The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-02 00:00:00

MR. DANBY SEYMOUR.

WE have been rather puzzled to understand
the principle which guided the Government in
their selection of Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR for the
Parliamentary Secretaryship of the India
Board. During his public career, which has
not been a long one, he has been chiefly
known as a very eager denouncer of the
abuses which pervade the Government of
India, though at the same time he has been
somewhat inconsistently a supporter of the
Administration by whose connivance those
abuses have since the expiration of the Char-
ter been alone perpetuated. Were the general
character of that Administration other than it
has proved to be, we should look on the
appointment as a mark of their desire to
render that justice to India at last which they
have hitherto denied it; but this would be so
little in accordance with all their antecedents
that we cannot help fearing that it has been
rather used as a means of buying off a prin-
cipal witness in a cause which they are bent
on defeating if they can. Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR,
it must be remembered, had made a voyage to
India, and could speak with the authority of
an eye-witness, and nothing could possibly be
more vivid than his description of the shame-
ful state of things he found there.
It may be, to be sure, that we are mistaken,
and that in accepting the Secretaryship or the
India Board, he has not done so on terms in-
consistent with that personal honour and
public faith which should be deemed the most
precious possession of every public man. It
may be that he has taken office to further the
objects he made so loud a profession of, and
not to stifle them; that he has done so as a
means of aiding the inquiry into Indian mis-
government, and not of quashing it; that he
has done so, in short, with the praiseworthy
intention of giving weight to his advocacy of
a just cause, and not with the corrupt one of
selling himself to the Government, and clinch-
ing the bonds of the clients who had intrusted
him with their case. This, however, is a poiut
which can only be solved by the future course
pursued by Mr. DANDY SEYMOUR himself. The
present session will, probably, determine whe-
ther he is henceforth to be ranked among the
most honourable or among the most despica-
ble of the rising generation of public men.
If he be really as earnest in the cause of
Indian improvement as he so lately professed
himself to be, he will, both for his own credit's
sake and for the public satisfaction, give suffi-
cient proof of this without loss of time.
It is the custom of Ministers in taking
office to explain the principles on which they
accept it ; and, without going out of the way to
make a formal statement, there are plenty of
occasions perpetually arising on which Mr.
DANBY SEYMOUR may let the country know on
what principles he has accepted the Secretary-
ship to the Board of Control.

Sir JOHN PAXTNOTON, for instance, has been
kept waiting for two years nearly for the pro-
duction of a report regarding the salt duties
in India. Mr. BBYMOUR can now rise and
state, what he knows to be the truth, that the
inquiry is a mere make-believe for the purpose
of obstruction, and that there is nothing that
could be learned upon the subject which is not
on the records of the India Board already.
If the question of torture be mooted he can
tell the House that while the fact of such in-
famies is admitted by him, he is prepared to

JUNE 2, 1855.

introduce a bill which shall cause effectual
justice to be done on those by whose act or
connivance such atrocities have been com-
mitted. If he be asked whether the col-
lectorate officials aro the habitual plunderers
of the people they are appointed to protect, he
can plead guilty to the charge on the part of
the India Board, and show that purveyance,
which is usually taking things for nothing,
and forced labour, are abuses that are hence-
forth to be put down for ever. If he be asked
whether members of the Civil Service, when
found too stupid for the office of collector, are
turned into judges, he will candidly acknow-
ledge that it is so. If questioned whether to
such men's decisions the absolute disposal of
the lives and liberties and fortunes of thou-
sands are committed without even the inter•
vention of a jury, to guard against the judge's
incompetence, he will allow that such is the
fact, and he will at once provide a remedy for
the injustice. In doing this he will dwell
feelingly on the numberless judicial murders
that under such a system the Government
must be annually responsible for, setting
aside the thousands of persons unjustly trans•
ported or imprisoned, and the utter insecurity
for property, as well as life, when dependent
on the judgments of such tribunals. Finally,
he will have an opportunity of showing the
practice of the Government in the matter of
Indian appeals—we mean appeals in cases of
injustice perpetrated by officials, and not in
those in which a native has a suit merely
against his native neighbour. In such cases
he will show how an Indian nobleman or gen-
tleman may be deprived by Government of
his patrimony on the most baseless pretext,
and without the slightest shadow of law or
justice ; and he will further show that such
nobleman may go on memorialising for re-
dress till his fortune is expended and his
heart is broken, without any other result than
being told in India that he may, if he likes,
appeal to the authorities in England, and in
England that the authorities here cannot
interfere with the authorities in India, who
have perpetrated the wrong.
No one knows better than Mr. DANBY SEY-
MOUR that there is not a charge which we have
here made against the Government of India to
which it is not really amenable, in addition to
That of the most shameless nepotism and
jobbery in every department of the State. If,
then, knowing this to be the state of things,
he has accepted office to reform it, he will
confer great benefit on India, and gain con-
siderable credit for himself. But if he has
taken the secretaryship with no such inten-
tion, he will yet live to repent it ; for the act
will prove as destructive of his own character
and prospects as a public man, as disgraceful
to the Administration in which he has de-
scended to play so mean a part.