The Press. — London, England, 1857-10-10 00:00:00

99'2 7 4 ; ittraturc. cra 1 Sir Charles Napier and the Directors of tit, East India Company. London: Wes terton. Tun above is the title of a little brochure of fot ty-five pages, compiled and issued by the historian of the Peninsular war. It contains the summary of a brief debate in Parliament last session, on the motion of Mr. Henry Bruce for the production of a letter from the late Sir Charles Napier refuting a charge se cretly made against him by some members of the Bombay Government relative to the dis posal of the grain received as revenue in Scinde. The charge was that, in order to swell the income of the province, he had raised the price to famine rates, heedless of the misery thus inflicted on the people of Scinde. This charge, which Sir Charles had in his lifetime thus refuted, had been revived by the Directors, iantl embodied iu a Return on the subject of land tenures in India made to the House of Commons. But when the answer before given to it by Sir Charles was called for, the Directors declared that it was not to be found. The remarks offered to the house by Mr. Bruce, Sir William Codrington, Mr. Roebuck, and Mr. Isaac Butt were full of manly indignation at this disgraceful trick. Mr. Willoughby, on the part of the Directors, took a course which only sank them deeper into the mire, while Mr. Denby Seymour, seeing the disgust thus created on every side, was glad to take shelter in an assurance that the revival of the slander was unintentional, and that no one could hold in higher estima tion the character of the dec..ased general than himself. Sir William Napier Ins given the missing document to the public in this pamphlet, along with the speeches of the members who took part in the debate. He has also added a couple of letters from a collector of Sir Charles Napier in Scinde, one of which shows that the highest average prices of wheat and rice in any year during Sir Charles Napier's government were 16s. and 10s. Bd. the impe rial quarter respectively, the lowest average prices for any year having been I Is. lid. the imperial quarter for wheat and 7s. Id. for rice. It is tints proved incontestably that grain was never sold during Sir Charles Napier's go vernment at famine prices at all ; while the details given by Mr. Bruce to the House show that the manner in which the public grain was disposed of, together with the absence of any protective duty. made it utterly impossible for Sir Charles to have raised prices factitiously, even if a man cf his known honour and huma nity could for a moment be supposed capa'ole of such an act. Extracts from the testimony borne to the kindliness, excellence, and abi lity of his Government by the Commissioners who succeeded him complete the case, Sir William adding some slashing remarks of his own on the conduct of his brothers assailants which are calculated to make an impression on the thickest hide. Considering, however, the grossness of the provocation, they do not seem a whit more severe than the Directors deserve. As far as regards the character of the late Sir Charles Napier the effect of this exposure will be complete and the Directors will be more hardy than we take them to be, if they ever venture openly to assail his memory again. Sir William may rest perfectly satis fied, therefore, with the triumph he has gained. But the public interest in the matter is of a deeper nature , it does not cease with the vimlivation of the memory of one whose eminent public services merited a far . better requital than they received. What conuerns us is not merely the rescue from insult of an honoured name : we have further to consider the affair as it affects ourselves. The question we have to weigh—and it deserves our most earnest thoughtfulness—is this :—lf the Direc tors have violated truth in a Return to Par liament in one case, what guarantee have we for the trustworthiness of any similar docu ments that they present? The men who do not hesitate thus to gratify their spleen against a de!...: vo, are nut likely to be more THE PRE S S, OcTonErt 10, 1857. scrupulous when the matter touches their interests or their existence, as such Returns often do. How, then, are we to tell whether the papers and the representations which they habitually submit to Parliament are true or false ? Who can say whether the accounts they render to the public are reliable or cooked? Nothing can be more striking than the dis crepancies observable between the reports they make to us and the finally ascertained results. They are perpetually telling us of the gains realised by lowering the rate of in terest on the public loans, and of the enor mous additional revenue derived from the annexation of native States. But at the end of the year an immense financial deficit comes always to dash our hopes. Then, again, they furnish tales to us of the success and popu laxity of their government that are wholly irreconcileable with everything we hear from independent sources, though these embrace every order of society,--Manchester commis sioners, Bengal missionaries, Calcutta mer chants, and retired judges from Bombay. Similar variances are remarked between their reports and the reports of passing travellers regarding the alleged unpopularity and mis government of native States. Then, again, in respect to the cases of petitioners from India who come here for redress, nothing can be more incompatible with the versions of these matters that are given by the Directors than the conclusions which every man of eminence arrives at who takes the trouble to investigate the affair. Is it not, then, possible that what has been often whispered and suspected, and what the present case, in one instance at least, establishes, may afford the true solution of this mystery? May it not be that the government of India by the Directors is a huge deception, a monstrous juggle from first to last? On this theory the whole of these discrepancies are accounted for, and what was before so dark and unintelligible becomes as clear as day. In this case there is nothing extraordinary in the contrast between the state of India as described by the Directors and the state of India as it really is. On this supposition one can understand how such an enormous revenue is perpetually wasted with out producing any visible