The Press.
London, England, 1854-10-14 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

But the dangers to England were too imminent
at that period to admit of his resignation
being accepted by the Government, and he
still continued at his post.
To enumerate half his services, even in the
briefest manner, would occupy ten times
the space which we can afford to this passing
notice of Mr. Thornton's work. Suffice it to say
that the result of a series of brilliant military
operations undertaken by Wellington and
Lake was to fix on the Peishwah, the Rajah of
Berar, and Sindia, subsidiary treaties of a
nature similar to that which had been already
concluded with the Nizam, and which, while
giving a vast increase of revenue and territory
to the Company, placed the military and poli-
tical supremacy within the States of those
princes entirely in the Company's hands.
Lord Wellesley thus reduced these princes to
a position in which, if they dared to disturb
the peace, their territories must surely and
speedily fall into our power. If aggression ou
the part of native princes in India has ever
since been followed by speedy ruin to them,
the facility with which they have been succes-
sively subdued has been entirely owing to the
wise foundations of policy which the far-
seeing Marquis Wellesley laid. Nor must
it be omitted to be remembered that it was in
his time that the Emperor of Delhi, the recog-
nised Sovereign of the whole of India, fell into
the hands of the British, having been pre-
viously a prisoner and a puppet of the Mah-
rattas. Thus was obtained for British domi-
nation a stamp of reverence and authority
similar to that which in England constitu-
tionally attaches to the possession of the Great

Seal.
Lord Wellesley was succeeded by Lord
Cornwallis, who, old and enfeebled as he was,
ought never to have been solicited to return
to India; but his services were called for; he
was too highminded to refuse them; he obeyed
at once the order of his Sovereign ; and in
the performance of his duty this amiable and
excellent nobleman died. After him came Sir
George Barlow, an ignorant, self-sufficient,
and mischievous ruler, but a great favourite
with the directors, who strove to retain
him in his position, from which it required
a more than ordinary exercise of Minis-
terial power to oust him. Removed, however,
ho was from the Supreme Government, and
sent to Madras. There he gave cause, by his
incompetent and oppressive conduct, to a
most formidable mutiny, which narrowly es-
caped merging into a general insurrection of
all the Company's troops in that Presidency.
The directors still for a time supported him,
but he was eventually recalled. He was suc-
ceeded in the governor-generalship by Lord
Minto, a respectable and efficient Governor-
General, if not a very great one, and one by
whom many important affairs were undertaken
with success. Order was enforced in many
petty States in which it had been violated ;
the Seik chiefs east of the Sutlej were taken
under protection; and a treaty was made with
the then ruler of the Seik nation, Runjeet
Singh. It was during Lord Minto's Govern
ment that Mr. Mounstuart Elphinstone's mis-
sion to Affghanistan took place, and Sir John
Malcolm's first embassy to Persia. Under his
Government, too, piracy was effectually re-
strained in the Persian Gulf, while Java and
the Isle of France fell before the arms of expedi-
tions fitted out under his orders in India. He
showed his sagacity as regards internal reve•
nue arrangements by endeavouring to intro-
duce the principle of Lord Cornwallis's
" permanent settlement" into Madras, an en-
deavour in which he was overruled by the
Court of Directors. The system had received
the hearty approval and concurrence of Corn-
wallis, of Pitt, of Dundas, of Lot•d Grenville,
and of Wellesley, but it has ever been opposed
by the body which rules in Leadenhall-street.
In 1813 Lord Wellesley observed in the House
of Lords that
every Governor of India had acknowledged the justice
and policy of the principle of the permanent settlement,
and he was satisfied that every person qualified to be a
Governor of India must do the same. It formed the
corner-stone of the Government of India, and the eitet-
•
sion of the principle to the conquered provinces would
form a solid basis for that Government to rest upon.
Yet what such men in such terms advocated
it is left for us in 1854 to plead for, and plead
for, unless Parliament shall interpose, in vain•

SATURDAY,

Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings,
succeeded Lord Minto. He was a personal
friend of the Regent, and of course went out
with all the prestige which such personal
intimacy and the support based on it was cal-
culated to confer. His reign was one, from the
beginning to end, of brilliant triumph. It was
under his Government that Ochterlony raised
for himself an undying name in India as the
hero of the Goorkha campaign. Cutch and
Kattywar were pacified, and the disturbances
at Hyderabad put down. Various local insur-
rections occurred, but all were met with prompt
vigour. But the most useful, and perhaps the
most brilliant, service of the Governor -General
consisted in that series of splendid combinations
by which the predatory career of the Piu-
darees, or organised armies of plunderers, was
put an end to,—men who had long been the
terror of the village population throughout the
provinces of India, which they had made
periodically their prey. It was under Lord
Hastings' Administration also that the battle
of Kirkee was fought, which resulted in the
Peishwah surrendering himself as a prisoner,
and the transfer of Poona and its dependen-
cies in the Deccan to our rule. Under his
Government, too, was fought the splendid
battle of Mehidpoor, which decided the fate of
Central India; and under his instructions the
arrangements were concluded with Holkar,
Scindia, the Nagpoor Rajah, the Nizam, the
Guicowar, and the Rajahs of Jeypoor, Joud-
poor, Jessulmere, and Cutcb, which reduced
the provinces of these respective princes to the
condition of subordinate dependencies of our
empire in the East. His Government like-
wise effected the settlement of Singapore,
which, thanks to the sagacity of its first go-
vernor, Sir Stamford Raffles, has been so
immensely beneficial to British interests and
to British commerce in the Eastern Seas.
The Administration of Lord Amherst, who
succeeded the Marquis of Hastings, is chiefly
remembered for the unsatisfactory war with
Burmah which took place under it, and for the
glorious capture by Lord Combermere of
Bhurtpore. After Lord Amherst came Lord
William Bentinck, whose name will be revered
as long as the most sterling honesty, the most
unaffected virtue, and the most entire abnega-
tion of all selfish interests or purposes shall be
held in reverence by man. He was a worthy
descendant of that bosom friend of the great
King William whose excellent qualities of head
and heart the pages of Macaulay so beautifully
depict. By Bentiuck suttee was abolished,
and the foundation laid for the removal of all
restrictions on the press—acts alone enough to
crown with perpetual honour the head of any
Indian statesman. Metcalfe succeeded tem-
porarily to the helm after the resignation of
Bentinck, and established by law that freedom
for the press which Bentinck had in practice
from the time he first became Governor-Gene•
ral accorded. Metcalfe was soon succeeded by
the feeble Auckland, by whom the war
fatal w
in Affghanistan was undertaken, a war
which, after humbling our arms to the lowest
point, was destined to terminate gloriously
under the hands of the Earl of Ellenborough.
Of this nobleman's administration of India
it would be difficult to find terms too laudatory.
A friend and pupil in the art of government of
the Great Duke, he had, under the Welling-
ton Administration, performed the duties of
President of the India Board, and performed
them, not as mere routine work, under the
tutelage of the clerks of the office, but really
as they should be performed by one who is the
responsible minister for India. Having thus
had an opportunity of forming a more intimate
acquaintance with the affairs of India than per-
haps any statesman who had previously under-
taken the office of Governor-General, he was
appointed to that post on the accession of the
Conservatives to power in 1841. His views
on accepting the office were views of peace;
but his wishes were doomed to be disap-
pointed. The first news that greeted him
on his arrival in the roads of Madras was
the utter annihilation of our army at
Cabool; and on his arrival at Calcutta he
found the direst panic filling the breast of
nearly every European throughout the land.
How ably he restored our lost prestige the
deeds of Nott, and Sale, and Pollock, acting
under his direct instructions, bear witness.