The Press.
London, England, 1855-10-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

we ravage it after the manner of Amu. It
is impossible to draw the talons of a nation—
to leave it strong for peace but harmless for
war. Whatever strength it possesses inter-
nally, that strength it cannot be prevented
from manifesting externally in some way or
other.

In opposition to the principle we hear pro-
pounded, that peace, to be secure, must depend
on the humiliation of an opponent, we say
that we can only expect the peace to be lasting
which rests on moderate terms, and which
leaves no sense of injustice or desire of re-
taliation. Are we to suppose that, in the pos-
sibility of future disturbance, the policy of
England will be regarded with greater suspi-
cion because she proved herself on this occa-
sion devoid of selfish aims and revengeful sen-
timents? It would be equally an error to rely
entirely on the justice of our cause or the
might of our arms. May they never be
divorced ! Our force must in future be suffi-
cient to give effect to our policy ; but that
force will never be efficient unless our policy
at the same time be recognised as moderate
and healing in its character.

THE NEW GOVERNOR-GENERAL.
THE new Governor-General seems likely to
have his hands pretty full when he arrives in
India, though his difficulties will not be such
as an ordinary amount of talent, backed by
good common sense, mtght not surmount.
He will do well, however, to give up all
idea of following the model which in
his India-house speech he proposed to him-
self. The present Governor-General's best
measures, some of those for the Punjaub,
were unacknowledged plagiarisms from the
late Sir CHARLES NAPIER'S government of
Scinde; his worst--Lord CANNING will reap
enough of the bitter fruits of, without any
addition of his own to the score. If the new
Governor-General be not above receiving
some suggestions from a quarter much better
informed on Indian affairs than he can be ex-
pected to be, he will find laid down for him in
the present article a line of policy which if
duly followed must inevitably obtain for him
the greatest popularity and the greatest possi-
ble success.

To begin with his foreign policy. It will be 11
very fortunate for him if the mission to
Burmah shall have accomplished its objects
when he arrives in India, and not be the
means of involving us in another war. Sup-
posing it, however, to have got as safely out of
the business as it was sent foolishly into it, his
Lordship will do wisely to let that pompous
Embassy be the last of its kind. He had
better trust to less stately agency for the
carrying out his diplomatic views. Natives do
not understand diplomacy on the European
system. Their own ambassadors are gene-
rally clever clerks. The honours and the
privileges of ambassadors are things wholly
unknown to them, and thus they are often led
unconsciously to violate etiquette and add
new complications to the old ones, which get
hopelessly entangled. If a well trained young
assistant, accompanied by a good native agent,
had been sent in the first instance to Rangoon,
we never should have been involved in tha
war which has led to the annexation of that
useless and most costly province.
Turning from Burmah, Lord CANNING will
do well to take some better security for the
safety of his northern frontier than is possessed
at present. Bengal should never be left
denuded of troops, however friendly the
Sovereign may profess himself who sits on
the Nepaulese throne. Moving onwards, the
Governor-General will find quarrels between
the King of CASHMERE and his nephew, in
which he will be wise to refuse to interfere.
Then comes Dom. MAHOMED, the ruler of
Caubul, who will never be true to us while we
hold an integral portion of his country,
though this unhappily we cannot at the
present moment give up. But though DOST
MAHOMED does not love us, he has no wish to
renew the war with us ; and probably while he
lives we may in that quarter look for peace.
His death, however, whenever it may occur,

967

will more than probably be the signal for a
powerful attack on us by the chiefs of
Affghanistan. The next people to be con-
sidered are the chiefs of the tribes on the
north-west frontier; and it will be Lord
CasNnie's own fault if with them he be not at
peace. If he will only confirm them in their
possessions, cease to harass them for rent
for their lands, which they have never paid to
any previous Governments, abolish • fiscal
exactions of a novel kind introduced by his
predecessor, and where the right of tolls has
been taken away give them compensation for
the income they have lost—if he will only act,
in short, in respect of these chiefs as he would
acts towards the humblest persons in posses-
sion of vested rights at home, these hitherto
untameable mountaineers will very soon be-
come the staunchest adherents of the British
Crown As regards the Nizam, there will be
little difficulty in keeping matters quiet with
him if his Lordship will only show a disposi-
tion to respect his dominions instead of a
desire to annex them, turning every little
difference with him into a pretext. And if
the King of OIIDE or any other sovereign in
dependent alliance with us should show him-
self hopelessly imbecile, that should not be
used as an occasion for seizing the country
for the Company, to whom it under no pre-
tence whatever can belong. In conjunction
with the Court and great nobles and people
generally, the Governor-General should make
such arrangements in that case for a Regency
as should obviate the evil until a more compe-
tent scion of Royalty had succeeded in the
course of nature to the throne. Cutch under
Porrixozz, and Nagpore under JENKINS,
afford instances where the interests of the
Royal Family, the nobility, the people, and of
ourselves were equally served by a moderate
and honourable policy of this description.
Annexation is in the present state of India
often worse than a crime; it is, in most
instances, a grand and most fatal mistake.
Sir JOHN MALCOLM looked on the native States
as the safety-vales of our empire, and Sir JOHN
knew India more thoroughly than perhaps any
man living at the present day.
The next persona to be considered are the
jaghiredars and enamdars, the hereditary
nobility and freeholders of our Eastern em-
pire. These the new Governor-General will
do well to reassure by putting an end to all
the vexatious proceedings to which they are
subjected at present. Three or four hundred
thousand a year are all that the Exchequer
can possibly gain by confiscation, and to
secure this hundreds of the most influential
men in India are reduced to beggary. Thou-
sands of others of the same class are by the
same act put into a state of uncertainty re-
garding their properties, that leaves them in
doubt as to their future means of subsistence ;
chile scores of thousands of old retainers have
nothing before them but starvation, and are
prepared to lend their swords to any partisan
who will lead them to revenge. The outbreak
in the Bombay Presidency the other day had
its origin in a jaghire confiscation of this
kind ; and there is no doubt that wherever an
opportunity occurs we shall find how vast is
the number of this class who have been but
watching their time to rise against us. We
have conquered the several Sovereigns of
India by the sword—we are now exterminating
the whole of their quondam vassals by means
of special commissioners and their pens. The
task will be found a harder one in the long
run than we bargained for, and it would be
well were we to desist while we can do so
with honour. What goes into the pockets of
an hereditary nobility is not really lost to the
State. They have their uses, like the Corin-
thian column of an edifice ; and, in the view of
the soundest thinkers on Indian matters, we
shall have destroyed what might have been
converted into the best supports of our power,
when we shall finally have succeeded in
sweeping all the jaghiredars and enamdars
of India away. Loyalty is a noble sentiment,
but the Government that looks for it must
reciprocate. No men in any country could
ever love a system from the continuance of
which they had nothing to gain and all to lose.
We forget the date of the Act of Charles the
Second, which changed the feudal tenures of
England into free and COMIXIOI2 swage, but we

