The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-23 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JANUARY 23, 1858.

separation, may lead to most objectionable
consequences, and is a real blot in the act :
A man may now recover damages for his wife's infidelity
without seeking for a divorce, but may continue to live
with her upon the damages recovered from her paramour,
which may be settled upon her or upon the children
Even when a divorce is obtained, the damages may be
settled upon the children of the marriage, and the father
may live with his children, whilst they are maintained
and educated with the price of their mother's dishonour !
It may well be doubted whether this is an improvement of
the old law, and whether we have freed ourselves from the

reproach of foreign nations—that we consider a money
payment as the proper consolation to a husband whose
wife has proved unfaithful to him.

The work is full of useful cautions, but no-
thing comes " home to our business and
bosoms" like a bit of personal experience.
All great lawyers have a horror of the arte
perire sad, and personally keep away from their
craft as much as they can. But a flock of
geese have before now brought an ex-Chan-
cellor into hot water, and caused him instead
of themselves to undergo the process of
" roasting "; and stoves and flues might very
naturally have had a similar result :--

A word of advice about your Fire Insurance. Very few
policies against fire arc so framed as to render the company
legally liable. Generally the property is inaccurately de-
scribed with reference to the conditions under which you
insure. They are framed by the company, who probably
are not unwilling to have a legal defence against any claim,
as they intend to pay what they deem a just claim, with-
out taking advantage of any technical objection, and to
make use of their defence only against what they may
believe to be a fraud, although they may not be able to
prove it. But do not rely upon the moral feelings of the
directors. Ascertain that your house falls strictly within
the conditions. Even having the surveyor of the company
to look over your house before the insurance, will not save
yon, unless your policy is correct. To illustrate this, I
will tell you what happened to myself. I have two houses
in different parts of the country, both of which open from
a drawing-room by a glass-door into a conservatory. The
one 1 had insured, for a good many years, from the time I
built it ; the other I had insured, for a few years, from the
time I bought it, in the same office, when a partial fire
broke out in the latter, and I was then told by the office—
s highly respectable one—that my policy was void, as the
opening to the conservatory rendered it hazardous, and if
so, of course both policies had been void from their com-
mencement. I was prepared to try the question, and ulti-
mately the objection was withdrawn, and my loss was paid
for. Upon renewing my policy, with some alterations, I
actually had some difficulty with the clerk of the company
to induce, or rather to forge him, to add to the description
the fact, that the drawing-rooms opened through glass-
doors into conservatories. In treating, at a later period,
for a policy with another company, I required them to send
their surveyor to look at the house and the stoves ; and
everything to which objection could be taken were snown
to him. The company then prepared the policy, and made
it subject to the report made to them by their surveyor,
referring to it by date. This report I never saw, and the
objectionable stoves, &c., were not noticed. Of course I
had the reference to the report struck out, and the policy
made correct, but not without some prrsonal trouble. I
state these circumstances, to show you how careful you
should be. I advise you to look at once at your existing
policy. If you have ad led an Arnot's stove or made any
other important change in your mode of heating your
house since your policy, or you had at the time of your
policy any peculiar stove, Arc., not noticed in the policy,
you should call upon the company to admit the validity of
your policy, by an endorsement on it.

Lord St. Leonards has performed an ac-
ceptable service in re editing this book, and
we have no doubt it will enjoy, as it doserves,
an extensive ciroulation.

77:e Mutiny of the Bengal Army. An Historical
Narrative. By One who has Served uuder
Sir Charles Napier. Part 11. London :
Bosworth and Harrison.
THE second part of what is popularly known
as the " Red Pamphlet" will, we have no
doubt, be eagerly received by the public.
After a lengthened interval from the
publication of the previous portion of the
narrative, " One who has Served under Sir
" Charles Napier " has presented us with the
second, but not concluding, portion of his able
narrative. The first part, it will be remem-
bered, brought down the detail to the outbreak
at Delhi; the present portion carries us to the
capture of the great city of the Mogul. The
main object of the writer is to point out in
the course of his narrative some of the lead-
ing results of the system pursued by the
Government at Calcutta—a Government whose
measures, always tardy, were often ill advised
—in dealing with the unparalleled disasters
with which India has been overwhelmed. The
Indian events of the last few months are so
fresh in the minds of our readers that we
have no need to follow the narrative step by

