The Press. — London, England, 1857-07-25 00:00:00

724 THE WEEK. THE week has been rife with rumours of bad news from India. The Australian steamer Simla, which arrived at Suez with eight days' later intelligence from Ceylon, is declared to have brought intelligence of the repulse of General BARNARD before Delhi, and of the disaffec tion having spread among the Bombay and Madras armies. We frankly confess that we are fully prepared for such intelligence. We shall not in the least be surprised to hear that Delhi, held by 16,000 well-armed, well-stored resolute Sepoys, and 40,000 fanatic Mahome dans, has defeated every effort of General BARNARD with his handful of troops to take it by a coup de-main. We shall not be surprised to hear that these Sepoys, fighting with the rope about their necks, have exhibited a courage and a determination unequalled in the annals of Asiatic warfare. And if General BARNARD fails in his coup-de-main we may rest assured that he will not take Delhi, with its new ditch and bastions and four miles of defences, its two parks of artillery, its hundred thousand muskets, and its tons of stores and gunpowder, for the next three months. We repeat, if he fail, Delhi may prove the Sebastopol of Bengal. We fear that it is wilfully ignoring facts to expect that General BARNARD, with 5,000 men hastily collected, ill-provisioned, and worse stored, harassed with outpost duty by night, and exhausted with the intense heat of the plains by day, should succeed in the first assault of such a stronghold as Delhi, defended by men flushed with all the vigour of a bloody rebellion, and prepared to encounter every hazard than again submit to British dominion. What may be the effect upon Hindustan of a successful defence of Delhi by the rebels it is not easy to say Each native regiment in India snuffs the approach of plunder iu every tainted breeze from Delhi. Those who not very long ago were unable to discern the nearest and most probable event, pretend to see far into futurity now, and deny that it would endanger the submission of Hindostan. Who can believe it? Experience and the evidence of facts are all the other way. What do HEBER, METCALF, and NAPIER tell us ? Do we not know that for years the East India Company have denied to the natives the existence of grievances, and have refused redress ? The patience of the people has been exhausted ; and this is not the worst of the mischief. Such a revolt as that in Bengal shakes authority to its centre. Men's mind s become unsettled, and with the Asiatic such a feeling is only one step from revolt. The European troops are known to be more or less concentrated in few positions ; and if the British residents generally exhibit such alarm as they did at Simla, so far from being a matter of surprise, a general rising may very naturally be expected. We fervently hope that such a terrible crisis may be averted. But for years past every writer upon India has thrust at us the same truth that we have no root in the country, and that we sit upon a mine which any day may explode with terrible consequences. We are willing to believe that much of this may be magnified ; but if we neglect to take more than ordinary care, if the Government at Cal cutta and at the Presidencies isnot administered with firmness and cau tion, if the management of the British forces is not conducted with skill and success, these dangers will rapidly become such in reality as they are represented to be. To restore order and repose to a province so great and so distracted as Bengal, is a matter for after consideration. At present we have to stamp out a rebellion. If the Government of India had employed proper precaution and exercised becoming firm ness months since, they had in their power the remedy for the ill ; but that time is passed, and only one thing is now clear—that such is our condition in India, such a crisis are we in there, that if they do not speedily resolve and carry out their resolutions, it may be probably out of their power to do it hereafter with any effect. The reluctance of Government to embody the Militia in the pre- sent crisis is attributed to a variety of causes. Some say it arises from unwillingness to interfere with agricultural labour others, that the Militia are considered to have been backward during the late war in volunteering for the Line ; others, again, are to be found sufficiently daring to suggest that the solution of the problem is to be found in the word patronage. Probably there may be some truth in all three of the reasons alleged. But the first is only transient, and the third we do not choose to discuss on the present occasion. But as to the second we feel desirous that the public should avoid the error of looking upon the Militia merely as a nursery for the Line. Such a view is at once deroga tory to both officers and men, and ,injurious to their public utility. The business of the Militia is to act as a substitute for our regular troops, when suddenly called abroad by military emergencies like the present. No feasible scheme of national defences could equal that by which if every soldier of the line were drafted out of the country one week, fifty thousand trained men would step into their places the next. These in the course of a month or two woull attain to as high a state of discipline as the bulk of the regulars, would perform home duties equally well, and might be made sufficiently numerous to defend the island from invasion. Why any Minister should hesitate to employ a force thus, as it were, ready made to his hand, we cannot well compre hend. We are loth to believe that professional jealousy has weight enough to retard the fulfilment of a great national requirement. If so, the rulers of the State are lamentably untrue to their trust. But we shall say no more on this unpleasant subject at present ; sinc , wely trusting that, unless an extraordinary change for the better takes place THE PRESS, JUL! '25,1857. in our Indian prospects, Lord PALMERSTON Will have energy enough to