The Press.
London, England, 1855-11-03 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 3, 1855.

rintees. A Government seldom interferes in
such matters, either directly or indirectly,
without importing an extravagance into the
expenditure under which the best conceived
operations fail to pay ; and Lord CANNING will
do well to limit his assistance to the extent
which would be accorded to the promoters of
similar works at home. He should give all
necessary facilities, and all reasonable powers,
to the shareholders concerned; but the rest
he should leave entirely to themselves. We
believe that even under the present state of
things money would be largely laid out in
canals and roads if the Government would
only grant the land on reasonable terms, and
leave the proprietors unfettered as to their
dealings with the public, and more especially
as to the amount of their tolls; but, should the
establishment of a landed proprietary through-
out India be facilitated in the manner that in a
former article we have pointed out, then there
can be no doubt that there would be found with-
out difficulty all the capital that the largest
scheme of improvements could require. In
India, as in England, the keenest in getting
up canal and railroad companies would be
those who had an eye not so much to traffic
profits as to the doubling or trebling the value
of their intersected lands.
We could go on with an enumeration nearly
endless of points requiring the new Governor-
General's attention, but the more vital ones
are those which in this and our two pre-
ceding articles we have named. There are, I
besides, the salt tax and all its concomitant
abuses. and the land customs and all the
corruption and impediments to trale to which
they give rise. There are the oppressive cir-
cumstances attending the Abkavee system,
and the frauds on the Government by which
they are habitually met; and there are the
enormous evils of forced labour and compul-
sory tariffs. There is, moreover, a new diffi-
culty, which is becoming daily of more import
ance, in the inadequacy of the circulation to
meet the change in the whole rental of India
to payments in cash from payments in kind.
There is also the evil of which the Madras
Torture Report exhibits the fruit—that of leav-
ing the collection of the revenue and the
administration of justice in the same hands.
These, like the rest, however, are points which
for the present we must be content with
merely naming; the details of such of them as
we may have space for we shall hereafter dis-
cuss. Our object in the present and two pre-
ceding articles has been simply to sum up the
more prominent measures regarding which
the public u ill look for legislation at the bands
of the new Governor-General, at the same
time indicating the direction in which such
legislation must tend. It is only as a true
Conservative Reformer that his Lordship can
prove himself a statesman worthy of the task
assigned him—a real friend to Britain's best
interests, and the benefactor and consolidator
of our Eastern empire.

WHO IS TO BE THE NEW COLONIAL
SECRETARY?
WHILE the public is being amused with absurd
rumours of impossible Coalitions, it behoves
them to beware lest under cover of these ridi-
culous clamours another Coalition be intended
which shall be even a greater outrage on
political morality than those suggested. The
death of Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH has opened
one of the principal posts in the Government :
is there no danger of its being filled in a
manner little consonant with the convictions
and anticipations of the people ? We shall
not be deterred from sounding the alarm in
time, because we may hereafter be charged by
the men whose schemes we may have thwarted
with having sounded it in vain.
Let us suppose the case of a statesman
who had long been popular with the nation
whose destinies he had guided; let us suppose
that during a long political career he had been
credited with a variety of useful measures,
and the possession of more than average
patriotism ; let us further suppose that in
process of time, by the inevitable necessity of
things and the fickleness of humanity, his
immediate followers and supporters had dwin-

THE PRESS.

died from his side, that an ungrateful people
had upon this begun to question their former
opinions, and foolishly to imagine that it was
not less the leader than the party that was
impotent. What, in such a case, should we
expect to be the part of this illustrious states-
man ? Would it not be to bow to that popular
voice to which he had so often professed
obedience ? To retire with dignity from the
service of his country, and, after one bold
vindication of his conduct, to make no
further efforts at sustaining a part of
which his countrymen had judged him
incapable? Would it be this, or would
it be to virtually refuse submission to their
will ? To lose no opportunity of embar-
rassing every Cabinet from which he was ex-
cluded—to grasp at the recovery of power
with the eagerness of a child, and to shrink
from no intrigue and no treachery in the
pursuit of his darling object?
Without deciding which would be the
conduct of a highminded man and great
statesman under these circumstances, let
us go on to suppose that he had for a
time regained his position, and been re-
instated in offices of the greatest trust
and importance. Let us suppose, how-
ever, that, so far from vindicating himself,
or giving the lie to the assertions of his
enemies, he had so managed matters that to
accuse him of the grossest incapacity had be-
come the highest charity ; that he had yielded
to terms of peace which he was afterwards
ashamed to confess, yet in vain stooped to
conceal; that by this conduct he had die
gusted our Allies, stultified his party, and
damned himself ; that he had in consequence
once more returned to obscurity, and that the
nation at large had at length become con-
vinced of his real merits. Let us suppose all
this to have occurred, and then that suddenly,
without one word of warning, this same ex-
Minister were lifted into one of the most im-
portant offices of State, and the destinies of
millions of our subjects, fraught with difficul-
ties that require the clearest brain and the
most vigorous honesty, committed to his sole
charge. What might we expect to be the be-
haviour of a free people under such an un-
paralleled insult as this ?
The friends of Lord Jona RUSSELL are enter-
taining a hope that a mantle may be thrown
over his recent disgrace, by his readmission
to the Cabinet of Lord PALMERSTON. It is well
known that the Premier supported him origi-
nally, and only gave way at last upon compul
sion. He is weak in Parliamentary support—
still weaker in political principle. A vacancy
has occurred by which he may secure some
small accession of the former—it is not pro-
able that he will be actuated by any consi-
deration of the latter. Could a more favorable
opportunity have occurred to the supporters
of our late Plenipotentiary ? We think not.
It may be worth while, therefore, before this
new Bedford compact is in suspense, to
glance back at the causes which forced
Lord RUSSELL to withdraw from the Mi-
nistry amid a storm of public indignation.
A reference to the debates in the House of
Commons during the months of May, June, and
July last—especially to those of the 24th of May
and the 6th of July, is instructive. To those who
attentively compare the separate statements de-
livered by his Lordship on these two occasions,
three simple truths, emerging from a cloud of,
verbiage, will be distinctly apparent. First,
that Lord Join; RUSSELL accepted the Austrian
proposals ; secondly, that when he found his
colleagues would not assent to them, he con-
cealed that he had done so himself, and adopted
the language of Moloch, though be continued
but a Belial at heart ; and thirdly, that he
actually reprobated the insincerity of Russia
for refusing to limit her fleet in the Black Sea,
while he had himself consented to treat on the
basis of non-limitation.
" Why should Russia hesitate to make peace
" in order to have seventeen or eighteen men-
of-war at Sebastopol, unless she meditates
" future aggression upon Turkey ?" says our
sagacious Plenipotentiary on the 24th of May.
But, notwithstanding the above declaration, we
find from his speech on the ensuing Bth of
July that he had assured Count Beet he
would do his best to get the Austrian pro-
posals adopted by our Cabinet. Is not

