The Express.
London, England, 1864-04-06 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6.

Surer of the recent news from India is as im-
portant as some matters which are engaging our
attention far more powerfully. Our first interest
in India, as in our other dependencies, must
always be that the people shall live, and not die.
We have been assured by the very highest autho-
rity on such matters that it is within our own
power that our soldiers in India shall live, and
not die ; and the same measures which may
secure the life and health of our soldiers will
save the civil population also, European
and native. The great mortality which we
have been accustomed to attribute to the climate
has been proved by ample evidence not to be
owing to climate, but to causes which operate
more disastrously in great heat than in cooler
places, but which are within our own control.
Englishmen live in good health to an European
age in tho hottest parts of India, when they dwell
on a dry soil and in a pure atmosphere, and are
well supplied with good water. For want of these
essential safeguards the natives die off as Euro-
peans do. For them, as for us, the curse of the
country is the absence of sanitary care, by which
the causes of disease abound in city and village,
in camp and barrack, along the rivers and on the
plains. The mismanagement began in ignorance,
and it has been perpetuated, since the
ignorance began to give way, by an overwhelming
sense of the magnitude of the task of reform.
The work to be done is indeed so wait that we
cannot be surprised if some persons in authority
have resorted for relief to their minds to scepti-
cism about the extent of the evil on the one hand,
and the practicability of curing it on the other.
Sir JOHN LAWRENCE is not the man to deny what
is proveable because it is disagreeable, nor to
acquiesce in the continued sacrifice of life and
health, as if it were a smaller cost and trouble
than saving both by any means at our
command. We knew, by his evidence
before the Indian Sanitary Commission,
that any power in his hands would be
diligently applied to the furtherance of
the necessary reforms ; and when he went out
as Viceroy there was no doubt in the minds of
those who knew him well that there was a fair
prospect of the removal of the curse which could
not be mitigated by any of the other great enter-
prises which are improving the fortunes of the
people of India. These expectations have been
fully answered, as far as time yet allows ; and if
he lives, we may reasonably hope that the great
mortality of India, and the peculiar liability to
disease, may become a tradition, as wonderful to
a future generation as any barbarism of our
ancestors is to us.

The smallest item in the recent news, though a
mournfully important one, is that the seat of
Government is to be removed from Calcutta. It
has long been certain that this was inevitable ;
but the necessity has been ignored as long as pos-
sible, on account of the expense, inconvenience
and trouble of the change. The delay is com-
pletely understood to have cost several lives of in-
estimable value ; and the thing has to be done at
last. It is done. The members of the Govern-
ment are to meet at Simla till it is decided what
city has the best claim to be the seat of counsel
and administration. Calcutta is to be the military
headquarters at present—the risk to so migratory
a body as the Staff being much less than to the civi-
lien Government ; and great reforms in the drainage
and cleansing of the city and neighbourhood are
going forward. Other changes, of importance in
their way, have been adopted with a view to the
repression of disease, and the benefit of the
sick. Provision has been made for summary
ritishment in certain cases, to obviate
such overcrowding of the gaols as has occasioned a
mortality of 20 per cent. ; and little as the punish-
ment of flogging is liked by the natives, they see
that it is more merciful than dooming so many
men to death by gaol disease. The military and civil
authorities together have conferred a great boon
ou the European soldiers, by giving them bedding
which admits of their getting good rest. Iron cots,
with the proper bedclothes, are ordered for the
troops, to save them from the plague of vermin,
with which they were powerless to deal while they
had wooden bedsteads, planked, as if to harbour
the pests which turn sleep into fever. In the
hospitals, the hard straw mattresses, which are fit
fur none but the most robust sleepers, are being
exchanged for more elastic beds. Again, the sick
in hospital are to be attended by European instead
of native nurses. The native ayah is to be re-
placed by the soldier's wife of good character,
selected fur her qualifications ; and the comfort of
this change to sick men so far from home may be
easily imagined.

All this, however, might, and no doubt would,
have been done without Sir Jolts LAWRENVE.
The great news that we have received as from him
that the sanitary agency by which India is to
be made a healthy country is already in course of
formation, and in fact actually organized in regard
to I.:mga], the members being admirably qualified
for the work. The Report of the Indian Sani.
tsry c-inniitsion pointed out, by the light of tho
evidenc, presented with it, that a new department
of administration was needed ; and that each of
the three Presidencies must have its own sanitary
council and body of administrators, because the con-
ditions of health vary in different parts of the
country. The soil has everywhere to be drained
and purified, in the neighbourhood of human