The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-09 00:00:00

E PRESS, OCTOBER 9, 1858.

ruling family, and that it is jnqt what is wanting to give a
national character to her cause.

15. An uncompromising assertion of our authority in
Oude is perfectly compatible with a merciful exercise of
it; and I respectfully submit that if the Government of
India is nut supported in making this assertion, and in
declaring that the recent acts of the people of Oude are
acts of rebellion, and that they may in strict right be
treated as such, a powerful temptation will be offered to
them to maintain their present struggle or to renew it.
16. 1 now proceed to offer some remarks upon the pro-
clamation, and 1 believe that the spirit in which the pro-
clamation was conceived and has been acted upon will be
best shown by the following statement.
17. When in January last, about the time at which the
I army of the cominander-iirchief began to concentrate upon
Lucknow, I left Calcutta for Allahabad, one of my chief
motives for doing so was the obtaining full, accurate, and
recent information in regard to the temper and disposition
of the chiefs and people of Oude ; the extent to which they
felt themselves aggrieved by the Government; how far that
feeling was just ; the nature of the influences at work among
them ; and other points requiring consideration before a
decision could be taken as to the mode of dealing with the
province. These were matters upon which formal refe-
rences and reports would have thrown very tardy and in-
adequate light, seeing the condition to which our archives
and official establishments had been reduced, and therefore,
in addition to the information received by Government

from the usual civil and military sources, I sought
information and opinions from those who, from having
filled posts withiu the province or upon its frontiers, had
had opportunities of becoming personally and. in some
cases, intimately acquainted with the talookdara and
zemindars and their followers. _ _

18. The conclusions at which I arrived were, firstly,
that all question of punishing with death, or even with
transportation or imprisonment, rebels who, however in-
veterate and unceasing their hostility had been, were free
from the stains of murder, should be set aside. I need
not at present defend this decision, although at the time
it was very far from meeting with general approval.
19. Secondly, that the one declared punishment for re-
bellion should be the confiscation to the State of pro-
prietary rights in the soil.
I have already said that this is a punishment which has
been repeatedly enforced against rebels in India, as well
by native rulers as by the British Government. It is one '
which admits of being easily tempered and relaxed with
more or less of lenity, according as considerations of
policy or mercy, and the past or future conduct of the
persons to be punished, may prescribe. It in no way
affects the honour of the most sensitive Rajpoot or
Brahmin. It would provide the Government with the
means of rewarding in the manner which is most accept-
able to the natives of India the services of those who
should be found to deserve reward. It would teni to the
final settlement of many of those disputes respecting
landed rights which have been the source of so much
strife and animosity in Oude.
20. Finally, I came to the conclusion that if a procla-
mation were issued on the capture of Lucknow (a point
upon which I entertained doubts up to the last moment),
it should be one not threatening confiscation as a possible
contingency, but declaring it, pointing out, however, the
means by which relaxation and indulgence might be
obtainable ; and, further, that no attempt should be made
to indicate the measure of relaxation and indulgence
which might be conceded in particular cases.
21. 1 will offer a few words in explanation of these last
points.
I believe that the issue of proclamations is not the
surest or safest mode of influencing the natives of India.
The experience of the past year has furnished examples of
the ingenuity with which the meaning of such documents
can be perverted or their language misrepresented by the
enemies of the State ; and it is a fact, several instances of
which have come to my knowledge of late, that the word
of an English officer of the Government, even though a
stranger, is more trusted than a printed paper. I should
therefore have preferred to take in Oude the course which
was afterwards taken in Rohilcund, and to place instruc-
tions in the hands of the officers attached to the columns
which marched through the country, leaving it to them to
carry out those instructions, and to explain in each district
through which they passed the spirit in which the Govern-
ment desired to deal with the people. But I knew it to be
very probable that no columns would be available for the
purpose in Oude, and that in that case mach time might
elapse before English officers would be able to penetrEe
the province. I therefore had recourse to a proclamation
which might be disseminated by native agency.
22 That proclamation was made to declare the confisca-
tion, and not to threaten it, because the natives of India,
while they attach much weight to a distinct and actual order
of the Government, attach very little to a vague threat,
whether conveyed by proclamation or otherwise, while it
might safely be assumed that the spirit in which the clause
treating of indulgence would be acted upon in the districts
which should be recovered would gradually become known
throughout the province, and have conciliatory effect.

Precaution was taken against per►ersion and mistrans-
lation by publishing in the first instance none but verna•
cular versions of the proclamation.

23. I have said that the proclamation should not attempt
to point out the different measures of indulgence which
would be conceded in different cases. This and some other
preceding observations will be best explained by a brief
reference to the recent condition of the talookdars and
other landholders, as reglrols their rights in the soil.
24. When we assumed the government of Oude in 1856,
the greater part of the province was held by talookdars,
who represented its aristocracy. They have been called
the " barons of Oude," but this term applied to them as
a class is misleading. Some had received tides from the
Kings of Onde for services rendered, or by Court favour.
Some few are the representatives of ancient families, but

973

the majority are men distinguished neither by birth, good
service, or connection with the soil, who, having held office
under the native Goverriment as nazi us (i.e., governors)
or chuckledars (i.e., collectors of Government rents), or
having ferruled the revenue of extensive tracts, had taken
advantage of the weakness of the native Government, and
its indifference to all considerations of jastice so long u
it received revenue ; had abused the authority confided to
them by that Government; and, by means of deeds of
sale, sometimes extorted by violence, sometimes obtained
by fraud, had become the nominal proprietors and the
actual possessors of the villages, or the majority of the
villages, which formed what they called their talookas se
estates.

