The Press.
London, England, 1855-07-21 00:00:00

LORD GRANVILLE AND THE MADRAS

PETITION.
ON Monday evening Lord ALBEMARLE pre-
sented the Madras petition of grievances to
the House of Lords, and in doing so made
some observations on the Company's govern-
ment of India which were of the most damna-
tory kind. The Directors, who in the House
of Commons had denied the existence of
torture, he charged with a deliberate violation
of the truth, and he assured the House that
the forthcoming Report on the subject would

SATURDAY,

prove the charge. Then, as to their conduct
as landlords and rulers generally, he stated
that a bask wonid be gkovtly laid before the
house every page of which would establish the
fact of their habitual plops neglect and sys-
temaile mismanagement. So complete and
continued had been, in hie Lordship's opinion,
the Dirowne 404001 of all the duties of
their poskion, ee to render it impossible to
leave (lie government of India any longer in
their 1141118. Now, as Lord ALBEMARLE lends
a general support to the present Administra-
tion, we trust that this address of his will
afford a sufficient vindication of the course
which we have all along taken in regard to the
affairs of India. It ought to eonvince the
most sceptical that it is in no spirit of
partisanship that we have given utteranee to
the severe reflections which we have from
time to time published ou the subject of
Indian misgovernment. When men of the
most opposite parties in the State agree upon
a particular subject, it may be fairly pre-
sumed that the conclusion which they have
thus separately arrived at is not far from the

truth.
Lord GRANVILLE showed by the tone of his
reply that he had no idea of damaging his
reputation by an out-and-out defence of the
abuses of the Company's government All
that he ventured to allege in their favour was
that a hundred and twenty out of the twelve
hundred miles the Lahore and Calcutta Rail-
way is to consist of had been completed ; that
the electric telegraph had now been estab-
lished throughout India; and that whatever
might be the abuses of the land revenue sys-
tem at Madras, it was thought by many that
so large a rental could be raised in no other
way. As regards the railway, however, it is
notil very clear what possible benefit the
Madras ryot can derive from the existence of
a hundred and twenty miles of railway at Cal-
cutta, when he would have to travel on foot
about a thousand miles before he could reach
the nearest station on the line. Equally futile
is it to tell men who are starving, and who are
neither known to nor cared for by a soul beyond
their homes, that they may for a pound or
thirty shillings send a message by the tele-
graph to the other side of India if they
please. The electric telegraph in India, like
the electric telegraph in Russia, is a very
valuable instrument for the Government, but
it has not much bearing on the present condi,
tion of the serf in either State. Then, as to
the rapid construction of the telegraph in
India, if any argument at all is to be derived
from that, it would be rather adverse to the
Government than in favour of it, as showing
how speedily the Directors can overcome the
most serious obstacles when their own inte•
rests are at issue, and that they only become
oppressed with doubts and difficulties when
the object is to benefit the people at large.
Three thousand miles of telegraph have been
constructed in India in exactly half the time
that it has taken to prepare the returns
on
the salt tax called for on Sir JOHN PARING-
TON'S motion by the House of Commons.
Respecting the remark of Lord GRANVILLE
as to the doubtful possibility of raising an
equal amount of land revenue in any other
manner than that now pursued at Madras, we
would beg to refer his Lordship to an article
on the Madras land revenue published in this
Journal on the 7th of October last. From this
he will see that no doubt need remain on his
mind upon that score, for we there showed
that, under the change of system described,
not only might an equal amount of land
revenue be levied, but a much greater, and
that without giving rise to a murmur or
affording the very slightest occasion for com-
plaint whatever. Nor is there anything ex-
traordinary inthis,ifor force and cruelty will
never in any country extract half the amount
from the occupier that under a rational system
would be voluntarily paid as rent. The only
result of the arbitrary and tyrannical measures
now pursued in Madras, and more or less in
most other parts of British India, is to drive
all men of capital from the occupation of laud,
to throw it into the hands of paupers who
have not the means to cultivate it properly,-
to make that an impossible rent which with r
the application of capital would prove a very

JUNE 21, 1855.

light one—and thus to defeat the very object
which, without it, was held principally in view.
Lord GRANVILLE surely need not go to India for
examples of tyranny and overexaction in a
landlord meeting' its own reward in a
tenantry so bankrupt and degraded as
seriously to lower the rental and depress the
marketable value of the estate. COKE, of
Norfolk, did not turn the most barren pro-
perty in England into the most cultivated and
productive by depriving his tenantry of all in-
citement to improvement, and leaving them
nothing but the barest subsistence, as the
Company does to its tenantry at Madras. And,
notwithstanding the studied mystification of
the India-house, there is no such difference in
the cases that precisely the same principles
do not apply to each. In each it is the
stimulus of self-interest operating ; but in the
one case it is the interest of the tenant to in-
vest all his capital and all his labour in the
holding, and in the other to invest nothing
whatever that he can help. In respect to
commerce there is no one so foolish as to sup•
pose that what would make a man in London
a bankrupt would make him in Calcutta a
millionaire. How, then, can it be thought
that in agriculture, which is nothing but com-
merce applied to land, the course which would
make a landlord in England a beggar can by
any possibility prove profitable to the Com-
pany at Madras ?

THE DEBATE OF MONDAY NIGHT.
COARSENESS was always a chief ingredient in the
character of Lord PALMERSTON. In the earlier
portion of his tortuous career, when vulgarity
was kept in closer limits than at present, Lord
PALMERSTON was either ashamed or afraid to
expose that grossness which at several times
has been painfully apparent since his acci-
dental elevation to the Premiership. Intoxi.
cated with his sudden promotion, the swag-
gering arrogance of his tone has become
painfully prominent. His common sense
seems to have reeled under the giddiness of
his undeserved promotion, and his unseemly
propensity to bluster threatens sooner or•
later to subject him to a simultaneous vote of
censure from all the gentlemen in Parliament.
On Monday last the Prime Minister ex
ceeded himself (and that is saying much) in
the truculent licence of his ill-tutored tongue
His reply to the graceful speech of Sir ED-
WARD LTrroti was the coarsest ever heard
from the Leader of an English Cabinet. The
personage who made it must have quite for-
gotten the well known saying of CHARLES
Fox—" that the House of Commons could
"never be led except by a gentleman," and in
Fox's meaning, " gentleman " had no reference
either to ancestral domains or a Norman
pedigree. but to that high-toned bearing, that
proud self-respect, and generous consideration
for others, which we expect from every one
who stands forward to guide the deliberations
of the first Representative Assembly in the
world. But if the offences of Lord PAL-
MERSTON on Monday were almost without
example, the exemplary punishment inflicted
on him by Mr. DISRAELI was, in poignancy of
comment, and in classic severity of reproof,
admirably executed. The Member for Bucks
gave the vaunting Prime Minister a lasting
lesson in the art of being at once Parlia-
mentary and severe. Alluding to the refined
diction and finely-sustained rhetoric of Sir
EDWARD LYTTON, Mr. DISRAELI significantly
said : " It is language which the noble Vis-
" count cannot command." The Prime Minis-
ter perceptibly winced, when vollies of sig-
nificant cheers echoed the polished poignancy
of the Leader of the Opposition. His Lord-
ship then looked as if he felt that something
else besides lofty office was requisite to make
a Prime Minister the first Member in the
Horse of Commons
We trust that we shall have no more " exhi-
bitions" of Palmerstonian vulgarity. The man-
ncra the 1-I')use of Commons ought to be
kept up to their traditionary level, and invec-
tives of the pot-house style, even though
coming from the lips of a Prime Minister,
ought to recoil on the person who is guilty of
them. A wit of past days said, with biting