The Press.
London, England, 1856-07-19 00:00:00

674

said his Lordship emphatically, " is different."
In the oue State there must be no interfer-
ence to maintain the authority of the Pope;
but, in the other case, there should be inter-
ference to put down the authority of the King.
This was the position assumed by 1.,0rd Jens
RUSSELL throughout his entire speech ; and
it was to answer his plea in favour of inter-
ference that the argument of Mr. DISRAELI
was addressed.
The discussion has settled one principle,
so far as argument or reason can settle
it. Our diplomacy in Italy must be con-
fined to the primary object of all diplo-
macy—to maintain friendly relations with the
de facto Governments of independent States;
or, adopting a policy of Constitutional Propa-
gandism, it must be prepared to support its
representations by armed force. As it is, our
foreign policy—irritating but fruitless—only
excites jealousy against our Government, and
deprives this country of the influence which
its commercial intercourse and political exam-
ple would otherwis() Ipfallibly exercise on the
life of other States.

ITEMS OF INDIAN INTELLIGENCE.
THE Indian mail which has just come in
brings with it some items of intelligence
the India-house will find it hard to digest,
but at which the habitual readers of this
journal will be by no means surprised. A
financial crisis has occurred at Madras ; the
prosecution of all further public works
throughout India has been put an end to for
want of funds; an insurrection, likely to
prove a very troublesome one, has broken
out among the Hill tribes on the northern
frontier of Madras; the Santhals are again
in rebellion, and have been joined by the
Koles, a people whom on a former occasion it
took us a couple of years to put down. Finally,
the annexation of Oude appears to have been
as yet a mere annexation upon paper, so far, at
least, as any but the King and Court are con-
cerned. The zemindars. when called upon to
pay their rent to us, decline, it appears, to
attend .to the summons ; and the Rajah of
TOOLSEILPOOR, one of the principal of them,
invites us to come and take it from him if we
can. A brigade of infantry, with some cavalry,
and three pieces of cannon, have marched
upon his stronghold, and there, with what
men he can muster, he purposes, it is said, to
give us battle. In the meantime the rest of
the Oude zemindars are quietly waiting to see
what turn the affair takes, their intention
being to follow the lead of the Toolseepor
Rajah, if the game he has undertaken to play
should prove successful. It is admitted, in
short, that the real cause of the annexa-
tion being carried through so quietly at
the outset was that everything was yielded
by our Chief Commissioner out of which
a conflict could arise. It seems, there-
fore, that we have still the country to con-
quer if we are not prepared to make an
enormous abatement in our revenue demands.
We lbeg since predicted that the surplus of
two millions anticipated by the Times world
prove a myth, and it now appears that we
shall not even get the income obtained from
the province by the ex King without having to
pay an almost equal amount in the shape of
the military charges which coercion must ne-
cessarily involVe. To complete the picture of
this Indiatt'Arcadia, our loving subjects of
Rangoon hare been amusing themselves by
trying to set fire to our newest settlement
there, and plotting the massacre of the Euro•
pean authorities en mane. To be sure the
attempts have been happily unsuccessful ;
but they may be taken as unmistakeable
symptoms of the discontent of the people.
It is all very well for the habitual sup-
porters of the Indian Government to set down
these things as mere matters of course, or to
lay the blame of them upon the usury of
moneylenders, the provocation afforded by
petty native officials, the ignorance of the
people, and things of that sort The true
cause is to be found, as we have incessantly
pointed out, in the rapacity which the
Indian Government has exhibited of late

THE PRESS.

years, and its utter disregard of the interests
of those whose destinies have been placed by
PROVIDE? have more than
once del between the new

and the pursued in our
Indian what results ttic
change ng about. Under
the old was applied solely
to thd `le new it applie4
equally to people. Under the
old system curt was compen-
sated for men of influence
in the co. ich drew towards
us a support tn.— ire than neutra-
lised the opposition the former Sovereign
could bring to bear against us. Jaghires'
pensions and endowments of every kind were
respected by us, and the holders of them saw
a new and additional security for their
fortunes in the stability of our rule. Finally,
the Ministers who had previously carried on
the Government of the country for the
native Sovereign, continued to do so under
another title for us. We realised, in fact, the
theory that BONAPARTE had formed of govern-
ing Spain through the Spaniards, which the
hostility of the Spanish priesthood overset.
Let any one turn to the account of the
settlement of Mysore by the Duke of
WELLINGTON, then Colonel Wellesley, and ho
will gather more readily than he could from
whole columns of our explanations precisely
what we mean. Our present system is the
very opposite of all this. It is in vain to tell
the natives that it is a more enlightened one,
for no subject peopla will ever appreciate the
value of a superior enlightenment that reduces
the nobility to beggary and deprives the
people of bread. True civilisation is the child
of plenty, and not of penury ; and it is in vain
to hope to spread Christianity and education
among nations whom our Government has
condemned to a perpetual struggle for the
merest necessaries of life. A sufficiency for
the absolute wants of the body must precede
in all cases any active cultivation of the mind.
There is no reason why the Indian
Government should not abandon its present
sordid system of rule, and revert to princi-
ples more in harmony with those on which
we elsewhere govern. The result would be
infinite benefit to its subjects and equal profit
to itself. The papers, for instance, which
bring intelligence of these insurrections, in-
form us that, in two out of the three in
stances, the country where they have arisen
is less known to us than the interior of Africa,
because less explored. But who is it that
prevents every part of India from being pene-
trated by our capitalists or their agents but
the East India Company itself? How
often have Europeans offered to embark
money in the clearing of these jungles and in
the improvement of these wastes, if the Com-
pany would only give them free liberty to
make their own bargains with the inhabitants
of them, and guarantee that it would not
come in afterwards and lay claim to the land
as lord paramount—a claim it is obvious
an 'individual would be powerless to resist?
Many of the Indian jungles are filled with
elephants, and a large profit can be and
is made by the European sportsman from the
ivory alone. The wildest parts of these jungles,
too, are the most admirably adapted for coffee
plantations, and there is nothing but the
opposition of the Company to prevent large
investments of capital in these most fertile
fields for it by retired officers and others. It is
by such means that other lands have been
brought within the pale of civilisation, but
who will be found to devote his life to the
clearing of wastes with claims of universal
proprietorship like those of the Company
hanging over his head—claims by the en-
forcement of which all the wealth, and all the
labour he had invested in his estate might at
any moment be totally swept away? It is
only by respecting the rights of native princes
and proprietors, and by opening the path
freely to European capital and enterprise,
that we can ever hope to fix our footing firmly
in India, and put an ead to these constant
outbreaks. That was the opinion of one of
the greatest statesmen India ever saw, the late
Lord METCALFE, and men may be disposed to
bow to his opinion who would not defer to
our own.