89

step, and exhibit the rise and progress of that
terrible insurrection, which was certainly mis-
managed if it were not misunderstood. We
will rather seek to extract the opinions of the
author upon some points of particular interest.
We all remember how Lord Canning and the
Supreme Council congratulated themselve
upon the facility and success with which Sir
Henry Lawrence had suppressed the insur-
rection in Onde. Neither Lord Canning nor
his Council believed in the necessity for any
further precautionary measures. They re-
garded the revolt as at an end :

Mr. Grant., indeed, who was considered to carry the
brains of the Council, in a minute which he recorded on
that date. expressed his marked approval of the dilatory
policy which had been pursued with reference to the 31th
Native Infantry, and hoped that the Government would
not depart from it on this or on any future occasion. He,
therefore, advised that the punishment of the 7th Oude
Infantry should neither be prompt nor sudden, and that it
should be prepared by all those tedious forms under
shelter of which the guilty parties in the 34th Native
nfantry escaped punishment. Both he and Mr. Doris
were evidently desirous to make the European officers the
scapegoats : the latter recorded his opinion that no regi-
ment which was properly commanded would mutiny, and
both expressed a desire that before punishment should be
meted out to those men who had mutinied with arms in
their hands, a strict and searching investigation should be
made into the conduct of the European officers, and a
proportionate punishment awarded to them—to those very
men who were at the time risking their lives and the lives
of their wives and children by remaining at their solitary
posts, and by endeavouring to preserve order and disci-
pline—many of whom, not long after, paid for their zeal
and confidence in their men by a lingering and cruel death.
The Governor-General himself was apparently quite
satisfied with the aspect of affairs ; on the 12th of May,
whilst our countrywomen at Delhi were being massacred,
he recorded his belief that the measures taken with
reference to the mutineers had not been " too mild," and
he was evidently of opinion that the spark of mutiny,
though it might glow for a time, was fast dying out.
It was in consequence of these feelings that he and his
Council at this period acted a part which very nearly, for
a time, lost to England the possession of India—to which
many of the horrors which were afterwards perpetrated
may be traced.
So great was Lord Canning's confidence in the
complete suppression of all mutinous resolves
that on the Bth May he resolved to send back
the 84th Regiment from Calcutta to Rangoon,
thus leaving Calcutta to be garrisoned by one
British regiment ; and was only prevented
from doing so by the arrival of the intelligence
of the massacres at Merut and Delhi. Then,
indeed, Lord Canning acted with some degree
of promptitude. He telegraphed at once to Bom-
bay for the Persian expedition ; but even the
credit claimed on this occasion by Lord Gran-
ville so exclusively for Lord Canning does not
appear to be supported by fact :
it may fairly be presumed that to Sir Henry Lawrence
belongs the credit of this measure ; his critical eye had
discerned the coming storm, and on the 16th he tele-
graphed to Lord Canning to send for troops from Chins,
Ceylon, and elsewhere, wherever they might be available.
. . . It has been the fashion to bestow all the credit of
this measure upon Lord Canning, but the Blue-book
abounds with proofs that it is a credit which must bs
shared with many others ; not only Sir Henry Lawrence,
but his brother Sir John, General Anson, Sir P. Grant,
and Mr. Colvin made it the aufject of their earliest mes-
sages. It was, in fact, an idea which must have struck
every one ; to have neglected it, would have shown the
grossest incompetency.
As the revolt spread, and darker reports from
Allyghur, Mynpoorie, Etawah, Agra, and
Lucknow reached Calcutta, anml our lament-
able weakness of European force was ex-
posed, Lord Canning became embarrassed,
and actually telegraphed to General Anson
to divide his forces as much as possible—" to
" detach his European Infantry and Cavalry
"to the southward, and to undertake
" the seige of Delhi with his Artillery."
The result of such a movement would have
been that the rebels would have captured our
siege-train, Delhi in all probability would have
been held to this day, and Sir Colin Campbell
would now have been defending Calcutta.
But in the face of disasters which were daily
occurring, Lord Canning and his Council
appear to have preserved their original anti-
pathy to " take time by the firelock.' They
made not the slightest preparation for the
transport of the expected troops. They
declined, on the proposition of Havelock and
Beatson, to raise a regiment of volunteer
cavalry. They refused the enrollment of a
European militia, and paralysed all the future
operations of the war; but they had certain
proof of the complicity of the King of Oude,
and of the mutinous disposition of the sepoys

