The Press.
London, England, 1855-04-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

to devote only two days a week to the work of the com-
mittee, on which two days members meet, for they also
have not been able to spare more time from their respec-
tive official duties. I have the honour to request that
the Right Hon. the Governor in council will be pleased to
relieve me from my duty in the small-cause court till the
committee can close proceedings, which we hope may be
in March. I beg to add that it may be of some impor-
tance that persons coming to the Presidency for the pur-
pose of stating grievances or supposed grievances should
not be kept waiting, for in several instances we have found
that parties have gone away under circumstances which
lead us to the belief that they have been induced to with-
draw under promises.—l have the honour to be, &c., &c.

We have given this letter in extenso lest we
should be charged by any one with unfairness
in the selection of particular passages ; and we
think that the result of the publication will be
a conviction in the minds of all that torture
must have been so extensively resorted to in
the Madras Presidency as to make ignorance
of its use on the part of any one impossible ;
and that thus, while the East India Company
have been deluding the people of England
with tales regarding their humanity and love
for the natives, and the kindness and paternal
character of their rule, they have been all along
conniving at the perpetration of atrocities by
wholesale for the purpose of screwing out the
revenue from the people, and in their criminal
courts carrying on that reign of terror under
which neither the property nor the life of any
native is safe who dares to brave a collector or
one of his subordinates in India. It may be
thought, to be sure, that this is only true of
Madras, but it will be found equally true both
of Bombay and Bengal if similar committees
be only there appointed.

The public has hitherto been apathetic on
the subject of Indian grievances, but we will
do it the justice to believe that these impor-
tant disclosures will not be without their
effect. The nation which paid twenty millions
to abolish slavery in the West Indies, and
which points with horror to the treatment of
the coloured races in America, will not surely
be guilty of the infamy of allowing the
destinies of the natives of India to be any
longer committed to the hands of those who
are thus proved so flagrantly to have betrayed
their trust. As long as charges against the
Directors were confined to mere assertion, we
are not surprised that many people should
have hesitated to condemn them in the face of
the solemn and seemingly truthful denials on
their parts by which such charges were met ;
but now that a total disregard alike of the
first dictates of humanity and of truth has
been established against them, the sin would
be the nation's own if it did not check that
exercise of their power which they have so
shamefully abused.

As far as the people of India are concerned
nothing could have been more fortunate for
them than the establishment of the torture
committee by Lord HARRIS. It was appointed
for the purpose of clearing the Company of a
most horror-striking charge by a Governor too
little acquainted with India to give for an in-
stant credence to it ; but the result has been
the conviction of those whom it was intended
to clear, and the clearing of those whom it
was intended to condemn. In point of fact,
India owes much, if not all, of the misrule to
which it is subjected to the apathy or incredu
lity of the British people. The denunciators
of the Company are almost invariably dis-
believed; whereas, in point of fact, there are
few instances in which, as in this instance of
torture, they do not rather understate the
case against the Company than overstate it.
Indeed, the overstating it would, in most in-
stances, be absolutely impossible. That truth
is stranger than fiction may be safely predi-
cated of India. Its Government has hitherto
escaped inquiry in the same manner that the
recent war mismanagement so nearly escaped
it—official power overbearing those who have
sought to arouse the public. But whenever
England shall begin to care half as deeply for
its millions of subjects in India as it does for
its thousands of brethren before Sebastopol,
it will learn that apathy, and favoritism,
and routine, and neglect, and mismanagement,
have not caused more human misery in the
Crimea than have been inflicted through simi-
lar causes by the Company in almost every
year of its possession of the Government of
India.