25. Owing to the ascendancy which the men of this
class acquired, the weakness of the native Government, the
venality of the courts, and the absence of justice, the sore
damn of the actual occupants of the soil of the province
was one of unparalleled depression. Their rights had
ceased to exist, or were reduced to a mere shadow ; they
could get no protection from the Government ; they were
completely in the power of the talookdars, and were sub-
ject to every kind of oppression, tyranny, and exaction .
In numberless instances they were compelled by the ta-
lookdars to execute deeds of sale, alienating whatever pro-
prietary right they nominally possessed ; and they lost but
little by the act, for the practical fruition of proprietary
right they had scarcely known.
20. Such being the condition of things in Oude, the
Government of India, perhaps with more of chivalrous
justice than political prudence, determined at once to
reinstate these proprietary occupants of the soil in what
were believed to be their hereditary rights, and to restore
the ancient village communities ; and upon the annexa-
tion of the country, the Chief Commissioner was instructed
to make the settlement of the land revenue with the pro-
prietary occupants of the soil, to the exclusion of middle-
men. This instruction was carried into execution in some
districts with undue baste, harshly, and upon insufficient
evidence; and where this took place, injustice was done
to the talookdars, some of whom were deprived of villages
which had long been attached to their talookas, and their
titles to which were not satisfactorily disproved.
The injustice might, and probably would, have been cor•
rected in making the revised settlement ; but this does
not excuse or palliate the wrong.
27. The mutinies broke out. It might have been ex-
pected that when insurrection first arose in Oude, and
before it had grown to a formidable head, the village
occupants who bad been so highly favoured by the British
Government, and in justice to whom it had initiated a
policy distasteful to the most powerful elms in the pro-
vince, would have come forward in support of the Go-
vernment who had endeavoured to restore them to their
hereditary rights, and with whose interests their interests
were identical. Such, however, was not the case. So far
as I am yet informed, not an individual dared to be lojal
to the Government which bad befriended him. The vil-
lage occupants, as a body, relapsed into their former sub-
jection to the talookdar, owned and obeyed his authority as
if he had been their lawful suzerain, and joined the ranks
of those who rose up in arms against the British Go-
vernment. The endeavour to neutralize the usurped and
largely-abused power of the talookdars by recognizing the
supposed proprietary rights of the people, and thus arous-
ing their feelings of self-interest and evoking their grati•
tede, had failed utterly,
28. 'I he time arrived when it became necessary to con.
Bider how the province should be dealt with upon the re-
establishment of our power and authority in its capital.
On the one hand was the patent fact that those whom we
bad desired to benefit, and had to our thinking benefited,
did not value the rights which we had restored to them,
and that, far from standing up in defence of those rights,
and in support of the Government which had been the
means of reviving them, they had acted in complete sub-
ordination to the talookdars, and had been no less forward
than these latter in their efforts to subvert the authority o f
that Government, and to expel its officers. On the oth •
hand was the no less certain fact that, with but few hone
able exceptions, all the talookdars—many who had not as
fered in the smallest degree by our fiscal measures, an
some who had benefited hy them, having been allowed at
the settlement to retain all, or nearly all, the villages com-
posing their talookas on reduced assessments—had taken
up arms against the British Government, had either them-
selves participated or had sent their retainers to aid in the
relentless attacks on the Lucknow Residency, had forcibly
resumed the occupation of their talookas, and had in many
ways manifested their malignant hostility to the British
Government.
29. In these circumstances, to have recalled the con-
dition of things which existed immediately before the rebel
lion, thereby renewing the experiment which had been at-
tempted in 1858, and restoring the occupants of the soil to
the position of proprietary landholders, which they had but
just pr)ved themselves wholly unfit and unprepared to
maintain, would have been to court failure; and, on the
other hand, to have reverted to the state of affairs as we
found them upon taking possession of the country, and
thus to have acknowledged in the talookdars, after they
had, as a body, risen in arms against us, and helped to
subvert our authority, rights which had been denied, and
in most cases justly denied, when our power was un-
questioned and unresisted, would have been to concede a
victory to rebels and to put a premium on insurrection—
s course which would have lowered the character of the
Government, and destroyed its influence, not only in Gude
but throughout India.