r9O

at Barrackpc re, and they determined to do
something. They arrested the King of Oude,
and at one sitting in Council gagged the
English press.
This was, perhaps, the only effective mea-
sure that the Government at Calcutta took at
this period of the insurrection. They gagged
the press, did not raise volunteer corps, and
ordered Allahabad, the then most important
military post in our possession, to remain in
the charge of a regiment of Native Infantry,
which mutinied, as a matter of course, and,
sternly checking the advance of reinforcements
to the aid of Wheeler and of Lawrence, brought
about those two great incidents of the insur-
rection, the massacre of Cawnpore and the
defence of Lucknow :
From that day to the present all Oude has been up in
arms against ns. Not only the regular troops whom we
poured into that province, but the sixty thousand men who
formed the army of the ex-King, the zemindars with their
retainers, the two hundred and fifty forts, most of them
heavily armed with guns, hide been working against us.
Here and there a petty rajah has been found ready to spare
the lives of our fugitives, and even in his heart wishing us
success ; but these exceptions have been very rare. The
great body of the landowners, the mass of the people, have
declared against us : they have balanced the rule of the
Company and the sovereignty of their own kings, and have
pronounced almost unanimously in fsvour of the latter.
The very pensioners who had served in the ranks of our
army, and who now derive their support solely from our
bounty, have declared definitively against us; not only have
they to a man joined in the insurrection, but it is a well
authenticated fact that they have been foremost in the com-
mission of atrocities.

Such is the political aspect of the question. In a military
point of view, Oude has been the great stumbling•block in
our course, the ulcer that has swallowed up and paralysed
all our resources. Granting that we should have had the
rebellion if Oule had not been annexed, there would still
have been one European regiment available for Cawnpore.
There would have been no occasion to keep all our rein•
forcements between that place and Calcutta, or to pour
them into Oude in long•fruitless attempts to succour our
oountrymen. In all probability Oude would have remained
to us what it was in the Mahratta, Sikh, and Burman wars,
not only a harmless but a friendly country. Our troops
would have been able to reinforce the army before Delhi
and to reconquer Rohilcund. As it is, they have been re-
duced by exposure, by disease, and by the sword, in the
endeavour to rescue from the clutches of the enemy those
of our countrymen who had been sent, in defiance of the
most solemn treaties, to usurp the place and dignity of the
native sovereigns of the country.

The assertion that the Government of Cal-
cutta f.rst refused and then accepted aid from
Jung Bahadoor is confirmed by the author of
this pamphlet. The assistance of the Minister
of Nepaul was contemptuously rejected one
week, and humbly asked for the next.
The inactivity displayed at Meerut. in the ear-
lier stage of the mutiny appears to have gene-
rally characterised the proceedings of the gene-
ral there in command. In Rohilcund we had
three military stations at the moment of the
outbreak—Bareilly, Mooradabad, and Shahji-
banpore. At each the native troops revolted
by the beginning of June, and, uniting their
forces, having plundered all the local treasu-
ries, and accumulated au enormous quantity of
spoil, set out for Delhi. The conduct of the
general then in command at Meerut demands
explanation :

They were about 5,000 strong, had with them
400,0 KU. in silver, laden on country carts : they crossed
the Ganges within thirty miles of Meerut. We had in that
station 1,000 Europeans doing nothing beyond guarding
an intrenchtnent; and yet the general commanding did not
attempt in the slightest degree to interfere with their pas-
sage. They even lay at Uurmuckteser for some days,
whilst they sent over their baggage ; and, to keep our men
off, sent the general taunting messages that they were
about to attack him, a threat which sufficed to make him
keep his Europeans within the intrenchment. How the
spirits of the gallant young officers, panting to revenge
their countrymen, chafed at this inaction, may be imagined.
More than one implored the general to permit them to go
with even 500 men to attack the rebels as they were cross-
ing; but he r ould not hear it. Meerut, he said, was too
important a station to be left undefended. Most true !
But there are some cases in which a bold attack is the best
defence, and this was one of them. The defeat of the
Rohilcund rebels at Gurmuckteser Ghit would have struck

terror into the surrounding district, and would have had
even a material effect on the siege of Delhi.
But it was not to be. This force, laden with the plunder
of Rohilcund, marched within thirty miles of 1,000 Euro-
peans, crossed the broadest river in India in boats, tra-
versed the cmntry, exposing their left flank to our inactive
forces, and finally reached Delhi on the Ist of July—a very
critical period for the garrison of that city—without a shot
having been fired at them in anger.
In our necessarily hasty and imperfect
notice of the present narrative we can
only say that it includes the proceed-
ings generally throughout India, with the ex-
ception of those in the Punjaub, which are