The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-30 00:00:00

INDIAN PROSPECTS.

ANYONE desirous of seeing a thoroughly good
illustration of the adage, "with how little
wisdom the world is governed," would do
well to note the late India-house debates. It
was not merely the mageates of the Direction
appealing piteously to that public opinion
which they had done all in their power in India
to put down ; nor was it their engaging as their
leader the president of a rabid society whose
chief panacea for every evil appears to be the
bringing Lord PALMERSTON to the gallows as a
Russian agent. It was not their attempt
to engage sympathy for a petition which in
every second paragraph contradicts itself, and
which is the most imaginative ever written :
or their winding up with a resolution which
showed them to be the most ignorant men in
the country regarding the rights and
privileges which, under the present constitu-
tion of the Indian Government, they possess.
These things, however incongruous and ridi-
culous, formed, as it were, but the minor
features of the affair The great absurdity
lay in their open abandonment of all reticence
regarding the administration of British India;
their candid confession of the gross mis-
government that had prevailed there; and their
equally plain admission of their utter igno-
rance of the causes of the revolt, the propor•
tions it had or might assume, and the means
by which it could be quelled. On these points
the Directors were all at issue with each
other ; the only one in regard to which they
were unanimous, being that the habitual in-
competence and mismanagement displayed
were not their fault, but the fault of successive
Whig Ministries, whose incapacity had re-
duced that empire to the disastrous and humi-
liating position in which it is placed.
Non nostrum eat &vitas oomponere lites, and we
assuredly shall not make the attempt. Indeed,
we have the less inclination to interfere be•
tween the parties, as the quarrel seems a
very pretty quarrel as it stands. Being our-
selves unconcerned in the matter, we shall
show our impartiality by yielding the same
credence to both. We have no doubt that
much of the Directorial abuse of the Ministers
is well founded ; and have as little that that
will be equally so, which the Ministers or their
organs will doubtless heap upon the Directors
in return. When certain people fall out, we
know that honest men come by their own ;
and so we dare say it will prove in the present
case. Our only reason for alluding to the
matter is to show the public what, by the con-
fession of the chief agents in the past Ad-
ministration of India, the character of that
Administration has really been ;—to exhibit
the total disunion of sentiment that prevails
among them as to the cause of our disasters,
the real nature of them, and the means of
cure ; and their utter unfitness in consequence
to be accepted as authorities upon any point
relating to this revolt. With this exhibition
of their ignorance (for many must be grossly
in error where all are diametrically disagreed),
we hope we shall hear no more of Directors
setting themselves up as the instructors of
the public and the Legislature regarding
matters which it must now be obvious that
they do not understand. To their respective
theories and opinions they have of course
every right to cling ; but the weight that
before attached to such opinions is irrevo-

V\

cably gone. They must henceforth be eon.
tent to rank, in this respect, no higher than
any other member of &Gaiety or of the House.
We are not sow diet this should be so,
because it will lead gtrtiy to clear the
gronad Wore us, sad Aboilstate the action
both of journalism sad debate. Every one
will now oso that it their Seeders in either
sphere do act happen to arm the same con-
olusioas as a.Mangioa era Sykes, they need
not necessarily be wrong; because, according
to the rest of the Directors, neither the
Member for Guildford nor the Member for
Aberdeen has the slightest claim to confidence
in the view he takes. In the same manner,
when other Directors or their organs come
forward to instruct the public, the public will
equally understand that they are, with all
their pretensions, as uninstructed as them-
selves. Official misleading, the one great
cause of our present dangerous position in
India, will thus be disarmed of its conse-
quences; and people, instead of relying on
the Government or the India-house for their
opinions, will leant to think for themselves.
They will not allow themselves to be imposed
upon by fallacious telegrams or by still more
fallacious deductions from the news that
comes. They will not be again deceived by
the gossip of the India-house, that has been
telling us incessantly for the last six months
that the neck of the rebellion is broken, and
that the work is done. They will learn to
attach less significance to the intelligence that
is published than to the items that leak out.
They will ask themselves, if enlistment is
going on so satisfactorily, what necessity there
can be for lowering the standard of recruits.
They will reflect that matters cannot bo pro.
greasing so very prosperously when the cry
from India on every side is for more and
more men. They will consiier whether it is
consistent with the fact of all being over that
the Government there should now be striving
to organise transport for Sir COLIN CAMPBELL
on so large a scale. And they also will he
able to judge what that Government and the
Home Administration merit, for neglecting for
so long a period a duty which the Conservative
leaders so strongly from the first enforced.
If the public will but take this tone—if,
instead of pinning their faith to Directors and
Ministers, they will but think and act for
themselves, then we have no doubt that in
spite of all our past mishaps India may yet be
saved. But it is not by cuckoo cries of all
being over that they will attain this object ;
still less by closing their ears to those who
have shown from the first that they under-
stand the subject, merely because these do not
happen to belong to the same political creed as
themselves. If India was ever a fitting sub-
ject for party action—a doctrine we have
always repudiated—the time for its being so is
certainly not now. Our existence as a nation
is dependent on our success there, and on our
speedy success too. It is not a special question
regarding either Whigs, or Conservatives, or
Radicals ; it affects us all—all, from the pea-
sant in his hut to the Monarch on her throne.
The issue at stake is a mighty one. It is
whether our finances are to be doomed to ex-
haustion and our rising youth to a drain which
they can never stand ; and whether we are to
be left in this position, prostrate and helpless,
to encounter the storms that are already
beginning to threaten our island home. Let
us not deceive ourselves as to possible even-
tualities ; let us bear in mind what in August
last the Conservative Leader in the Commons
said. The surest guarantee for lasting friend-
ships is prosperity, whether it be nations or
individuals that are concerned. Is there,
then, no danger in the continuance of a war
that sends, as fast as they can be raised and
equipped, all our disposable regiments to battle,
and die for us on the plains of Hindostan .
We will not say more—we could not say less ;
but by all that is dear to the nation we do im-
plore our legislators to take at once such
steps as can alone be effectual to bring this
Indian contest to a close.

THE NEW PEERS.

A CONSIDERABLE section of our readers v6ll
doubtless be surprised at the title of our
present article. Their astonishment is per.