The Press.
London, England, 1855-11-24 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

plaints are not redressed. It is no wonder
that, under such a. system, King Stephen
should have been so lopg dominant.
And now comes M. LABOUCHERE to uphold
that tradition of medlperity which acts like a
spell in the Colonial Department. What has
he ever, vtritten, or spoken, or done, that
indicated vigorous intellect, an originative
capacityb or a statesmanlike spirit? For
twenq-six years he has been in Parliament,
and he has never. stamped his name upon a
single measure. Upon a current question,
with complex problems for solution, he has
not prompt logic or intuitive perception. It
is notorious, and cannot be denied, that he
utterly failed in Dublin Castle, when Lord
J. RUSSELL made him Chief Secretary in 1846-7
Mr. LABOUCHERE reeled and staggered before
the famine, although Sir WILLIAM SOMERVILLE
(who is no Solon) managed with some credit
to get through the work with the aid of Lord
CLARENDON. Yet Mr. LABOUCHERE had great
help, as the much respected Earl of BES-
BOROUGH—the head of the Ponsonbies—was
the Viceroy at the time, The crisis did not
require an orator, nor a diplomatic mind.
That rare character, " a really good man of
" business " was demanded, and Mr. LABOU.
CAERE decidedly failed to supply it. There
was never more deplorable official mismanage-
mentin Dublin Castle than at that time. Poor-
laws, with outdoor relief, were suddenly
introduced to cure a famine, property was
swallowed up, and estates were virtually con-
fiscated. " The dog was told to eat its own
tail," as the Archbishop of Dublin wittily
remarked, and from such suicidal blunderers
" the Exodus " was precipitated, and the
recruiting sergeant in Ireland has good reason
to know that there was once a Labouchere in
Ireland.
Between the Colonial and Irish Office de-
partments there is considerable analogy. De-
putations puffed up with provincial import-
ance, and with hereditary grievances of a real
and fictitious character, worry both depart-
ments. Mere mannerism will not encounter
such persons with success. You can best
explode their fictitious grievances by showing
that you are able and ready to redress real
wrongs. Illusions vanish before a states-
man of practical capacity. But Mr. LLBOB-
CHERE has not the faculties which master men
or which mould circumstances. Sensible on
common affairs, he is not shrewd, penetrating,
or profound.
We recollect the amusement of some mem-
bers of Parliament, when, on Mr. LiBOUCHERE'S
appointment to the Irish Secretaryship in
1546, an English county member expressed
his doubts " whether LABOUCHERE was `rattling'
" enough for a Secretary for Ireland." " Ah!"
said a whimsical Hibernian legislator, " he's
" rattling rich, and when we catch him in
" Dublin we'll make him bleed like a brick."
That sanguinary operation was performed in
Dublin to the pecuniary contentment of those
who understood what to " bleed like a brick "
meant. He kept " open house " in Ireland,
and his dinner-table was in perpetual requi-
sition for stopping the famine of patriots
requiring to be filled with good things. The
colonial mind is less affected by "the rebellion
of the belly " than the soul of an Irish patriot.
There is a sternness about the colonial
grievance-monger that would not relax before
the hospitable board of Mr. LABOUCHERE.
John Colony is very clear-sighted and rather
cross-grained. He is to be subdued by real
skill rather than baffled by compliments.
" The colonial Hampden "—as poor CHARLES
BULLER said--" is a sort of hybrid Britisher.
" When he has a mouth full of wrongs his
" mind discovers Scotch plausibility, Irish
" volubility, Welsh irritability, with but little
" of English gullibility."
Routine of the Whig Families is of course
the sole cause of this weak appointment so
much to be condemned. Mr. LABOUCHERE
married Lady MARY HOWARD, and is admitted
a Whig jure matrirnonii. As Mr. ROBERT SMITH
passes for a Vernon, so the new Colonial
Secretary may with the patent of the Fox Club
call himself Howard Labouchere.

Rival jokers at the clubs have given reasons
for this appointment. Some have thought it
was to make a show of having an extra Com-
moner in the Cabinet, and that Mr. SbUTII

SATURDAY,

should no longer plume himself on being its
solitary " Mr." Others have surmised that
the fact of Mr. LABOINIipE having in early
life travelled with tArd D*RBY was the real
reason, As the Premier in his difficulty had
gone to Lord STANLEY, ans as the Noble Mem-
for T g's Lynn had declihed, Lord PALMERS•
TON ought that the next best thing was to
offer t to, one who hid 4relled with Lord
STANbiY's Atther. yor He' orthy of note, that
the mast distinguished fact in the life of Mr.
Lisouollime is that he made an American tour
with Lord DEBBY. His official life, however,
shows that he did not sympathetically catch the
energy hereditary in the STANLEY&
...