30. Regard toeing had to the history of tenures in Oude,
to the failure of the efforts made by the Government in
1856 to set up those who were believed to be the heredi-
tary prcprie•ors of the soil, to their nnworthy reception
of the benefits bestowed upon them, to the rebellions
spirit manifested by nearly all the talookdars of the
province, and to the inconceivable difficulties which would
have attended the adjudication of claims to proprietary

974

right in the circumstances that have leen briefly described
and which would have hampered the Administration at every
turn, the surest, the safest, the most politic, and a thoroughly
just course seemed to be to declare the proprietary right
in the boil (to whomsoever appertaining, for all classes,
as such, had sinned equally) confiscated, and to reserve
to the Government the right of hereafter disposing of it
as might seem fitting, at the same time notifying the in-
tention of the Government to show indulgence to those
who should tender immediate submission and throw them-
selves upon its mercy.
81. I apprehended little difficulty, and, so far as expe-
rience has gone, little has, I believe, been found, in ex-
plaining to the talookdars and landholders with whom our
officers have come in contact, that the " confiscation " does
not necessarily operate as a permanent deprivation of their
rights, but that it places in the bands of the Government
the power of punishing those who shall still persist in
rebellion after life and honour have been guaranteed to
them, of rewarding those who shall promptly come forward
and give their support to the Government and to the cause
of order, or substituting in every case of restoration the
undeniable title derived from the will of the Government
for the doubtful title which alone could be advanced by the
majority of those whom the order affected, and of attaching
to the fiat of restoration such conditions of service (political
and military ), fealty, and good conduct as the altered cir-
cumstances of the province have made essential to the firm
establishment of our authority.
32. I have now stated the considerations which led me
to frame the proclamation in the form in which it was
ransmitted to you.
3:1 It was sent to Lucknow on the 3rd of March, and on
the 10th I received from the Chief Commissioner, Major-
General Sir James Outram, a letter urging a reconsidera-
tion of the terms of the proclamation, mainly on the ground
that it would render hopeless the attempt to enlist the
talookdars on the side of order, and would drive them to a
desperate resistance; and recommending that such land-
holders and chiefs as had not been accomplices in the cold-
blooded murder of Europeans should be enlisted on our
side by the restoration of their ancient possessions, subject
to such restrictions as would protect their dependants from
oppression.
34. This letter and the replies to it, including the
additional paragraph which Sir James Outram's opinion
of the light in which the talookdars and chiefs would view
the proclamation induced me to add thereto, are before
your hon. committee.
35. I will not trouble your hon. committee with a reca-
pitulation of the reasons which appeared to me to forbid
the adoption of Sir James Outram's suggestion; but lest
your hon. committee should suppose. that I was without
any previous expression of Sir James Outram's opinion on
the subject. I wish to state that the unfavourable view
taken by that distinguished officer of the substance of the
proclamation was a cause of much disappointment to me.
31i. A very few weeks previously the Chief Commissioner
had sent to the Government of India an able and elaborate
memorandum upon the system of civil administration to
be adopted for Glide after Lucknow should be subjugated.
In this memorandum, dated the 15th of January, 1858, are
the following passages :
- .

The system of settlement with so-called village proprietors
Will not answer at present, if ever, in Oude.
These men have not influence and weight enough to aid us in
restoring order. The lands of men who hr.ve taken an active
part against us should bo largely comiscated, in order, among
other reasons, to enable us to reward others in the manner most
acceptable to a native. But. I see no prospect of returning
tranquillity, except by having recourse for the next few years to
the old talookdaree system. . . . Talookas should only be
given to men who have actively aided us, or who, having been
inactive, now evince a true willingness to serve us, and are
possessed of influence suftleieut to make their sivport of real
value.
37. Subject to the understanding that even to those
who had been most active against us indulgence should
be extended upon their making prompt and complete
submission, these opinions accorded exactly with my
own ; and although 1 was aware that there might easily
be difference of opinion as to the mode of announcing
and of carrying out punishment by confiscation, it did
not occur to me that any finch divergence of views as
was subsequently intimated in the Chief Commissioner's
letter of the Bth of March could occur between us.
The belief therein expressed, that there are not a dozen
landholders in the province who have not borne arms
against us, seemed to go far towards justifying the general
and sweeping terms of the proclamation, to which alone
I expected any objection on Sir James Outram's part.
38. I afterwards had occasion to send my military secre-
tary, Colonel Stuart, to head-quarters, and I took the op-
portunity to explain to the Chief Commissioner that I
wished him to give the most liberal interpretation to the
proclamation ; that, for instance, the proclamation left it
free to notify to any talookdar who was deserving of
consideration, that if he made submission and supported
the Government, the contiacation of his lands would not
take effect, and that his chains to property of which he
might have been deprived upon the annexation of the
province would be reheard; and that in the case of these
having been resumed by him he might retain them till
the rehearing.
- -

39. On the :3rd of April Mijor•General Sir James
Ontram being about to take his seat in Council at Calcutta,
Mr. Montgomery succeeded to the Chief Commissionership
of Oude.

- -
40. Mr. Montgomery had, at my request, done me the
favour of visiting Allahabad before going to Lucknow, in
order that I might have an opportunity of communicating
unreservedly with him upon the discharge of his new duties.
I impressed upon the new Chief Commissioner my wish
that his dealings with the chief rebels should be as con-
ciliatory as might he consistent with the dignity of the
Government ; and that he should treat liberally and gene-
rously all those who tendered their allegiance and gave
support to his authority. Mr. Montgomery expressed his