SATURDAY,

LORD CLARENDON'S DIPLOMACY.

THE speech of the Secretary for Forei,oi
Affairs on last Monday in relation to Italy
exhibite4 the peculiar defects of Lord. C LA.
RRNpoN's nature. in the ;.‘ower House a con.
sidemble time watt occneied by the Prime
Minter in using 'Rimy words for the purpose
of saying nothing, as if Ile meant to indicate a
policy of doing nothing, in contrast to his
mischievous activity in former years. The
speeches of Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Mr. DIS-
RAELI were very different in tone and political
sigaificance, but both of them had breadth of
view, and exhibited thoughtfulness as to the
exigencies of the question of how Italy should
be governed? Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S speech
was in that style of Whig foreign politics
which was fashionable in days when the
" Holy Alliance " was in existence. It was
redolent of tribunitian artifices, but still it had
a measure of power in its language, and repre-
sented skilfully the vague aspirations of those
sentimental sympathisers who fancy that there
is "a great Whig party" in Italy.
The speech of Mr. DISRAELI was eminently
practical, and went directly to the root of the
question. The Member for Bucks showed
that Austria was the sovereign power in Italy,
and that if we interfered at all, our policy
should be real. We should avoid stirring up
passions to no purpose, as France and Austria
had as strong a right as ourselves to interfere,
and we should not forget the swarming secret
societies of the peninsula.
Let us now see, on the other hand, the weak
and flimsy insincerity of Lord CLARENDON'S
speech, which was the worst address on that
night in either House of Parliament "It has
" been, my Lords, my disagreeable duty for
" the last two years to meet with official re-
" serve strictures " on his foreign policy. That
is a maladroit admission, as the words " dis-
agreeable duty " suggest that there is secret
sympathy struggling against national engage-
ments. He then significantly alludes to their
Lordships' custom of " making allowan:;e for
" official reserve ;" and, in a few minutes after-
wards, admits that " there is so much that is
true " in Lord LYNDHURST's charges, while he
clenches that sentiment by announcing on the
part of Government " a great desire ' to see
Italy emerge "from the condition to which
" she has been reduced by bad Government."
Surely that is strange language from one who
talked so much about " official reserve ;" and
the Noble Earl uttered many other sentiments
which contrast strongly with the language of
the Premier elsewhere
We may be told that Lord CLARENDON, as
the Times hinted some time since, is " no
orator,"—an assertion established positively
by his speeches, and almost the only thing
ever clearly proved by them. The ambiguous
regrets about the "disagreeable duty" of
" official reserve " mark one aiming at ambi-
dexterous effects. Such a style of speaking
is neither frank and manly, nor guardedly reti-
cent. In point of fact, the speech of Lord
CLARENDON does commit his Government
awkwardly with Austria. It shows a willing-
ness to wound, if it also reveals a timidity to
strike; and when taken in connection with
the Blue-book revelations about the Foreign
Enlistment Bill it helps to confirm the charges
universally made about Lord CLARENDON S
want of sincerity. His Lordship cannot yet
have forgotten Mr. GLADSTONE'S dissection of
his elaborate method of making Mr. Caamprox
a " scapegoat;" and we sincerely trust the
Italians will have no reason for becoming
familiar with the least favorable side of his
Lordship's character.
No fault, indeed, in a statesman's character
is so great as insincerity. Unlike other de-
fects, it exercises a prejudicial influence over
colleagues and subordinates, as well as over
avowed adversaries, or lukewarm friends.
Officials serving in the same department be-
come timorous in action, if they cannot place
confidence in their chief. His fluent promises
to aid them in danger or difficulty will not be
relied upon. They will fear his reticence, and
a large deduction will be made from the vehe-
ment verbiage in which fidelity is promised.

ENCE in i►.s han is. We
3picted the difference I
e old 'system! of rule
'empire, and allowed I
must necessarily bring
system confiscation wa
Sovereign ; under the
to both Sovereign and pi
tem hostility to the Cot
nr by a liberality to all r
onquered province, whit
upport that far more