The Press. — London, England, 1857-09-19 00:00:00

11 -7---- upowimers . wwwwwwww p. o,(/4/7:pompgavfoiww wwwwwwwitiprOl\\ 6t113.r/cl,4+ No. 229.—V0L.V. LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19,1857. STAMPED .... STXPENCE. UNSTAMPED ..F IVEPENCE. ge brass. pounds ; and there is not, we believe, a single member of the body who possesses more than that SUM. The interest of each in the concern is, therefore, just a hundred and five pounds annually ; that is the exact amount of the security which the Crown and nation hold from them against their making ducks and drakes for their own personal profit, and for that of their friends, of the twenty-six millions of annual revenue which they are trustees for in Hindostan. And even that security is, after all, fictitious; for being behind the scenes they can dispose of this last thousand, as they have already got rid of the rest of their stock, before the final crash arrives. To these men, we repeat, the news from India may be cheering, just as the directors of cemetery companies look gay when the cholera comes. But it will not prove cheering to the rest of England, any more than it has proved to ourselves. It is not cheering, for instance, to us to learn that three more regular regi ments on the Bengal aide have mutinied, besides an irregular regiment, and another regiment that in anticipation of mutiny had been already disarmed. It is not cheering to be told that the latter has murdered its com manding officer, and that the irregular regi ment has massacred both its con►mading officer and his wife. It is not cheering to know that the epidemic has spread to Bombay, and that the 27th Regiment there has risen, and tried to murder all its officers, having actually succeeded in killing three. It is not cheering to hear that the intention was to slaughter the ladies of the regiment as well, and that, only by the fidelity of a single native officer, and the noble conduct of his mother, they and their husbands were saved. It is not cheering to be told that Delhi still holds out, that our soldiers there are losing heart at the apparent fruitlessness of their attacks ; that in our camp there are men who communi cate all our intended movements to the enemy, and that there are numbers there who wish the latter well. It is not cheering to learn that the Mahomedans of the Swat Valley have broken out again, even though their first attempt had been fortunately put down. It is not cheering to know that a plot was entered into to massacre the English at Benares and ,Tessore. It is not cheering to be told that it is doubtful whether Agra has not fallen to the mutineers, that 200 of our men had been killed at Affair, and thatthere is no immediate chance of relieving Lucknow. It is as little cheering to hear that the Governor-General has been obliged to disarm his body guard, and has been reduced to the inexpressible humiliation of accepting aid in his necessities from the Minister and virtual Sovereign of Nepaul. Those who know the antecedents of JUNG BEHAUDER know that the monster NANA SAHIB was a mere babe to him in the treachery which he has through life exhibited, and the atrocities which he has performed. In the hands of this man, who has not only the troops he brings with him to rely on, but also the Ghoorkas in our employ, who are all Nepaulese by birth, the fate of Calcutta and of Lower Bengal will by this move be virtually placed. Setting aside the humiliation of seeking aid from such a source, we know of no folly to equal it, saving that which called in the infamous NANA SAHIB to help us at Cawnpore. Turning to the Bombay Presidency. there is, besides the mutiny of the 27th Regiment, which will destroy all confidence in that army, a state of things prevailing of anything but a cheering kind. The widow of the late Sove reign of Sattara, and her adopted son, have been arrested for conspiracy, and the head of the Mahoinedans at Poonah has been found. plotting too. At Belgaum and Dharwar, and. Rutnagherry,and Sattara, and Poonah,and Bom bay the English inhabitants were beginning to anicipate the worst ; at Poonah they had even gone !so far as to prepare for blowing up the arsenal; and at Bombay they had on one occa sion been actually on the point of flying on board their ships. Allowing that something of this may have been the result of mere panic, still that such panics should exist gives us well-founded cause for alarm. For panics, even though groundless in the outset, not seldom produce in the end their foredreaded effects. They afford precisely the kind of encouragement which is often alone left want ing to make the people rise. Nor has the danger failed to be greatly aggravated, as we had expected, by the suicidal policy of the