The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-20 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

be carried on, not from London, but on the
Moh ; and the only chance of success for such
attempts would be in our own misgovernment
of the province lately subject to the King of
Oude, but now annexed by us, and from which
so many of the Bengal Sepoys come. If our
sway is productive there of greater comfort
and happiness, all the intrigues in the uni-
verse will fail of effect; but if, on the contrary,
the annexation to our empire has brought with
it only increased extortion and oppression, we
may be sure that the tale told by the people
to their sons and brothers in our ranks will
speedily lay the foundations for an organisa-
tion against us more dangerous than any that
has yet been seen. In India, as in England,
the intriguer and toe demagogue are only
powerful where the misconduct of the Govern-
ment has itself prepared the field for them in
the shape of wide-spread social discontent.
If we are to believe the accounts we read in
the Indian papers, we must confess that there
does seem to have been gross mismanagement
by our authorities since the annexation of
Oude. Not only does the annexation itself
appear to have been accompanied by acts of
violence and spoliation wholly indefensible,
but the foundations of all property seem to
have been unsettled to an extent unheard of
under any civilised rule. If the Red Repub-
licans themselves had got possession of the
country they could not have made greater
havoc with all proprietary rights, and espe-
cially with ail proprietary rights in land.
We hear on all sides of landowners dis-
possessed, of rent free tenures arbitrarily set
aside, and of the assessment of whole districts
being altered at pleasure—in short, of the
Company's dealing in all respects with the
province as if it were not merely entitled to
the revenues of it, but as if all the property
within it had become the spoil of its bow and
spear; as if, in fact, it was an uninhabited
island newly discovered with which the dis-
coverers had a right to do what they willed.
Now, if this is really the manner in which our
officials have been dealing with Oude, there
will be no necessity for looking for the causes
of Sepoy disaffection in the intrigues of the
King; for in that case we have only to lay the
blame of it on ourselves. Whether the stories
we have heard on this subject have been ex-
aggerated or not, it is impossible for us, in the
absence of any official information, to deter-
mine ; but there is this fact staring us in the
face which goes a great way to confirm them
—namely, that the administration of the
province has been changed three times in
about as many years. The British func-
tionaries appear, so far, to have agreed as little
among themselves as they have with the land-
owners and the people of Oude. Such discord
is not the best spectacle to hold out to a
people who know by experience that disunion
is weakness, if they have not learned the
converse of the proposition, that union is
strength.

But though the late mutinies in the Bengal
army have, as we believe, no connection what-
ever with any intrigues on the part of the
Indian dispossessed princes now in London,
yet we cannot help saying that the state of
things which brings so many of these to our
shores as petitioners against injustice is one
calculated to prove in the last degree detri-
mental to the security of our rule. In the first
place, the mere fact of there being so many
complainants ready to incur all the cost and
inconvenience of a voyage from India would
be sufficient to convince any reas9nable per-
son that there must be some foundation for
the charges made so generally against our
officials there. But unhappily for the national
character this is not merely a matter of infer-
ence, for we have before us the most con-
vincing proofs of their truth. In the most
prominent of the cases that are now before
the India Board for consideration the opinions
of the most eminent lawyers in England have
been taken, and they are all in favour of the
petitioners' claims. Among those who have
given expression to this view are both the pre-
sent and no less than three of the former law
officers of the Crown. The proof of wrong rests
thus on the most unimpeachable testimony—
the testimony of the law officers of the very
Government whose subordinates have done
the acts of which the petitioners complain.

