The Press. — London, England, 1855-05-05 00:00:00

MAY 5, 1855. in religion corrupts, and that the Peelite in politics would equivocate away the manly public morals of our people. But the facts are too strong for the artifices of the Duke of NEWCASTLE'S apology. We can state a case against him from which his Grace will vainly strive to extricate himself. In his speech before the House of Lords, when trying to defend his conduct, his Grace confessed " that from the first the Government " had resolved on the expedition to the " Crimea." His Grace made that admission some months since, and it is too late now, in whining tones, and with apologetic manner, to try and escape by telling people that the starvation of a British army " grew out of the " circumstances." Observe how the chain of responsibility is fastened upon the Duke of NEWCASTLE. For example, the want of transport was one of the greatest defects in the plan of the ex pedition. The shelterless and destitute con dition of the troops, the prostration of the men by thousands, and the greater part of the miseries of the whole campaign, are clearly attributed to the want of transport. Now, let us see how upon that terrible neglect the Duke of NEWCASTLE criminates himself. In his second day's evidence (Tuesday, April 24th,) his Grace was asked the question, " Who was responsible for tho organisation of " the transport service ?" and his Grace at once answered, " The Commissariat." By the change in the Commissariat the whole of that department has been most properly removed from the Treasury to the War-office. The immediate working superintendence is now under the War Minister's notice, and the change is undoubtedly a good one. But in the first column of the eleventh page of the Tunes of Wednesday, April 25th, we find the following question and answer:— Was the change in the Commissariat made upon your representation ? No ; it was a measure which had been long mooted, and was decided on as early as June. I do not consider the existing arrangements are quite in accord• ante with my views, which are dependent on a much larger scheme of alteration. My impression is, the details of commissariat work are so complex and so extensive that it is impossible for them to be properly attended to by a Minister of War personally. In time of we I think the Commissariat ought, like other departments, to be under a separate head, but entirely subordinate to the Secretary fur War. In that answer there is an entire volume of incrimination against the Duke of NEWCASTLE. 1. He confesses that this beneficial change had not been made upon his representation. The first word of his answer, " No," reveals how little there was of prescience in his Grace. 2. He disparages the existing arrange ments. and intimates that he had the whole system under his consideration : and a pretty result was the consequence of his Grace's re flections ! 3. Then he shows us his utter ignorance of the real duties of a War Minis ter by suggesting that "the details" of the Commissariat are to be attended to by him, as if it was not the grand design—the organi sation of the expedition—the looking to the quantity and quality of the troops, horses, artillery, and ammunition, and transport, that was the peculiar duty of the War Minister. His Grace thinks that the Commissariat in times of war ought to be placed under " a " separate head;" and his Grace says this when the obvious necessity of the case is that we should have more unity in the War-office. Such is the man to whom the Peelites and Whigs entrusted the organisation of our expe dition against Russia! Then let the singular contradictions between his Grace's evidence on the various days be observed. They are really very curious, and sufficient attention has not been directed to them. They are more visible when placed in parallel columns : AVOWAL OF RESPONSIBILITY. EVASION OF RESPONSIBILITY. At the same time, Ido As to the Commissariat, not mean to say that I di- do you consider Sir C. Tre yested myself of all care velyan responsible for that respecting the supplies to branch of the service? — be made by the Commissa- Practically, up to the 22nd nat, with which, being an of December, Sir C. Tre independent department, I velyan was the officer who did not interfere to the same had the control of the Cora extent as in others.—( Tinto, missariat. ( Times, April April 2 ith, p. 3, col. 7.) 20th, p. 11, col. 1.) In his first day's evidence his Grace boasted of his care about supervising the Commis- THE PRESS. sariat, to a knowledge of whose state he actually confesses, and on the next day he q s uietly shuffles off the responsibility upon Si r CHARLES TBEVELYAN ! But the same extraordinary contradictions run through the entire of his Grace's evidence. Lord DERBY called the Coalition " a Cabinet of " suspended opinions," and certainly the Duke of NEWCASTLE was a singular illustration of that felicitous description of an unfortunate Ministry. Let us see his glaring contradic tions in another form : POSITIVE RESPONSIBILITY. NON-RESPONSIBILITY. It is difficult to define 1)o you consider yourself what, from the moment of responsible if any ladies be war, the Secretary of State proved against the Commis had to be responsible for—of sariat?—As I said, the Se course, of the whole conduct cretary of War must be held the war—to dirrct every- responsible for all that is thing. lamat a loss to say done by those who are as what did not come within sumed to take their orders the sphere of his duties.— from him. Responsibility (Times, April 24th, p. 3, admits of two interpretations col. 1.) —moral and official respon sibility. Mot ally responsible I was not, but officially, as Minister of War, I am, and cannot claim to be freed front it, on account of all these departments, however ill-arranged.