The Press.
London, England, 1855-09-15 00:00:00

THOUGHTS AFTER TRIUMPH.

THouoitTs crowd upon the mind as we reflect
over the last eventful scenes in the Crimea.
It is not too much to say, that within the last
twelvemonth the nation has gone through
more intense sensations than it experienced
in the previous quarter of a century. The
horrors, uncertainties, and glories of war have
been realised. Foreign affairs have superseded
the interest in our domestic concerns. Public
opinion has oscillated between the extremes
of anxiety and modest confidence. Cabinets

SEPT. 15, 1855.

have tottered, some statesmen been ruined,
and an appetite for strong excitements has
seized upon large portions of the popular
classes,—in a word, events have occurred to
show that the age of economy has passed
away.
In that one reflection there is deep room for
thought. For some time to come there is
danger that our national policy will be
seriously influenced by the sentiments that
spring from the love of strife. Even WALPOLE
—the Minister of Peace—found the passion for
war too strong for his resistance. FREDERICK
of Prussia was a favorite on our signboards.
The defeat of our arms in America caused
anguish to the public mind, while our suc-
cesses in the Indies swelled the English heart
with a prodigious sense of triumph. The
tremendous struggle in the Crimea will pro-
bably cause a similar current of feeling. Yet,
though we are justly proud of the heroism of
our countrymen, there is in the history of the
last year much to make us ponder deeply over
our position.
It has turned out that it took at least five
times the number of men calculated on for
taking Sebastopol. That we underrated the
resources of our foe is apparent from the tre-
mendous resistance which was offered to us.
The magnitude of that resistance, of course,
enhances the glory of our triumph ; hut still
the fact is plain that we were deceived as to
the terrible nature of the struggle. Weaker
nations would have succumbed, but it is the
English spirit to wrestle with obstacles. Our
reliance on the dauntless energy of our
race is apt, however, to make us overlook diffi-
culties. We were certainly rash in making
war with a peace establishment. Precious
lives were sacrificed by wholesale to our
official blunders. Numbers allowed themselves
to bo duped by insincere promoters of a cry
for Administrative Reform ; and our public
service still awaits the hand of a bold and
comprehensive statemanship. If our age is
to be aggressive, and if the voice of the
country be loudly raised for prolonged war,
it behoves us to prepare for a pressure on our
energies, and not to imitate the rash tone of
over-confidence in our military system which
caused such evils last winter.

It is impossible to overlook the immense
advantages of the alliance with France; and
for its perfect consolidation the country
has to thank the last Conservative Cabinet
The value of that alliance cannot be over
estimated. The head of the dynasty of
BONAPARTE has been enthusiastically hailed in
the crowded streets of London, while the
Queen of England's progress through Paris
was a glorious triumph. Even politicians
opposed to our principles admit that the
statesmanship which brought about that
alliance deserves the warmest praise.
But though we have triumphed at the Alma
and Inkermann, and in the bloody bastions of
Sebastopol, it is painful to think that the
British navy has disappointed the national
expectations. Our huge fleets have performed
pigmy deeds. Our admirals have put in special
pleas against pef il, and have readily demurred
to appearances of danger. Our power has to
some extent been checked, either by mis-
management, or imbecility, or divided counsels.
Hence the expenses of the war have been
vastly increased, and its continuance pro-
longed.
Thus, on a calm retrospect, the gravity and
uncertainty of war aro forcibly realised to
the mind. We have been taught by expe-
rience how serious is the struggle in which
we have entered, and we receive a strong
lesson as to the measured policy, firm resolve,
and attainable objects by which our future
course should be regulated.

OWNERSHIP OF INDIAN LAND.
LORD STANLEY, in an excellent speech delivered
the other day at the Manchester and Liverpool
Agricultural Society Meeting, made the follow-
ing observations regarding the duties of pro-
prietors of land in England :—" I do not
" hesitate (said his Lordship) to say that I feel
" conscientiously that any man, whether he
" knows it or not, is a wrongdoer as regards

THE PRESS.