S V TURDAY,

It might, be thought that a country assuming
for itself so high a position in the scale of
civilisation as Great Britain would see but
one course open to it under such circum-
stances—namely, frankly to admit the wrong
which its own law officers declare to have been
committed, and at once afford that redress
which on a full review of the transactions they
deem equitable and right. To do justice to
those we have wronged is a duty not less bind-
ing on us collectively as a nation than it is on
us individually when the question is between
man and man. Yet what honest individual
would persist in the retention of property
which circumstances had placed in his power,
when his own legal advisers, with all their
natural partiality towards his interests, avowed
that in respect of it he had not, either in law
or equity, the merest semblance of a right?
The principle upon which, we believe, the
Government has confessedly acted, is one
which is politically erroneous as well as wholly
unjustifiable in a moral point of view. It is
the principle that in India we cannot retrace
our steps, and that whatever is done there by
the authorities must be supported whether
right or wrong. Now, it is easily capable of
demonstration that but for their knowledge
that they would be so supported the autho-
rities in India would have acted in all cases
more scrupulously and more conscientiously
than they have done ; thus much of the mis-
chief complained of would but for this prin-
ciple have never occurred at all. Irresponsibi-
lity there as well as everywhere else is the fruit-
ful parent of wrong. But leaving this point out
of the question, there can be nothing possibly
more erroneous than the idea that in India,
any more than in any other country, persist.
ence in injustice can be advantageous to the
State. It has been tried more than once
amid the despotisms that preceded us there,
and through injustice those despotisms fell.
It has been tried, too, by the despotisms of
the Continent, and what has been the result?
To fill other lands with refugees, whose whole
fortunes and whose whole faculties are devoted
to the destruction of those at whose hands
they have suffered. To do, in fact, what our
authorities in India are doing for us there as
fast as they possibly can. Nor is it only in
the intrigues of such that there is cause for
danger ; the spectacle of these countless
Indians is not lost to Europe, and is beginning
in every capital of Ithe Continent to have its
effect. Foreigners are beginning to perceive
that the seagirt isle has its unguarded point as
well as other countries—that the British
Achilles is vulnerable in his heel. They
know that England, deprived of her Indian
empire, would sink to the level of Holland in
the rank of European States, and they begin
to see the weakness of the bonds that bind it
to us, the accounts of the disaffection there,
and the materials of disorganisation that on
all sides exist. Nor are the natives who come
here on their part less observant. They see
our great ingenuity in arts and commerce, to
be sure, but they see also on how narrow a
basis our military power rests—the only part of
our power that touches them. They see us
obliged to enlist foreigners for our European
wars, and they perceive at once that but for
the aid of their fellow-natives, the Sepoys, we
should be unable for an hour to hold Hindos.
tan. In short, by our injustice we are not
only making countless enemies, but we aro
furnishing them with the knowledge requisite
to give their hostility effect. If this is wisdom
our Ministers are the wisest of men, but, be-
lieving it to be the extreme of folly, we im-
plore them, in heaven's name, to retrace their
steps. We pray them, with the aid of the
Crown lawyers, to settle the cases of these
people according to the principles of equity
and good conscience, and let them return, as
they are only too desirous of doing, to their
Indian homes.

JUNE 20, 1857.

of what Lord DERBY actually did often taunt
the Noble Lord with his reduction of the
number of Irish bishoprics; but the Noble
Lord steadily refused to allow the State to
confiscate any portion whatever of the Church
property, which he re distributed in a more
Judicious manner. His complete acquaintance
with every branch of this great subject
was evidenced in the Noble Lord's most mas-
terly speech on Thursday night. His Lordship
clearly explained all that had been done by
the Legislature in 1833, and in subsequent
years ; and he showed also how only two years
since the present Prime Minister held upon
" Ministers' Money " the identical views
now advocated by himself. How the
scheme of the Government invades the
right of property was completely proved
by the Noble Lord. He drew an analogy
between the proposed action of this reckless
measure and the hypothetical case of buying a
house subject to the payment of 501. per annum
to a Jewish Synagogue. " I should like to
know," said Lord DERBY in his racy and vi-
gorous manner, " what would be said of me,
" if from conscientious motives I refused to pay
" money for such a purpose ?" This was
putting exactly the case of the Cork Corpora.
tion in its relation to " Ministers' Money ;"
and Lord DERBY then answered the question
thus :
A wise man would call me a fool, and an honest man
would call me a rogue, and the law would say that being
liable, I must put my conscientious scruples in my pocket,
and take my money out of my pocket and pay the amount.
This plain method of putting the case was
loudly cheered. and that it told upon the
portion of the House present at the
debate is seen in the fact that it
was only by the use of proxies, which
were anxiously sought for, that Ministers were
able to gain a majority of five, while of the
Peers " present " a clear majority of six (71 to
65) sided with Lori DERBY. The appeal made
by Lord DERBY to Lord Chancellor BRADY'S
evidence on this question ought to settle the
question for any one who has yet to make up
his mind upon it. The whole bill is nothing
better than a " pro-Catholic " job, perpetrated
by the ever-yielding Premier and his
colleagues, in order to please their Irish
friends who helped in the scheme for giving
the Chinese a specimen of " Liberal' rule.
We trust that on a third reading the House of
Lords will throw out this dangerous measure,
or, at all events, introduce into it such provi-
sions as will effectually guard against its being
drawn into a precedent. The sum at stake is
small, but the principle at issue is of vast im-
portance.

In his attempt to connect the argument of
Lord DERBY with the abolition of church rates,
Lord HARROWBY seems to have committed an
extraordinary blunder. If, said he, only im-
ports which are fixed in amount are to be
regarded as inviolable, then church rates are
at once condemned, for their amount is fluc-
tuating. Now, one would have thought it was
obvious at a glance that the essential distinc-
tion drawn by Lord DERBY between church
cess and ministers' money was that the latter
was a fixed charge on property, subject to
which it was bought, sold, and inherited ;
while the other was levied only as occasion
required rather in the shape of an income tax.
Thus it turns out to be ministers' money and
church rates which stand upon the same foot-
ing, and not church rates and church cess, as
Lord HARROWBY thoughtlessly argued.
The growth of Protestantism in Ireland was
finely touched upon by the Bishop of KILMORE,
as affording an additional reason why at this
critical moment not even a show of discou-
ragement should be inflicted on the Irish
Church