be levied from an ordinary cultivator in Madras. But, if in the first year he shall not have brought a fourth of his holding under plough, in the second year one half of it, and iu the third year three-quarters of it, the land is to be confiscated, and all money invested in it lost. At the same time, as the object is to encourage immigration, he not to be allowed to avail himself of the services of any of the people employed in agriculture in Pegu at present. If by the terms he offers he induces any such to engage with him, his lands are to be forfeited for the crime of enticing the Company's immediate serfs away. But while all his labourers must thus necessarily be imported, they are not to be exempted from the capitation tax which is levied on the other Pegu ryots at present ; and further, to protect the Company from all risk of evasion of this tax, the landlord is to be held responsible for the payment of it in respect of all the men he may employ. Hay ing thus, in the space of eight years, brought the whole of his holding into cultivation if he can, the assessment is to be revised, and a new lease of twenty years may be granted to him on the terms which the agents of the Company may choose to affix. The, Company is thus to reap the whole benefit of the investment, and, for fear that the capitalist should at any future time be able to make anything of his bargain, a revision of the assessment is to be similarly made by the Company's agents at the end of every future twenty years. As if this was not check enough, subletting is only to be permissible on the condition that the lessee does not in any shape interfere with the revenue by charging either a higher or a lower rent than that levied on the surrounding Company's lands. The Directors are perpetually talking of the ignorance of the natives, and they certainly must have speculated largely on it when they offered for the peopling and cultivating the wastes of Pegu terms so monstrous, or rather so utterly ridiculous, as these. If offered by a West Indian landlord, in respect of his barren THE PRESS. tracts, they would go far to consign him to a I commission de lunatico inquirendo ; but what would be the mere wildness of folly in an individual is deemed wisdom enough in the men who govern I ndia. We set aside all con sideration of the right of the Company to establish formally the principle of serfdom which these rules so openly set forth and embody. Nor will we question how a free trader like Mr. VERNON SMITH could tolerate such an interference with property, and above all with the free trade in a man's own labour, which every one not born a slave inherits. These are questions into which we will not enter, though they will not pass unregarded by thinking persons. But, as a mere question of advantage, we wonder where on earth he hopes to find people fools enough to close with a bargain of which " Heads I in and tails you lose" is the simplest formula extant. The mil lions of acres of waste lands on the Irrawaddy might in twenty years be made as fertile and well peopled as the millions of acres on the Mississippi if sold as the latter have been out and out at the upset price of a dollar an acre. By this means, too, our outlay in the conquest might be recovered, and in the shape of duties on imports and exports alone the revenue of Pegu would be trebled. But under the pre sent plan the land will simply remain what it is—a desert; an encumbrance instead of a ' gain to the nation, which can stand by and tolerate its interests being sacrificed by such intense administrative folly. MAYNOOTH AtiITAT lON. IT is one of the ill-effects of the Anti-May. nooth agitation that to speak against it is it terpretated by a certain class of minds as evincing a leaning to Rome, or at least a total indifference to Protestantism. We verily be lieve that some sincere and excellent persons think that clamour against Maynooth is insepa rable from, and identical with, Protestant zeal. We regard the question in the political light alone. With the doctrines taught at May nooth we have no concern. If the institution were deprived of its State endowment, the priesthood would certainly not lack some edu cational establishment. Those persons who belive that the education given at Maynooth is immoral and criminal should go much fur ther than demand the abolition of the endow ment. They should demand the total sup pression of all such institutions throughout the British empire. If the institution of Maynooth be permitted to exist without let or hindrance from the law, we cannot regard it as a matter of vital importance that it should be deprived of the support it now receives. By placing the endowment as a charge on the Consolidated Fund the Legislature did almost the same thing as if it had presented the institution with a grant of land or a considerable sum of money. Suppose the Legislature had made over to Maynooth a sum of five hundred thousand pounds in the funds. Would it be contended that it was justifiable to introduce each year an act to repeal the vote? Yet, where is the virtual difference between the two cases ? The statute was expressly introduced to put an end to those yearly discussions on May nooth which had proved so injurious. It was advocated as a settlement, and resisted as a settlement of the question; and it would, in our opinion, be a I ositive breach of legislative faith to repeal that act now. If it is to be repealed, what is to follow? This is a question we do not see answem ed: Is it proposed to repeal the endowment made prior to the Union? If not, of what avail, us regards the principle at issue, will it be to dis turb the statute of 1843? We must admonish our Protestant friends that theme are far more effectual ways of ad vancing the Protestant interest in Ireland than by this agitation against Maynooth. We must leave the Church of Rome to make the best it can of its existing condition. We shall be much better occupied in rousing the genius of Protestantism, an d in strengthening our Irish Church Establishment, than in assailing the educational