The Press. — London, England, 1857-06-06 00:00:00

JUNE 6, 1857. that its Civil servants have no title to any retiring allowance whatever, without being mulcted for it, it surely is bound to make no greater deduction for this purpose than was absolutely necessary. But how stands the fact? The superan nuation tax was fixed at so absurdly high a rate, that with the provisions made and the precautions taken to protect the country from premature and excessive retirements, it be came nothing more nor less than an act of fraud and spoliation. The means used were so out of all proportion to the end desired, that in a short time it became apparent that money was being deliberately obtained on false pretences for Imperial purposes. This is no wild and exaggerated statement, but a sober, unadulterated fact. Since this charge was laid on the luckless shoulders of the Civil Service, a sum of 900,000/. has been collected ; and out of this the State has paid back 82,0001. only ! Or, to give our readers a clearer idea of the monstrous swindle now actually iu force, this is the annual position of the debit and credit account,-75,0001. is received, and 11,0001. is spent ! That, we should think, sufficiently illustrates one aspect of this question. But then the Civil servants of the Crown not only suffer under an oppressive impost, but they suffer under it ‘vith . a very remote chance of ever receiving any return for their loss. The period of retirement is so affixed, that it brings a man down to the very brink of his allotted space. No one can " superannuate," except under very extraordinary and excep tional circumstances, until he is sixty-five years old; and then if he has not served the full term of fifty years, his pension will be so small that the probability is he will not be willing to make that sacrifice of income which retirement would involve. But another phase of the wrong now per petrated upon this important class is that in the not unlikely event of a man's dying at work after a long and faithful service, or soon after he has retired, the sum he has paid through the course of his official career is entirely lost to him and his family. Not one sixpence of the colossal surplus we have mentioned is touched to afford the relief so often very bitterly needed. This, then, in hurried outline, is the evil which the Commission was appointed to expose. The remedy its members propose will need a special notice. It will suffice to say of it now that it recommends the abolition of the superannuation tax altogether, the salaries of the Civil servants becoming by that means actually what they have since 1834, with bitter irony, been only nominally. They lessen also the period of compulsory service before re tirement on full pay by five years, and they think that this full pay should be granted free of all contribution in aid of it. They do not, however, make as liberal an arrangement in respect to retiring allowances as we should have wished. They evidently split on the rook of economy, and were afraid to be generous. The details of their proposition s ill, of course, become the subject of a Par liamentary scrutiny. In the meanwhile, we may congratulate the Civil Service that it is to be relieved of a wrong, and the country that it is to be cleared of a disgrace. THE ANGLO-INDIAN SCREW. " Punts° on the screw " is a term familiar enough to the Anglo-Indian, but not likely to be comprehended without some explanation by the inhabitants of these realms. At the same time it is most desirable that they should become acquainted with its meaning, because without this knowledge no Indian revenue question can be properly understood. Putting on the screw, then, means in India a resort by the authorities to those coercive processes by which they are not ashamed to see their coffers filled. The treatment to which the ryot is subjected in Madras, as disclosed in the Torture Report, created, and not unnaturally, great indignation here ; in India it was simply looked upon as a case of putting on the screw. Then, again, there is THE PRESS. nothing more common there than to see a whole district driven to the very verge of desperation by some enormous addition to the previous assessment. The ruin and deso lation which follows would be abhorrent to the eye unaccustomed to such sights ; but there the matter is viewed by the ruling class with the greatest indifference, the only re mark being that so-and-so the collector, is a smart fellow, and is " putting on the screw." Suddenly at times the whole of the landowners of the country are threatened with the total loss of their estates. A Commission of Inquiry is appointed to investigate the titles of men who have held their lands rent free ever since we conquered the country, and who claim to hold them by prescriptive right or under grants of various kinds to their ancestors by former kings. The terror which this produces may be best imagined by those who know the alarm that such an inquiry into the title of every landowner in England would occasion here. Industry is paralysed, all improvement is put a stop to, and the families of nobles, seeing that they may be reduced to beggary, curtail their expenditure to the lowest point. The position of the seigneurs of France at the time of the first revolution is perhaps most illustrative of the position of the nobles of India under such a system — setting aside, of course, the final disposal of them by the guillotine, which after all would be a mercy when their lands and fortunes are gone. Among Anglo-Indians, however, the thing is treated as a matter of course : they observe merely that the Government is in want of money, and in consequence is "putting on the screw." In the same way one hears every now and then rumours flying in all directions of the misgovernment exhibited by some native State, and of the qualms of con science felt by the British authorities at allow ing the people any longer to be subjected to such rule. Among the uninitiated this has a fine moral effect ; but those who understand the thing know that it simply means that the Government wants a gift or loan from the prince in question, or a slice of his territory— in short, that it is " putting on the screw." In this way the screw was put on Oude from time to time throughout the latter part of the last and during the whole of the present century, and the enormous gifts and loans of money to us by its princes and cessions of territory, which the Blue-books exhibit, mark the result. During the Government of Lord HASTINGS it took a couple of millions sterling to open our eyes to the real merits of the then reigning prince, and to throw a gilding round his por trait the reflection of which changed him at once from a prince of darkness to an angel of light. Now, whatever may have been the case in the state of public opinion in those days, there cannot, we imagine, be a doubt that the time for proceedings of this kind in any part of our territories is, or ought to be, past. It is with great indignation, therefore, that we read in the Calcutta papers that the process is now being had recourse to with two of the wealthiest of the native princes whom our rapacity has left. We hope that the journal in question has been mistaken, and that some assurance will be given on authority that there is no foundation for the statement in fact. This statement is, that the Rajah of PurreEALA, who had some differences lately with the Go vernment, has been able to arrange them, but that his subscription to the new five-per-cent. loan, which is at a discount, is to be seven hundred thousand pounds, or seventy lacs ; and that the young Rajah of GwALioa, who is now on a visit to Calcutta, is being subjected also to pressure by the authorities, with a view of compelling him to come forward with his treasures in aid of the exhausted funds of the State. We do hope, we repeat, that the story is false ; still it bears such an air of truth about it that nothing but the knowledge that no such subscriptions have been either asked fur or accepted from those Princes will suffice to clear the Company of the charge they must be open to by such an act. For, if its views are really such as it professes regarding the habitual extortion and misrule of native princes, what can be more shameful than to make itself a sharer in the plunder thus acquired ? If, on the other hand, its real convictions are 547 not of this stamp, it must be equally iniqui tous in it to take advantage of its supposed impressions to extort money from native princes, which they must well know will never be repaid, and which nothing but their fears could draw forth. In any case, the relation in which the Company stands to these persons makes it impossible that such aid should be received from them without disgrace. For, to take the mildest view of the matter, it is un becoming in any one to receive money even as a loan from men whose conduct one may here after have to judge ; and it is peculiarly unbe coming in the Company to take it from native princes whose means of improving their own territories must thus be crippled, and the foundations laid for future charges of miso.overnment, on which as soon as their treasures are exhausted their States will be swept away. If the Indian Government is in want of money, it has only to put forth such terms as will induce the habitual dealers in the article to supply what is required. The fact, if true, of its being compelled to resort to pressure on native princes shows that such terms have not been offered ; and the notion of taking► advantage of their prostrate position is as dishonest as in an economical view, it is impolitic and unwise. That the Company is exerting this pressure the Cal cutta papers distinctly state ; and we do hope, for the honour of the country, that the state ment will on authority be denied. THE CHURCH OF ROME IN BELGIUM. FOR a long time past the excessive pretensions of the parti pritre in Belgium have caused uneasiness to the best friends of that kingdom. Large concessions from year to year had been given by the Government to the Ultnimontanists. The tone of the Belgian prelates had not been reproved, and the Jesuits at Louvain and elsewhere were allowed to pursue their projects unmolested by the hand of power. As might have been antici pated, the old story was acted over again. The more that was given to the Church of Rome, the more she took and claimed; and at last the middle classes of Belgium, supporting a large party in the Chambers, have been com pelled in self-defence to make some show of resistance to the grasping ambition of the Ultramontanists. In judging of the excitement still existing in many parts of Belgium, we must recollect the peculiar spirit of the country. The Roman Catholic Church in Belgium has, down to our times, preserved a medieval character. There was always in that country a remarkable social equality of conditions, and the philosophy of the eighteenth century, as well as the revolu tionary shock of Jacobinism after 1792, left scarcely any permanent traces . on Belgian society. Vast monastic establishments and extensive nunneries have always flourished in its soil. Ghent reminds a traveller of Prague, from the amazing number of its conventual institutions. The religious processions in the streets of several of the towns recall what one has seen at Seville. The gorgeous richness of the Jesuits' Church in Antwerp can scarcely be paralleled north of the Alps; while the Cal raire, with its carved effigies of the awful events of the Passion of our Saviour, suggest powerfully the coarse and powerful grasp of Romanism over the credulity and the preju dices of the Belgians. Of late years in some of the large cities, as at Liege and elsewhere, there have been symp toms of a rouge party, not very dissimilar from the working classes in other large continental cities where manufactures prevail. These working men are not priest-ridden, but unhap pily we fear that they cannot be claimed as Christians. A coarse sort of materialism pre vails amongst them, and they are disposed to hail such prophets as EUGENE SUE, and other leaders of that type. The Protestants of Bel gium are few in numbers, but are intelligent and active ; and the Ultramontanists in late years appear to be extremely afraid lest au anti-Romish feeling might seize upon their flocks. Hence they have gone on from step