1039

his downfall to be attributed less to an
error of judgment than to the means he
took for disguising it? Can any one doubt
the extreme peril of intrusting power to one
who scruples at no dissimulation in order to
screen himself? How are we to redress the
blunders which an honest and even capable
Minister may sometimes commit, unless he is
willing to tell the truth? How, in fine, is any
Ministry to expect the confidence of the
country if it retains members who so sadly
abuse the privileges of official reticence ?
Such an appointment as that of Lord JOHN
RUSSELL to the Colonial•ofl'ice the country
would never tolerate ; and the very possibility
of it only shows the extremities to which Lord
PALMERSTON is reduced, and sufficiently ac-
counts fur the unwillingness of any member of
principle or statesmanlike ability to take part
in his Administration.

"217, STRAND," AND THE CONVICT

BANKERS.
TARING up the Red Book the other day, we
lighted accidentally on " 217, Strand," with
the names of " Strahan, Paul, and Bates,"

opposite to it. In the next edition of that
more useful than entertaining " annual," a
different address, in a more wholesome, but
less fashionable place, will be given. We hap-
pened to be more struck with the change in
their situation, as we some months since strolled
through the suite of reception-rooms in the pri-
vate residence at " 217, Strand." What a respect-
able appearance of perfect " respectability '
was over the whole arrangement of those
gentlemanlike apartments ! They were fur-
nished, not flashily or gaudily, but in an
elegantly quiet style of chaste decoration.
You ascended by a Portland-stone staircase
to the lobby. To the right was a dining-
room, in which one could have been comfort-
able even in a November fog. At each side of
its fireplace were two carved pieces of curious
woodwork, with scriptural subjects, and richly-
framed oil-paintings hung upon the crimson
walls. It was a capital snuggery for a cheerful
company—not less than the Graces, or more
than the Muses.
Then who could have thought, on saunter-
ing through the other rooms, that they who
dwelt therein would be condemned before the
year was over to fourteen years transportation
as convicts, and that their names would be
classified henceforward in the dismal cata-
logue of criminal gentlefolk which numbers
in its items those of Dr. DODD and HENRY
FAUNTLEROY ? The whole place looked so
conventionally regular, and so comfortably
arranged, that none could have imagined that
the spectre of crime was 111..-Arting an abode
apparently filled by the household virtures.
There was the nice old fashioned library, with
its shelves loaded with classic tomes of his-
tory, bending beneath British essayists, with
printed reams of admonitions on Prudence,
and the long etcetera. in her train. A few new
hooks were carelessly tossed in a corner, and
" Dissuasions against Popery," and " Melvill's
Sermons," were to be seen amongst them.
Lying on a worktable was a large album,
filled with water-coloured sketches from a
female hand, of the various country seats
where she had sojourned. That album, with
its feminine autographs, and the dates of all
the fair one's drawings, was also ticketed for
sale. It stands recorded by the valet of Lady
BI.ESSINOTON that at the auction of Gore-house,
while all the bustling throng was chattering
and staring, Mr. THACKERAY bad teals in
his eyes. At " 217, Strand," the author of
" Vanity Fair" would have found many a
memorial of human nature which would have
given him subjects for his peculiar style.
We could not help remembering our obser-
vation of the fraudulent banker's former town
abode, as we read Baron ALDERSON'S sen-
tenec of their punishment. Their case was
an extraordinary one in all its phases,
from first to last, and in no respect was it more
singular than in the perfect confidence with
which the convicts relied upon their. plea
under " the disclosure " clause. The discus-
sion of that plea is too purely technical for

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