—( Times, April 25th, p. 11, col. 1.) And so on throughout the whole of the three days' confessions of the follies of a mediocre mind. In the presence of these bewildering dis tinctions between moral, personal, and official responsibilities, men of plain sense would soon be puzzled if once they admitted such special pleading as an excuse for enormous blunders. At a single stroke we shall tear to pieces the web of sophistry with which his Grace endeavours to embarrass those who accuse him of ridiculous vainglory, and culpa• Lle, not " commendable," ambition. If the expedition to the Crimea had been well planned, vigorously supported, and care fully provided for, does his Grace mean to say that he would not have accepted the applause which the public would have accorded to him? And when the expedition was sent in haste to make " a leap in the dark," without transport or sufficient horses, and with an inadequate staff of Commissariat and medical officers, by which starvation and misery and ignominious failure resulted, are the friends and the survivors of the victimised heroes to allow the Duke of NEWCASTLE to escape from the disgrace of his failure. A WORD MORE ABOUT TORTURE IN INDIA. IN our last we noticed some results of Lord HARRIS'S Committee of Inquiry into the sub ject of torture by our officials at Madras. We showed, on the evidence of a letter from the Superintendent of Police to the Chief Secre tary to Government at that Presidency, that people were flocking from all parts of the interior to lay their complaints before the Committee—that three hundred such com• plainants were then at Madras—and that more were coming in daily. We showed, in short, that such a state of things prevailed there as would have been impossible in any Crown colony, or in any of those parts of India which are subject to the jurisdiction of the supreme courts, and within the protection of Crown appointed judges. To Indians of course the information was not new. They are all aware of the existence of the practice, and also of the modes in which torture is inflicted. Many of them, indeed, defend the practice as one which under the existing system of govern ment our officials find very useful. The same argument is urged in favour of similar prac tices by the slaveholders of America, and by the familiars of the Inquisition in Italy and Spain. The modes of torture commonly used in India are numerous. A frequent one is to take off a man's turban and clothes, and tie him to a stake, deprived of food and water, and exposed to the rays of a burning sun. A second mode is to put a man in the stocks for days and weeks together, exposed to the sun; 415 and not in such stocks as are used in England. The ordinary Indian stocks consist of square holes with sharp edges, cut in a fallen tree, through which the feet are thrust, when a peg is driven in vertically, to prevent them being pulled out again, and which fits close to the ankle -bone. Then, as there is no seat for the Indian stocks, and nothing for the back to rest against, the unfortunate prisoner of them finds his feet raised up and hi s b o dy th rown i n t o a position which if long c on ti nue d i s exqu i s i te l y painful. A third mode is to bind the fingers of each hand and the toes of each foot close together with twine, and then drive pegs in between them, which is a process of exceeding torture. A fourth plan is to stretch a man out on his back, and, fastening his hands and feet with tent-pegs to the ground, to leave him with face upturned to the sun's vertical rays, which literally sear the unprotected eyeballs. A fifth mode is to tie a man up by the feet, or, as is more general, to fasten him to a bedstead or stretcher, and then stand it on end against a wall, so as to leave the sufferer, till he con fesses or pays, with his bead downwards. A sixth plan, ar.d one which will infallibly make a man do or confess anything, is one which among the police is an especial favorite. This plan is to tie a man's arms behind him above the elbow-joint tightly, so as to bring them as close together as is possible, end then throw the end of the cord over a bough of a tree, and haul the victim up till his toes barely touch the ground. His shins are then beaten with the buts of the police horsemen's riding-whips, or with sticks of any kind, which causes him to raise his feet every moment, and throws the weight of the body with jerks upon the cord. The result of this is, a degree of torture and prostration which in the space of half an hour would overcome the firmness of the strongest man. Murders have been confessed to under th:l process which it was clearly shown after wards that the prisoner could by no possibility have been connected with. There are many other modes of torture used too numerous to mention, some of them such as decency would preclude us from describing; but we cannot omit to notice one method more, which is, perhaps, the most cruel and almost the most common. It is the thrusting a man's head into a horse's leather nosebag in which pounded capsicums, or in other words coarse cayenne pepper, have been placed, along with burning charcoal, and the smoke from which, entering the eyes and nostrils and mouth, and penetrating to the throat and lungs, is pro ductive at once of semi-suffocation and of the most excruciating anguish possible. • Such are some of the modes of torture in daily and hourly use among the Company's officials in India. It will be said in extenua tion that they are practised under native Governments as well. But they have never been practised under the worst native Govern ments to a tithe of the extent that they are practised in the Company's possessions in India. Indeed, the doing so would be impos sible, for the subjects of no native State would stand it; it is only a Government possessing unlimited and uncontrollable power like the Company that can connive at such practices as these with impunity. The question, how ever, for the Legislature to determine is not what has been done by native Governments, but what it is fitting should be done by a Government deriving its authority from the Crown and Legislature of Great Britain. If it should assent to the continuance of the pre sent state of things, then it will affirm practices which equal, if not exceed, the worst evils of slavery and serfdom. But we cannot believe so badly of Parliament as to suppose that it will tolerate these cruelties one mo ment beyond that in which the facts shall be made plain to its apprehension. As regards the remedy, that is as simple as the remedy for all the other Indian difficulties will prove to be whenever Parliament may please to face them. It is merely to extend that protection to all our subjects in India which the natives of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay enjoy at o p f re i s n en Torture those osecities, b b e y o eau ffi se cia i l n s t i i s iem nev t e h r er h e eard are tribunals to appeal to independent of the a C s o n e p i a l n a y s , and to their 1 whichthe lowest offiCompany's al s ar e highest amenable. Let an act be passed making all the Company's ..•