OUR CIVILISATION IN THE EAST.
IT is a standing topic of reproach against us
by foreign nations that we are too much a
people of professions, practising very little
those high principles which we so perpetually
preach. That there is some foundation for
the charge it is impossible to deny, and it is,
therefore, doubly incumbent on those of us
who believe in our mission of civilisation and
enlightenment to root out from among our-
selves all cause of offence. To leave flagrant
abuses in our own system unnoticed while
playing the monitor so pragmatically to the
rest of the world, would be to destroy at once
all hope of usefulness, and to sink from being
leaders in the van of progress into the posi-
tion of a parcel of political Tartuffes. Holding
these views, from which we think that no man
of earnest truthfulness will dissent, we cannot
but record our strongest protest against an
act of the grossest barbarism lately perpe-
trated with the sanction of the Government of
Madras. It is an act calculated to degrade us
to the level of the lowest of the natives of
India whom it has been our destiny to con-
quer, or even lower; for the most debased of
them do not extend their atrocities to the dead.
The act we protest against is as follows, and
we are sure that the recital of it will call up
the same feelings in the breasts of our readers
which we do not hesitate to say are felt by our•
selves.
It appears, then, that the Moplahs who
lately murdered Mr. CONOLLY have for the last
twelve or fifteen years been perpetually guilty
of outbreaks against that collector's authority
—outbreaks which have been always accom-
panied by bloodshed, and which, have, there-
fore, very properly been put down by the
sword. As such outbreaks seem to have been
unheard of before that Gentleman went to
Malabar, it may be inferred that there must
have been something very galling in his
system of administration to produce such
effects. A wise Government would, therefore,
have instituted some more searching inquiry
into his acts there than the Madras Govern-
ment has done. However, that is a point into
which we shall not enter at present. If the
Moplahs thought fit to resort to force to effect
those objects the accomplishment of which
they should have sought for by legitimate
means, the only course for the authorities was
to recur to the same alternative for their re-
pression, and the responsibility of the lives
thus sacrificed lay on the Moplahs' heads. So
far, therefore, the Government of Madras had
the feeling of the public entirely on its side.
In an evil hour, however, it allowed exaspera-
tion to get the mastery over all other con-
siderations, and descended to carry its ven-
geance beyond the grave.
The Moplahs, it must be remembered, are a
Mahomedan people, who, like all Mahomedans,
have an extreme respect for the dead. Their
interments are accompanied by prayers over
the corpse not very dissimilar to those in
use among Christian men. Iu them they
consign the soul of the departed to the merci-
ful protection of its Maker, and the body to
its mother earth, pending the general resurrec-
rection, in which, in common with ourselves,
they hope to rise again. Of all the points of
the Mahomedan religion, that of the sanctity of
the grave is the one which is the most deeply
felt. This may be seen by the vast and beau-
tiful cemeteries in the neighbourhood of
Mahomedan cities, it being held a sacrilege to

P

NOVEMBER 24, 1855.

eopen a grave once closed, or in any way to
disturb the ashes of the dead. For this
reason the Hindoo plan of burning the body
is viewed by them with particular abhorrence ;
and it is this mode of disposing of the de-
parted, together with the worshipping of idols,
which Mahomedans equally abhor, that creates
between the two creeds so strong a feeling of
hatred and so impassable a gulf. What then
does the Madras Government do but take
advantage of this feeling to order that
the deal body of every Moplah who falls
fighting against our troops shall be publicly
and, as the Mahomedans consider, sacrilegi-
ously burned. The order has been carried
out in the late instance, and the bodies of the
murderers, or supposed murderers, of Mr.
CONOLLY have been so disposed of.
If the affair concerned those criminals alone,
we should think the less about it, as it is not a
part of our creed to show murderers pity ; but we
may be sure that the matter will not rest here,
as there is not a Mahomedan in India, or in
Asia, who will not be aroused to the highest
state of indignation against us when he hears
the tale. Setting aside the barbarism of the
act, and the recurrence by us to a proceeding
in the nineteenth century which the better
sense of our fathers has long since flung
aside, it will be held by all Mahomedans to be
a deliberate outrage on their religious faith.
It would not be a greater insult to the whole
Hebrew community throughout the world if an
enactment were made that the bodies of
Jewish murderers should be interred in a
pigsty or thrown to the hogs. In such case,
the sense of outrage to the remains would wipe
out all consideration of the delinquencies of
the living criminal, and direct against the
Government which sanctioned it that indig
nation which would otherwise have been felt
against the culprit by all men, even those of
his own creed.
We do hope that no time will be lost by the
President of the India Board in vindicating
the national character from any participation
in such proceedings by peremptorily ordering
the discontinuance of this deliberate pollution
of the remains of Mahomedan criminals at
Madras. If the dread of what can be done to
the living man will not deter such men from
crime, neither will anything that can be done
to the dead. But, even were it otherwise, such
acts can only revolt their coreligionists, and
brutalise the people among whom they are
performed. Let those who commit murder
die the death that they have merited ; but let
not a nation of Christians and of Englishmen
sully themselves by imitating the worst of
heathen savages in the maltreatment of their
enemies' remains.

THE POPE, THE WAR, AND THE
CONCORDAT.
WHATEVER may have been the differences of
opinion amongst European publicists on the
progress of events in the present crisis, there
was at least one point on which they have been
nearly unanimous. They concurred in think-
ing that nothing should be done to cast a
brand of religious discord amongst Powers
with one common political purpose, though
with different national religions. In further
ante of that general sentiment, topics calcu-
lated to excite theological rancour have been
excluded from political discussion. Their
consideration at such a period was felt to be
untimely, and therefore unwise.
It is one of the most unpleasant aspects of
the Concordat between Austria and the Court
of Rome that its publication has a necessary
tendency to raise questions of a polemical
character ; and, possibly, some of the parties
most active in bringing it about worked with
an immediate view to that end. We must,
therefore, take care not to fall into their trap.
We shall not play their game by plunging
into discussions which might sever political
friendships which it is mnst desirable to culti
vate and preserve Without doing so, it is in
our power to comment on the progress of
events ; and the extraordinary nature of the
Concordat could not be excluded from the