The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

tracted series of mistakes which have destroyed
the boasted " administrative abilities" of the
Peelites. For let • never be forgotten that
the managem
Of lvar has been monopo fil
lied by the c e lelandestine politic' r
.
ett
whti itatis mad e
.i• roud Whigs tru..
'Val'
their until* AM 11".. .. . The Premiers?
ilth
the at epattillient, 1. e Admiralty, the Er
Cheque lk e N,X•ioilalt of Ireland, the great
bfficei lif the all seized upon
Lord ABERDEE-N-,-eblikes of NEWCASTLE, Mt.
SIDNEY HERBERT, TIMES GRAHAM, Mr.
GLADSTONE, and Lorr tr. GERMANS. We well
recollect the temerity of their promises—we
hetv beheld their actual performances. They
have been more dreadful to a British army
than the swarming legions of the Czar. The
presumptuous conceit of the Duke of NEW-
CASTLE has laid more gallant British hearts
low in the grave than all the artillery of Russia.
But their hour of downfall draws near, and for
the honour of the English name we trust that
the country will never again he misruled by a
Cabinet of clerks, whose miserable errors
have been attended with such fatal conse-
quences to the Queen's troops. Mr. DISRAELI
said that " England does not love Coalitions,"
but after the horrors concocted by the present
one the word will, for years to come, be ex-
ecrated by all parties in the land. Its mention
will be fearfully associated with blunders taus
ing torrents of blood to flow in vain, and mil-
lions of treasure wasted while an army starved
to death.

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF INDIA.
AT the time when the last act for the govern-
ment of India was passed a Legislative Council
was appointed from which it was said that
vast good might be anticipated ; but this
Council was unhappily so constituted that no
one really acquainted with the state of India
could rationally expect any benefit from it.
In the formation of it not only was the native
element wholly omitted—though there are
many natives of India whose talents and whose
wealth would render them very fitting mem-
bers of such an assembly—but the heads of
the great European mercantile houses were
also excluded, as were all officers of the army,
notwithstanding that the names of MALCOLM
and Musaos are a sufficient proof that political
sagacity is nowhere more conspicuous than in
the military service of the Company. In fact,
with the exception of the Supreme Court
judges of Calcutta, whose presence in the
Council will be a real advantage to the country,
the assembly consists merely of a number of
old civil servants, men who commenced
their service as " merchants," " factors," and
" writers " in the trading days of the Com-
pany, and who are necessarily wedded to all
those corruptions and abuses the correction
or eradication of which should be the main
object of the Legislative Council.
The results of the measure so far are such
as to confirm the worst anticipations formed
of it. Instead of reforming the district courts
of law, the Council appear to be deterniined
to augment the evils arising from their ineffi
ciency by enlarging the powers of the judges
—already too great for the class of men ap-
pointed—and by limiting the right of appeal,
which alone makes their proceedings tolerable.
To be sure, it is a roundabout way of getting
justice to have to appeal for it in every in-
stance against the decree of the judge in the first
resort; but as long as laymen, totally ignorant
of the first principles of law and equity, shall
continue to be appointed to the bench in
India it is the only method by which justice
in the end can be hoped for. To bar the
right of appeal without raising the character
and improving the efficiency of the judges,
would be to take away from the public every
chance of obtaining justice from the bench
whatever; and the despotism of Turkey in its
worst days would in such case be infinitely
more bearable than the despotism of India.
And not only in respect to the district
courts are the arbitrary views of the new
Legislative Council of India apparent, but the
interests of the European merchants and
planters who are settled out of the jurisdic-
tion of the supreme courts seem likely, if

SATURDAY,

Parliament should not interfere, to suffer in a
peculiar degree. These " interlopers," as the
Company term them. have always, from their
independblite, boleti Otektlloo hateful to the
Compvytiwend nothipg but tfle powerful sup-
ort of mercentdie chile' in this country
I, form With Inala hs*,enabled them to
old it iround aMid the difficulties of their
Isitua n. It it to Wiese bit n that we are in-
tleb (OP the 1104°4 Uke sugar, and nearly
all the other pro dt involving intelligence
and caiSitui in their preparation that corns
from India; but at the same time it is these
men who, suffering most from the misgovern-
ment of the Company, have been always
loudest in their denunciations of it; and it
would seem that the Council, composed almost
entirely of the Company's civil servants, are
not disinclined to use with rigour that power
which as legislators they now possess over
them.

It is needless to say that if the new Legisla-
tive Council is to pervert its enormous and un-
checked authority to such purposes as these—
if it it to give vastly-increased powers to a
bench admittedly incompetent to exercise
those which they already possess—and if,
tinder pretence of upholding authority, it is
to destroy the few seeds existing of mercantile
independence in India—then there can be no
doubt that its proceedings will be a curse to
the country instead of a benefit, and that it
will exercise its powers and privileges, not
for the suppression of abuses, but for the
suppression of remonstrance against them,
and that all those evils will be perpetuated
which at present pervade the administration
of our Eastern empire.

Under these circumstances we cannot too
earnestly impress upon Parliament the neces•
sity of exercising a strict aMd unceasing su-
pervision over the acts of the new Legislative
Council of India. The good government of that
country is a question in which all parties are or
ought to be equally concerned ; and if the pre-
sent Administration has chosen to barter its
duties towards India for the parliamentary
support of Sir JAMES HOOO and hie directorial
brethren, that is no reason why the rest of
the Legislature should calmly look on and by
tacit acquiescence give effect to the bargain.
Indeed, it should be an additional cause of
vigilance that those to whom the control over
Indian affairs has been intrusted, have virtually
abnegated their functions ; and the interested
obsequiousness of the present Minister for
India to the India-house should be a reason
for increased attention to Indian matters on
the part of all independent members of Pan
liament.

LORD ABERDEEN'S CLAIMS TO THE
GARTER.
THE bare rumour that GEORGE GORDON, Earl
of Aberdeen, the lifelong apologist for the
excesses of continental absolutism, whose
sinister " credulity" and guilty "connivance"
have exercised such disastrous influence in
the course of the last twelvemonth, is to be
admitted to the highest of personal honours,
has caused much painful astonishment Splen
did services in the senate or the field, heroic
devotion to the person of the Sovereign, have
often been rewarded with the dazzling em-
blems of tke " Order of the Garter," and no
kingdom in Christendom can show a more
far-famed line of public worthies than that
preserved in the knightly list whose em-
blazoned banners have waved in St. George's-
hall. A poet of the days of Queen ANNE has
commemorated the celebrities of the Garter in
an ode which reads now like a fine piece of
irony, when we hear that an Aberdeen is to
have his name written on that famous scroll

Where Britain's foremost names are found,
In peace beloved, in war renowned,
Who made the hostile nations moan,
Or brought a blessing on their own;
for through his protracted career of inglorious
statesmanship our Premier has exhibited an
odious contrast to the generous qualities ez
pected from a Knight of the Garter. Crue
would be the satirist who would publicly
compliment the present Prime Minister o
England on being "in peace beloved." A