result. At this rate one is able to perceive how it is that sepoys described as pampered and petted tern so ferociously on their benefactors, and how it happens that native princes and people prove such demons towards men who have ruled them on unvarying principles of benevolence and love. In other lands it takes a long course of gross misgovernment to work the people up into such a state of brutal ferocity as to resemble nothing so much as what our Indian subjects now resemble, "Hell lei. loose." Bat if the theory we have ventured to put forth be the correct one the whole thing is at once explained, and there is nothing incon gruous in the vindictiveness of these mis creants towards the most beneficent and paternal Government, judged by the Directo rial standard, that ever was. At any rate, this pamphlet of Sir William Napier has established one point, which is that the Directors of the East India Company do sometimes make Returns to Parliament which are utterly contrary to fact. And this being so, we think that the public will do well to look more sharply after them in future, and withhold credence from all their statements which do not bear upon the face of them, or in their compatibility with known principles, some impress of the truth. We fear that the effect of such caution will be to bring the Indian Returns that are accepted as reliable within a very narrow compass. But if all the Punjaub Blue-books, and Scinde Reports, and Dalhousie Minutes, are henceforth thrown over as worthless, the public mini will gain a healthier tone by the suppression of such romances, while the public purse will profit to fully as great an extent in the shape of a pro portionate reduction in the parliamentary printer's bills. In this item alone it will sAve a greater sum than it is ever likely to draw front the richest dependency in the world, as long as this continues to be degraded from its proper uses into a mere patronage preserve for the Directors and their friends. One point alone remains to us to nothy, but it is a point that we cannot think for passing by, for the simple reason that it furnishes a better illustration of the foulness of the Directorial system than any other that could be adduced. We all remember how indig nantly they repudiated the idea of tolerating the torture of their ryots when the deeds done in this line were brought to light by the Madras Torture Report; though since the outcry against them on that score has sub sided, we may remark, by way of parenthesis, that they have done nothing whatever effectual to put an end to the infamies thus disclosed. Now, there is a little circumstance in the affair under review which affords the best possible proof of the actual amount of anger they exhibit against those of their servants who, happening to have interest with them, have been guilty of cruelty towards those subject to their sway. In this pamphlet there will be found mention more than once of a certain Mr. Goldsmid (incorrectly spelt Goldsmith), described as " a malignant partisan," who was Sir George Clerk's secre tary, and on whom the act is charged of having introduced the slander complained of into Sir George Clerk's report. Well, this Mr. Gold• amid happens to be the very individual who was once assistant to Mr. Luard, late of the Bombay Civil Service, and who is alluded to in Mr. Luard's pamphlet, which was reviewed by us in our issue of the 19th of September last. Mr. Goldsmid is there accused (and the matter is one, we are informed, of public notoriety in the Western Presidency) of having " caused the death of a native by beating him, " and having urine put down his throat by the " lowest caste that could be procured, having " previously with his mod hands dragged him to "prison by a rope tied about his heels, beating him "on his back wit% a bridle all the way." Yet this abominable conduct on the part of a magistrate towards a prisoner before him in open court did not prevent his being restored by the Directors to his office after a short suspension, he having in the interim had to stand his trial before her Majesty's Supremo Court. There he escaped conviction on a ground which left the stain upon his character intact. The facts, we believe, were established, but it was shown that the Dative was suffering from severe illness at the time, and a doubt arose, therefore, how far his death was attri butable to his disease, and how far to Mr. Geldsmid's atrocious act. In a moral point of view this only rendered the enormity the greater ; for what could be more horrible than the perpetration of such a series of outrages on a dying man? But, in a legal point of view, Mr. Goldsmid was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and so with a total loss of character he escaped. One would have supposed that expulsion from the service would have fo lowed ; but his interest was great, and a con genial mcupation was found for his ruthless nature. He was appointed to inqui:•e into the titles of all the natives of the Decean to their estates ; and the result of his wholesale con fiscations the present state of that part of India tells. Stigmatised in native op►nion as a murderer, and proved to be a brute, he was the fittest instrument for sach heartless work. Eventually he was made Secretary to the Government of Bombay, and n that capacity he penned the slander on the late Sir Charles Napier of which Sir William so justly com plained. Such are the masters and such the servants who dare unblushingly to accuse of inhumanity the kindest anti most beloved of Governors—the Conqueror of Scinde. We would gladly have drawn a veil over these passages of Indian history so disgraceful to the country, but the Directors have ; provoked the exposure ; and if' the people of England after it shall continue to tolerate their rule, they must be content to stand branded in the face of all Europe as abettors of their mis government and as partners in their guilt. The Course of True Lore Fever did Run Smooth. By Charles Reade. London : Bentley. Tuts very pretty book appears, we are sorry to say, under somewhat false colours, which our sincere admiration for the charming young person on the cover must not prevent us from exposing. From the advertisements, from the general aspect of the volume, and even from the running title, we are led 1,..) imagine that.