The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

sions might be productive of. In their des-
patches relative to the wars undertaken by their
Governors, the question of the offended honour
of the nation never appears to have entered into
their minds. The only point they seem inva-
riably to have considered was, whether the
plunder of a province would exceed the cost of
its annexation. In short, whether we look on
them as the rulers of a mighty empire, or in
their more congenial capacity of men clutch-
ing at patronage, contract monopolies, and
profitable sinecures for then\selves and friends.
the same sordid feeling sei\ins to have per-
vaded the body from first to lest. The men
who, in their commercial days, gave thousands
of pounds a year as salaries to their tea ware-
housemen in China, and then passed a by-law
that offices so profitable should never be con-
ferred on any but directors' nephews or
sons ; the men who paid forty pounds a ton
for shipping taken up from themselves or their
friends when other shipowners would gladly
have furnished it for ten ; the men who treated,
and we believe still treat, the granting contracts
as a private perquisite of the directors, and so
assign a contract to each director, to give a bar-
gain away in turn ; the men who have long
saddled India with the charge of maintaining,
at enormous salaries, as civil servants, the
members of their families too incompetent to
make their way at home ;—such men are not
likely to have been influenced by any very. ex-
tensive regard for the public welfare in their
governmental capacity.
That they have had some eminent public
servants in India is certain ; but the most emi-
nent, from Clive to Metcalfe, have fallen under
their ban ; while their treatment of their most
illustrious Governors-General has beetf such
as to drive them eventually from their service
in disgust, as the despatches of Lord Welles-
ley and the recal of one who, had he remained
in India, would have perhaps equalled that
great Indian Governor—we mean the Earl of
Ellenborough—attest. The only Governor-
General with whom they appear to have fully
sympathised was Hastings.
It is not, however, with the East India Com-
pany that we have now to do, but with their
territories and those of the native princes
which these encircle, and we have only made
these allusions to the Company as a necessary
counterpoise to the commendation of their
rule which our author in various parts of his
work sets forth. Turning from them to their
empire, the eye brightens at the prospect, for
surely a more glorious one Providence in its
most generous dispensations never created.
Covering a surface of 1,500,000 square miles,
of which the half is strictly British, with a
population of 160,000,000 ; possessing almost
every degree of climate, from the extremes of
the temperate to the forcing heat of the torrid
zone ; hearing in its northern hills the pine,
the Chesnut, and the oak, and in the south the
magnificent teak, with almost every other wood
whose beauty and usefulness call for the grati-
tude of man ; covered with flowers of une-
qualled beauty ; with fruits of the most exqui-
site description ; with a fauna which embraces
the kingly elephant and the whole range of
deer tribe, from the beautiful gazelle to the
lordly elk ; with game of every kind, from the
bustard to the ortolan, to minister to the wants
or luxuries of its people ; while the lion, the
tiger, the wild boar, the bison, and the bear,
afford to the more daring sportsman a never•
failing pursuit; its rivers teeming with fish
more delicious far than rejoice the palate in
England ; its lakes covered with wild-fowl ;
its plains overspread with cereals and sugar-
cane and cotton, and its hills crowned with
plants of medicinal virtue, from which a large
portion of the drugs of Europe are supplied ;
its bosom teeming with precious stones, from
the queenly diamond to the humble moss-
stone and agate; having iron in its mountains,
and lead, copper, and last, though not least,
abundant supplies of coal ; with gold found in
the sands of its rivers, and traces of silver dis-
coverable northwards which leave no doubt
es to the existence of that metal ;—with all
these advantages, surely we may repeat that a
nobler province of the world, animal, mineral,
and vegetable, God never made.
The earliest English settlement in India
took piece at Surat in the year 1612, where a
factory was established, with the permission