The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-08 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 8, 1857.

1830, the state of Ireland, and other questions,
completely diverted the public attention.
Practical statesmen avoided the study of
India, and our Oriental empire was virtually
left to the routine of the Company. It is a
proof how little Indian abuses went home to
the hearts of the people of England in those
days, that SYDNEY SMITH, a popular satirist,
and ever in search of subjects, directed his
trenchant pen at spring guns, and let
India alone. So also with the tongue of Lord
BROUGHAM, who exerted himself more for the
Blacks than for the Hindoos. To serve the
negroes we ruined our own colonies, and
virtually increased the foreign slave trade.
Upwards of a hundred millions of Hindoos
are left to a Company, whose charter we
renewed in 1833, after a sprinkling of pam-
phlets, and a shower of speeches. Philanthropy,
►f the purest, is often the least practical of the
virtues.

But it used to be snid in those days, as wo
hear it said now—" What can you possibly do
" with such an immense problem ? You
" might as well think of reforming the
" universe." Mr. MACAULAY attempted to apply
" reason and justice" to this vast Indian
problem ; and we are afraid that his views
upon it were neither practical nor philoso-
phical, and were only specimens of sounding
rhetoric and spirkling sophistry. After allud-
ing to the number of intricate legal questions
,onnee.ted with the affairs of the Company,
Mr MACAULAY in 1833 spoke the following
remarkable words :

But the fact is, sir, that the municipal law was not made
for controversies of this description. The existence of
such a body as this gigantic corporation—this political
monster of two natures—subject in one hemisphere, sove•
reign in another—had never been contemplated by the
legislators or judges of former ages. Nothing but gro•
tesque absurdity and atrocious injustice could have been
the effect, if the claims and liabilities of such a body had
been settled according to the rules of Westminster•hall—if
the maxims of conveyanlers had been applied to the titles
by which flourishing cities and provinces are held, or the
maxims of the law•merchant to those promissory notes
which are the securities for a great national debt, raised
for the purpose of exterminating the Pindarrees, and
humbling the Burmese.

That is taking what Crown lawyers would call
a constructive view of the moral rule applica-
ble to such a case as the India Company. On
such a plea any absolutism on earth could be
defended. We are at once made to think of
the still finer rhetoric and far purer ethics of
ERSKINE in his magnificent burst of moral
passion about " defending an empire which
" Heaven never gave by means which Heaven
" never can approve."
" But then," continued Mr. MACAULAY, " the
" whole case is that of an anomaly." After
going through a long process of special plead-
ing, the brilliant casuist, thus endeavoured to
approximate to a conclusion:—

I, then, take these things as proved, that the Crown
must have a certain authority over India, that there must
he an efficient check on the authority of the Crown, and
that the HOUSi of Commons is not an efficient check.
We must, then, find some other body to prform that im-
portant office. We have such a body—the Company•
Shall we discard it ?
And lie proceeded to answer the last question
thus :

It is true that the powor of the Company is an anomaly
in politics. It is strange, very strange, that a joint-stock
society of traders--a society the shares of which are daily
passed from hand t 3 hand—a society the component parts
of which are perpetually changing—a society which, judg-
ing a priori from its constitution, we should have said
was as little fitted for imperial functions as the Merchant
Tailors' Company or the New River Company—should be
intrusted with the sovereignty of a larger population, the
disposal of a larger clear revenue, the command of a
larger army. than are under the direct management of the
Executive Government of the United Kingdom. But what
constitution can we give to ou► Indian Empire which shall
not be strange, which shall not be anomalous That empire
is itself the strangest of all political anomalies.

We have nut the last sentences iu itali s,
and in that style of reasoning any complex
institution may be called, and, in fact, is an
anomaly. The British Constitution, for ex-
ample, could be cited as an anomaly. Feeling
the difficulty
.of the ease that he was making
on the Indian theme, he then broke off into
the following passage of intensely sophistical
rhetoric :
That a handful of adventurers from an island in the
Atlantic should have subjugated a vast country divided
from the place of their birth by half the globe—a country
which, at no very distant period, was merely the subject
of fable to the nauous of Europe—a country never before

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violated by the most renowned of Western conquerors—a
country which Trojan never entered—a country lying
beyond the point where the phalanx of Alexander refused
to proceed; that we should govern a territory 10,000 miles
from us—a territory larger and more populous than
France, Spain, Italy, and Germany put together—a tern.
tority the present clear revenue of which exceeds the
present clear revenue of any State in the world, France
excepted—a territory inhabited by men differing from us
in race, colour, language, manners, murals, religion ; these
are prodigies to w!lich the world has seen nothing similar.
Reason is confounded. We interrogate the past in vain.
General rules are almost useless where the whole is one
vast exception. The Company is an anomaly ; but it is
part of a system where everything is anomaly. It Is the
strangest of all Governments; but it is designed for the
strangest of all empires.

This may he dazzling rhetoric, but it is most
deceitful logic. The human nature of the
Hindoos or of the Brahmins is not an excep-
tion to tlie laws of MAN, sunk and prostrate,
but still craving after a better lot, and aspiring
even in his degradation. The whole passage
teems with sophisms and misstatement. Mr.
DISRAELE was profoundly right when he said,
in his great speech the other night, that our
relation to our Indian subjects was like that
of WILLIAM of ORANGE, in 1688, to England.
A country cannot strictly be called " subju-
gated " when the religion of the people has
been so carefully defended from the missionary
ardour of the superior race; and the assertion
that " the Company is part of a system where
"everything is anomaly" is a self contradictory
exaggeration. Such a style of reasoning, even
if ingenious, is itself anomalous. It is having
recourse to the artifice often employed by
rhetoricians of evading a difficulty ; it is en-
deavouring to demonstrate a foregone conclu-
sion, and to carry off the argument in a cloud
of words.

But we must reserve till another day further
ernmnents on Mr. MACAULA Y'S views on the
East India Company.