Government in placing a gag upon the Anglo- Indian press. By this means a knowledge of the true state of things is prevented, the field for false rumours is consequently widened, and our countrymen have nothing to guide them but the exaggeration of the Bazaar reports. Universal ignorance is producing in India, as it produces everywhere under similar circumstances, universal fright. But, irre spective of this, there are not wanting real grounds for deep anxiety, as we prophesied there would be, if any of the troops of Bombay were removed to furnish succour for Bengal. We explained at an early stage of this dis cussion what a thorough state of disaffection the Bombay provinces were in, owing to the numerous jaghire resumptions, and to the vexatious inquiries into titles that had there prevailed. But in the face of this disaffec tion, all the available troops at the Governor's disposal were sent to garrison Indore, and the people of the Deccan, of course, began to raise their heads as soon as they found that the field was clear. How long, we ask again and again, is such folly and mismanagement to be allowed to last? Is it to be for ever a case of tho blind leading the blind, notwithstanding what we know to he the necessary result? Is England. to leave her cards to be played by men wholly ignorant of the game, and while doing so to stake her last man and her last shilling on the event? If this is to be the state of things it is right that, at any rate, the public should know it—it is prop( the they should be made to see clearly are being led. It whose influence sui Company that will management ; these profit from this revolt war and of the burdt on persons very differ fall on those industr: taxation is already ' It will fall on the and the nobility bound up irrevocably per that they should be into what an abyss they is not the host of jobbers upports the , pttfiet . ol• - the il suffer tow guar , We" ie are rea , i • • • •• i. ......• olt. Thema . t. ~ ...Ai • .. „.404irry. rdens it vul '77 i • • V) fferent fr iii • .. ~ ot trial class •Liii ,: • . '1; I A" fast drivi4 79 7' . . .. 1"d )6 4 .? yeomen, tp u. ~.., , Lt " 71 of Englazgi o ' 4 % 6 .. .. . trt ably with the B. LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPPEMBER 19, 1857. THE Times tells us that the news from Tudia is cheering, quoting as its authority the open ing paragraph of a Bombay overland paper. In this it is difficult to say which is most con spicuous—the bombast or the blasphemy or the obsequious laudation of its new masters the censors of the Indian press. The leading journal has been ringing the same changes perpetually ever since the revolt began. Now it tells us that the affair is over—now that we have seen the worst—now that we have smashed, or are just going to smash, the mutineers completely, and that the task of picking up the pieces is all that is really left. As to the rebels it will not allow that there is, or ever has been, such a thing as a rebel from the beginning against the most wise, and liberal, and fond, and paternal, and generous Government that ever was. Lord WELLESLEY, to be sure, who ought to have known the Com pany well, gave them a different character. His designation of them was •' the ignominious tyrants of the East." Sir CHARLES NAPIER'S view of them was much the same, as, indeed, has been the view of every one who really ke. w them, and whose judgment was not b.assed by their patronage, their contracts, or t4eir rupees. To these men, of course, the news from India will be cheering, because it opens to them a long vista of enormous patronage, enormous expenditure, and the enormous influence which such expenditure begets. By this they hope to secure a carte-blanche as to their future mode of governing India, and a full and complete indemnity for the past. Before the outbreak the combined efforts of India and England had nearly succeeded in rescuing that country from their grasp ; but the stupefaction caused by these disasters has made inquiry to cease, and now they have both India and England at their feet. As to any personal loss from their misconduct, the sagacity of the Whigs in 1833 indemnified the Company for ever against that. Previously their dividends were dependent, as is the case with every other public company, on their good management ; and misgovernment might reduce those dividends, or cause them wholly to cease. But now they have a dividend of ten. and a half per cent. on their stock, guaranteed to them under every possible circumstance that can arrive. They would not get more if they made India a mine of wealth to the nation; they will not get less in its present bankrupt state. The only qualification for a Director is stock to the amount of a thousand LATEST EDITION,