" the community who retains in his own
" hands or in his ownership land which he has
" not the power to improve and which he has
" the power to sell. The community has a
" right to say to every one—either use your
" property profitably yourself, or let others use
" it for you."
If this remark be true, as it undoubtedly is,
of highly cultivated England, how much more
true must it be of the neglected lands of our
Eastern empire? These are, for the most
part, composed of soils of unrivalled fertility
—fifty-six bushels to the acre being not an un-
common crop on irrigated and newly-turned-
up land—yet the fairest portions have long since
gone out of cultivation, simply from our
neglect to maintain the means of irrigation
and our ceasing to make the annual advances
for• seed, &c., to the cultivators, which, from
time immemorial, it has been the business of
the Government in India, or of its grantee the
jaghiredar, or its lessee the zemindar, to
supply. Under the native Governments which
preceded us these advances were made with
great regularity ; but, excepting those parts of
Bengal in which Lord CORNWALLIS granted
leases for ever, our plan has been to do away
with the zemindars as well as the jaghiredars
altogether, while we refuse to perform our-
selves one of the most essential of their• funs
tions,—viz., supplying the capital, without
which it is impossible in any country to
obtain adequate returns from land. The
consequence is that while those permanently
leased districts have increased so enormously
in value as to give vast rentals to the zemin-
dars, which are daily more and more exciting
our Government's cupidity, the rental of the
rest of India has greatly decreased, and with
all our annexations and resumptions it is
found that our land revenue is in a state of
hopeless decline. Matters have now arrived
at that point which leaves but one of two
courses open to us if we would avoid becoming
bankrupt—either to cc mtnence at once making
the necessary improvements throughout the
whole territory, or to do as Lord STANLEY ad-
vises in regard to similarl)• circumstanced
property in England—to sell the land.
The land in possession of the Company may
be estimated after the recent annexations at
about five hundred and fifty million English
acres. A very large proportion of this is
capable of cultivation, most of the jungles
bearing traces of having been under plough
at sometime, and many of them having been
allowed to run to waste within the memory of
man. At the same time, the cultivation of
those parts of India which are still tilled is
conducted in the cheapest and most slovenly
manner by which a crop can be raised—a
necessary consequence of rackrent tenures, and
of the impoverished state in which the ryots
at present stand. Now, for the Government
to attempt to supply the enormous capital
which would be requisite for the restoration of
agriculture over so vast an area is a thing
clearly out of the question. Its money would
only be wasted in mismanagement, or swal•
lowed up in the peculation of subordinates,
even if it had at its disposal the funds requi
site for the attempt. But the Company is not
in a position to lay out ten millions a year for
the next twenty years in agricultural improve-
ments, and it may be safely affirmed that it
never will be. Even if it were so, the money
in the hands to which the expenditure of it
must from necessity be confided would be sure
to be almost wholly thrown away.
The only alternative left us, therefore, is to
commit the improvement of India to the
proper parties—the natives themselves ; and
this we can only do by giving due encou-
ragement to their investment of capital in
land by means of long leases or sales. For
the ordinary cultivator a lease might be suffi-
cient, but the wealthier capitalist would only
invest his accumulations in land on condition
of obtaining the freehold from the Company
by sale. If this were possible, w•e know that
a very large amount of money would be so in-
vested to the equal benefit of the capitalist, the
cultivator, the Company, and the community
at large. Rich natives would not leave their
money in four and five per cent. Government

871

paper, if they could, as they might then easily
do, make so very much more by the purchase
and improvement of land. Nor are the natives
insensible to the pleasures and honours of
proprietorship when not rendered nugatory
by the perpetual interference of the collector
and the extortions of his peons. Enact a law,
allowing every peasant in India to become the
proprietor in fee-simple of his holding on the
payment to the collector, either in cash down
or by instalments, of from twenty to twenty-five
years' purchase of the rental, as indicated by the
selling rates of the Government funds in India
for the day ; let every village community be-
come the absolute proprietors of their village
lands on the same terms, if they should wish
it ; put waste and deserted lands, of which
there is neither owner nor occupier, up to
auction to be sold, subject to such reserved
price as may be fixed by Government to the
highest bidder ; and grant leases of their laud
to those who cannot afford at present to pur-
chase, with a power of conversion into freehold
whenever they may he in a position to pay the
money—do this, and leave the rest to the
natives themselves, and India will be soon
changed into that garden for which nature in
its luxuriant bounty intended it, and which
nothing prevents its now being but the short-
sightedness of those who hold its destiny in
their hands. Directors look upon their five
hundred and fifty millions of acres as a mine
of wealth too valuable to be shared with those
most interested in the cultivation of them,
forgetting that even a gold or a diamond mine
would be profitless in the hands of men who
would not hold out any inducement to capi
talists to work it, while they had not the
means of working it properly themselves. If
Lord STANLEY'S maxim be good for England
it is doubly so for India, and ought to be framed
and hung up in letters of gold for constant
contemplation by all who have at heart the
perpetuation of our sovereignty, and the
cause of advancement and happiness, iu our
Eastern empire.