resist the pressure of his colleagues, and embody the national force in preference to any more costly aul abiding addition to our armaments. The Neapolitan revolt at Sapri is one of those failures of rabid republicanism that the arch conspirator MAzzisi has concocted in London, and so often endeavoured to carry out in any spot of Italy deemed appropriate for the attempt of the moment. But the organisation of this particular conspiracy had larger dimensions than is commonly supposed. The Neapolitan Government, well aware that in England Italian affairs are imperfectly known, and still more imperfectly treated, has taken great pains to persuade the few who are friends to King FERDINAND that the Sapri insurrection is to be attributed entirely to a Murat source, hatched at Paris, and privately aided by Sardinia. Such are the accounts put forth by Neapolitan authority, and credited by some journals, or rather affected to be so for the sake of party. It is well known by those who have any pretension to an acquaintance with the Mazziniati system, that the outbreak was to have been simultaneous in Piedmont, Tuscany, and Naples, and that the signal of general revolt was to be the assassination of the Emperor NAPOLEON. Documents exist, and will be produced, to substantiate this fact. The pecuniary loss to the Mazzinians and their allies has been above twenty thousand pounds ; and it is perfectly true, as stated by the Governmental organs of Naples, that these funds came from a French quarter, but that quarter was neither Imperialist nor Muratist, which is sufficiently evident by the signal for a general rising being the assassination of the Emperor of the FRENCH. There are those in Fiance and out of France that believe the death of the Emperor would lead to an enthroni sation of their interests, and whether republicans or not is another question. Suffice it that the republic, one and indivisible, serves as a cry and collects dupes ; and to prove at once the correctness of the position, the Courts of Piedmont, Tuscany, and Naples were apprised of the forthcoming insurrection by the French Government. The latter had knowledge of the conspiracies and intended assassination from England, but not from the police in the first instance, if ever. Neither was that knowledge conveyed through the French Embassy. The assassins, four in number, went by way of St. Malo, and their route had been forwarded to the French police. The fabrications of the Court of Naples, by which it is intended to throw suspicion on the Court of France, will not serve the purpose. When the Mazzinian insurgents landed at Sapri, the projeot was so utterly hopeless, that many were urgent to re embark in order to wait for a more opportune time, and it is reported that PISACANE had nine of these dissentients shot for insub ordination. Oue hundred and sixty-seven of the insurgents have been killed. Those who were taken—to the number of three hundred— have been sent to Salerno, where they are to be rejoined by ninety-one other prisoners from Naples, and they will be immediately tried before the Criminal Court of that town, specially summoned for the occasion. Papers have been found in the possession of the mistress of PISACANE which throw a considerable light on the ramifications of the conspi racy ; but it is doubtful whether these will be publicly produced at the trial, since they establish a perfectly different version of the affair from that which the Neapolitan Government seeks to propagate. The fact of the Pied montese colours having been hoisted on board the Cayliari is advanced as a proof that the insurrection was undertaken with the connivance of that State ; and this, too, is boldly asserted after it has been overtly shown that one of the objects of the grand conspiracy of republicanism was to overthrow the present constitution of Sardinia. The trials at Salerno and those at Paris will settle the matter in dis pute, for the evidence suppressed at Salerno will be published at. Paris, and will disprove and utterly confound the Neapolitan Govern ment in its endeavour to throw odium on the Government of France. The Indian debate on Monday next is looked forward to with considerable interest. The papers presented to Parliament concern• ing the Indian question are so meagre in detail, and so mutilated in extent, that a debate is felt to be the only means of arriving at some definite conclusion upon the origin of the rebellion iu India, and of satisfying the public mind upon the point whether the Government and the East Indian Company were or were not forewarned of the hazardous state of the Bengal provinces. Lord PALMERSTON last night endeavoured to induce Mr. DISRAELI to postpone the debate on the plea that, as the Indian mail was not expected to arrive before Monday night, it might be as well to delay the motion until some later day. We sce no relation between the latest intelligence of the progress of the rebellion and the inquiry into the origin and causes of that rebellion. What the country desires to arrive at is some explanation of the course of affairs from the earliest symptoms of disaffection in Bengal, and of the conduct and measures of the East India Government and of the Board of Control during that period. It is incredible that so vast a con spiracy should have suddenly arisen from some superstious motive of caste, or that it could have attained the complete organisation it has since displayed, without the knowledge of the Government. The papers presented to Parliament explain little on this point. Front them we learn, it is true, that, on the 19th of May last, Lord CANN I s(i wrote home " that the necessity of an increase of European trooi:s " upon the Bengal establishment had been " long apparent," but that the necessity of keeping down the military charges had prevented him from taking any steps in the matter. This, at least, is a question able economy. Upon the other hand, we learn something of the nature of the Directorial Government. On the Bth of this month Lord '