institutions of Rome. Can our Protestant friends believe that it is of more importance to drag down Maynooth than to . strengthen and extend the Protestant interests 747 of Ireland ? Let them be assured that our zeal for the spread of the Reformed faith is equal to their own—that our distrust of the Romish Church is not less, and that it is only from a sincere conviction that they are wasting their strength by agitating against Maynooth, and overlooking far higher objects of easy attainment, that we remonstrate against the course they are taking. THE " MONITEUR" UPON SPANISH AFFAIRS. THE Moniteur of Tuesday publishes, in the form of a letter from Madrid, the following remarks upon recent events in Spain . In order to appreciate exactly the events which have taken place in Madrid, the manner in which the last change of Ministry occurred must not be lost sight of, while the happy influence exercised by this change can alone be understood by a recollection of the state of anarchy which the Peninsula has escaped. Matters, as far as the Crown is concerned, have followed a perfectly constitution►l course. The resolution which confided the chief power to the hands of Marshal O'Donnell was derived from the legal exercise of the prerogative of the Throne. The Ministry having offered its resignation, in consequence of internal dissensions, her Majesty had at first hoped to succeed in introducing the two Marshals into a new c.nnbination. Espartero having proposed conditions which could not be accepted by O'Donnell, this latter, before accepting the mission of forming a new Administration, considered it proper to remind the Queen of the great political influence exercised by the Duke de la Vittoria. The Count himse f represented to his colleague the grave nature of the events which might accompany that statesman's withdrawal, and employed sincere efforts in endeavouring to persuade him to keep the presidency of the Council. The Queen took her decision only after having in vain endeavouredto main: fain Espartero's presence in her council ; and it is unde niable that Marshal O'Donnell, on his side, so far from having wished t supplant a rival, neglected no measure which could insure his co-operation. Espartero positively refused, and then only did the Queen proceed, in virtue of her comtitutional functions, to form a new Ministry to replace that which had abandoned her amid the most com plicated and serious difficulties. The accounts of certain foreign journals, accord ing to which this change was accompanied by forms savotirin; of a couo d'etat, are founded therefore on a completely erroneous appreciatkn of the facts of the crisis. Doubtless Marshal O'Donnell was com pelled to recur to force in order to maintain the royal au thority, but his conduct in this circumstance in no way affected the laws of the country. He only suppressed an insurrection which no measure or word of the new Ministry could explain. Before having accomplished any act, the Minister was encountered by a vote of distrust on the part of a minority of the Cortes, and by musket•shots which proceeded from the National Guard united with the rioters of the faubourgs. He was attacked instead of having been the aggressor; and if that struggle, which he had not sought, permitted him to substitute a conservative policy for a revolutionary one, he obtained that position by an entirely legitimate defence. Those who in reality aban doned the constitutional path were they who failed to respect the decision of the Queen, and attempted to sub vert by revolt a Ministry which was established in a regular manner, and of the programme of which they were still ignorant. It is thus, we firmly believe, that history will judge the respective conduct of the two parties which found themselves in hostile presence in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona. It is besides fortunate for the Peninsula that the ultra fraction of the Progresista party should spontaneously have led to its own destruction, and affordel an opportu nity of bringing to a close a system of disorganisation and anarchy. It is impossible in fact not to admit the danger of a situation which the certain tolerance of the democratical party had created in the provinces, even more perhaps than at Madrid itself. For two years, owing to the impotence of the Adminis tration, subversive doctrines had been disseminated without hindrance among the working classes. Last year the evil effects of such doctrines had been seen at Barcelona, and in a number of other localities of inferior importance. Independently of acts which did not cease to give proofs of a hotbed of Socialism in Cata lonia, at the same period acts of violence of the same na ture took place on a vast scale at Valladolid, Palencia, and Rioseco. Threataligainst property, cries of death against the rich in the most industrious provinces of the kingdom, are proofs not only of the progress of Socialism during the last six months, but of an organisation becoming stronger and stronger of the juntas which directed that combined movement. It is certain that if the military force has put down these risings, the bad spirit of the civil administra tion was more calculated to encourage than to prevent them. And even had the civil administration been dis posed to cause property and public order to be respected, it found itself paralysed by the false ideas which prevailed in the Cortes and by the uncertain directions which were sent from Madrid. It was thus that at Valladolid the persons most ardent after pillage were liberated convicts, who were allowed to be there by the fault of the polief . : Thus also the insurgents of Madrid forced the pri sons to obtain additional assistance. Recourse to such singular auxiliaries to defend a constitution which had not been violated, and b repel a coup d'etat which had not been attempted, proves sufficiently what suggestions the insurrection obeyed, what was its real object, and with what danger it would have menaced not only the royal authority, but the whole range of social order, had it triumphed.