The Press.
London, England, 1854-10-21 00:00:00

..

THE PRESS.

MORE INDIAN CONFISCATIONS.
IF British India, under the rule of the Direc-

tors, makes slow progress in most things, it is
certainly making a very rapid advance in the
art of bp,nfiscation. Nagpore has been an-
nexed; the Nuwab ttOORSHEDABAD has been
despoiled of the privileges appertaining to his
rade; nod the Nizam has been called on to
make.concessioh‘ inconsistent with his rights
as a Sovereign. The Mandate is pretty sure
to be met by resistance, while resistance,

of course,

will furnish the excuse now want-

ing for the confiscation of his kingdom
also. But these are not all the confiscations
in embryo, or lately carried to completion, by
Lord DALHOUSIE. GOOLAB SINGH is dying :
his nephew has announced himself as a pre-
tender to the succession, in preference to his
son. We support the pretensions of the ne-
phew, and are naturally looked upon with no
favourable eye by the son, whom we avow the
intention of disinheriting. The son, in turn,
is proclaimed by the Government organ to be
disaffected to our rule ; and the virtual
annexation of Cashmere —we taking the
power and the revenues, and leaving a pension
and the shadow of sovereignty to our puppet,
the nephew—is treated almost as a fait ac-
compli.
This might be considered a pretty good list
of spoliations for one mail to bring us intelli-
gence of ; but the list is not complete. The
kingdom of Oude is rich and, at the same time,
powerless. It is encircled by our dominions,
and incapable of resistance, and on it the
Company have long cast an eye of covetous-
. ness. We are bound, to be sure, by the most
solemn treaties to defend and maintain it ;
and on the faith of those treaties the Sove-
reigns of Oude have long since abandoned
their own military establishments beyond such
as are required for the maintenance of internal
order, ceding to the Company the districts,
amounting in value to some millions sterling
annually, which had been assigned, on the
feudal principle, for• their support. It is also
true that, in one of the greatest emergencies in
which the Government of India was ever
placed, a predecessor of the present Sovereign
of Oude made a voluntary present of a mil-
lion sterling to the Company in aid of its
necessities, and shortly afterwards made a
second gift to it of another million for the
same purposes. It is true that on the out-
break of the present war with Russia the
actual Sovereign of Oude made an offer to the
Governor-General to 'raise, equip, and main-
tain at his own cost a force of twelve thousand
men, with a brigade of artillery, to be at the
entire disposal of the British during the war.
All this is true—all this is undeniable ; but
the Sovereign is rich, and, at the same time,
helpless, and by the representative of the
Company, which affects, when it suits its pur-
pose, so scrupulous a faith, the Sovereign is
doomed. Even his last noble offer• to maintain
. for us so large a number of troops cannot save
him, though the offer was made, not at a time
when Bomarsund had fallen and the victory
of Alma been gained, but when our oldest
European allies were trimming their sails,
prepared to be wafted to either side, according
as might blow Fortune's gale.
It may perhaps, under• these circumstances,
be supposed that this Prince has been guilty
of some atrocious secret crime against us to
warrant the infliction of such a fate; but there
is really nothing of the kind. His country is
very rich; that is, in truth, his only crime. His
territories, to be sure, are said to be badly go-
verned ; but that is an old cr•y, and some of the
most eminent servants of the Company have
:testified in refutation of it that they are not
nearly so badly governed as our own. His
,ministers also occasionally resort to force to
compel payment of the revenue, but ours in
Madras resort to torture ; and the very paper
that brings this news from India reports that
in the Punjaub they were about to send out,
for a precisely similar purpose, a regiment of
infantry, a large detachment of cavalry, and a
couple of guns. Indeed, to give this as a rea-
son for annexation comes with a particularly
bad grace from a GovernOr-General whose