a

fear it would sadly try the loyalty of our Eng-
lish nobility and landed gentry if that act were
repealed, and their lands made liable to re-
demption again at pleasure by the Crown. In
England the change formed the foundation of
all our after agricultural improvements and
wealth, because of the agricultural indepen-
dence which it gave. In India the effects of
a similar change will not be different whenever
a truly enlightened and patriotic Governor-.
General shall dare to propose the innovation
for the approval of the Crown.
The home policy that should be pursued by
the new Governor-General will form the sub
ject of our next week's article. We have
already in the present one gone beyond the
length we had intended.

THE " PRESS " AND THE " TIMES."
Ix is now three weeks since, in an article on
" The Times ani Lord PALMERSTON," we
directed the attention of our readers to the
singular circumstance of an extravagant pane-
gyric on the Premier appearing in the columns
of that journal which, for twenty years and
more, had vilified Lord PALMERSTON without
scruple and without cessation. It took the
Times an entire fortnight to reply to our re-
marks. It had certainly abundant leisure for
composing its answer. It felt, probably, that
as it had gone too far in its former vitupera-
tion of the Viscount, so it had committed
itself too egregiously in its tardy laudation of
one for whom it reserved all its praise until
he had become Prime Minister of England.
Yet, after abundance of deliberation, the
Times never committed a greater blunder than
in the tone of its reply to our comments on its
notorious and unparalleled inconsistency. It
has made, during late years, some curious
blunders, and is prominent amongst them
shall be recorded the indecent tone assumed
in replying to this Journal. We shall not
degrade ourselves by employing towards the
Times language similar to what has been used
in its attempted exculpation. But we shall
not allow its audacity of imputation to pass
unpunished. " Writers careless of the
"degree in which they injure by their
" profligacy or their meanness the character of
" the occupation to which they belong ;"
" habitual baseness ;" " who habitually prosti-
" tate their pens for the purposes of faction
" and animosity." We shall not, as we have
said, reciprocate such phrases ; but we shall
certainly resent them, and we shall obtain
ample redress against those who have dared
to use them. We shall permit no journal to
use such language with impunity ; and we
know no better way of proving our determina-
tion on that point than by inquiring how far
the Times, after its avowed abandonment of all
steady principle, is warranted to assume its
tone of dictatorial censorship?
In the first place, the Times admits the fact
that Lord PALMERSTON was its " ancient ad-
versary," and, in offering a sophistical apology
for its panegyric, it plausibly asserts that Lord
Patmitaszom is one of those mixed characters
with some fair and some foul features, doing
good with one hand and evil with the other,
virtuous in one year and 'vicious in the next,
alternating between the powers of light an 1
darkness. Truly the compliments of the
Times are of a singularly cruel character. The
recent eulogist retains rather too much of the
" ancient adversary." The language of Lord
PALMERSTON'S new courtier is of a more da-
maging kind than is commonly heard in the
antechamber of a Minister. But what avails
the special plea of Lord PALMERSTON being a
mixed character? It only confirms our charge,
which we now reassert, that for years the
Times made a set at Lord PaLmsasToti, and
assailed him with continuous disparagement,
as coarse, as rancorous, and as prolonged as
that with which, to its lasting disgrace, it
maligned the character and disparaged the
illustrious abilities of HENRY LORD BROMIIAM.

—...
Why did not the Times in those past years
admit the mixed qualities of Lord P - ALMERSTON
Why did it never recognise the genial qualities
of the man while condemning the errors of