The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

THE PRE S S, DECEMBER 18, 1858.

as beings of an inferior order, and that the object
of those who came from the far West to rule over
them was simply to make merchandize of them
and of their country. It is not the intention of
the Queen's Government, and of the Noble Lord
to whom the administration of Indian affairs is
specially committed, that this state of things
should continue. India is henceforward to be
governed, like every other part of her Majesty's
dominions, for the good of the governed them.
selves. The improvement of India, the develop-
ment of its resources, the elevation of its
inhabitants to a higher rank in the moral and
intellectual scale, not the dividends upon a par-
ticular stock, are the objects to be kept in view ;
and to the attainment of those objects the united
efforts of the representatives of British power and
of the Anglo-Saxon race will have to be directed.
The " Upper Ten Thousand" Anglo-Indians
will have to bring to bear upon the more than ten
times ten millions of native Indians the moral and
intellectual ascendancy of Great Britain, and this
they can only do by the display among them of
superior qualities of head and heart.
It is not by withholding from the natives the
sympathies of our common humanity, not by
denying them the rightful claims of even-handed
justice between man and man, but by concilia-
ting their affections, and respecting their rights,
that the power of Great Britain must establish its
moral title to rule over millions of Indian sub-
jects. And to do this, it is not enough, as Lord
STANLEY 80 well pointed out, for those who are
administering India in the name of the British
Queen, to make themselves masters of the lan-
guage of India ; they must observe native habits,
study native ideas, learn to understand the native
character. Thus will they best qualify them-
selves for exercising a beneficial influence upon
the natives, and establishing between them and
their British rulers that mutual goodwill and
reciprocal attachment which is impossible where
there is neither sympathy of feeling nor identity
of interests.

These are the lessons which, as lessons to be
collected from the events of the last two years,
the Noble Lord the Secretary for India has so
well summed up, for the benefit, not of the cadets
of Addiscombe alone, but of the whole Indian
service, which will henceforth be the Queen's
service in India. To the whole community of
Anglo-Indians he has given notice that it is not
by English superciliousness soaked in Oriental
luxury and vice, but by the sterling virtues of the
English character heightened by a sense of the
deep responsibility attaching to our relations with
Oriental nations, that the British Government is
to be represented, and its administration carried
on, in India. The restraints imposed by the pro-
fession of the Christian faith and by the princi-
ples of English society are not to be shaken off,
as they have been too often by our countrymen
in India, but are to be maintained with
tenfold strictness, in the presence of a population
whose love and respect is to be won by the exhi-
bition of the English character in its most favour-
able aspect. Next to the admirable Proclamation
that heralded to the natives of India the great
political change which their relation to this
country has undergone, the new Secretary of
State, to whose hands the future of India is
intrusted, could not more happily have inaugurated
his administration than by pointing out with so
much clearness and wisdom the change that is
required in the social relations between Anglo-
Indians and natives. Let us hope that his
counsel will be appreciated by the former in its
full weight and significance, not the less so
because of the apparently incidental nature of the
occasion on which it was given, and the unas-
suming language in which it was couched.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF IRISH
CONSPIRACY.

" WHAT is this Phoenix Club like ? " is a question
asked with interest, and answered in a great
variety of ways. Some pooh-pooh it, others
" cannot tell," and many think that it is a serious
conspiracy. The fact, certainly, that a secret
society of a considerable extent, with ramifi-
cations north and south in Ireland, and con-
prising classes ofa kind far superior to the Ribbon-
men, .is no trifle, and the subject demands in-
vestigation. .We have taken some pains to

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ascertain the circumstances connected with the
Phcenix Club, and we shall endeavour to elu-
cidate some of its aspects.
The Society, we have reason to think, may be
traced to an American origin. The Irish in
America have lost much of the vogue which
they possessed in former years, and the zeal with
which the Roman Catholic clergy have worked in
the States has caused a general repulsion of the
Irish influence. The Irish in America, there-
fore, have internally concentrated their re-
sources, and they leave the course more narrow
and less diffusive than was the case with them
some time since. After the Cabbage Garden
conspiracy of 1848 had exploded in ridicule, the
Irish in America ceased to be political, and
took no interest in popular movements; but after
the " Know Nothing " Society had exercised its
power throughout the States, the Irish in
America were again swept into a reactionary
political movement, and for the last five years
there has been amongst them more or less of
political work going on, which has been care-
fully kept back from the public eye.
It must be remembered that the Irish demo-
crats in recent times have undergone extraordi-
nary changes. All faith in the Irish Platform
has ceased. The jobbery of Agitation has ruined
the trade of the Irish tribune more effectually
than the proclamations from the Castle, or the
transportation of SMITH O'BRIEN and his col-
leagues. The " patriotism " of the shop, the
spouting of heroics, and the pocketing of salary—
the invectives against the Saxons and the in-
triguing to gain the Saxon's good-will—the
noisy hypocrisy before " the people," and the
sleek flattery in the antechamber of the Minis-
ter,—all
these features have become positively
hateful to the popular mind in Ireland. The
Dublin Platform is dethroned from its power,
and the survivors of the Stock Company at Con-
ciliation-hall are in official position, certainly for
their own, if not for their country's, good. I
But though agitation is extinct, democratic
activity survives, and a large body of Irishmen
arc not ready to subside into tame acquiescence 1
with the results of the movements of recent
years. The lower range of the middle class in
Ireland still offers fine materials for political
conspirators to work with. Sectarianism and the
spirit of religious propagandism will not satisfy
• I
the minds of men who love the bustle of political
movements, and who wish to have exciting ideas
and brilliant visions of the future " splendid
phantoms" dancing before their vivid Celtic
fancies. In the political working of the Ame-
rican States there is a considerable amount of
active secresy, aided by the machinery of the
Vote by Ballot. The " Know-nothing Society "
was secret in its operations, and we cannot be
surprised that the Irish democrats should think
fit to copy American examples. The Irish in
America, also, suppose that their influence and
consideration will be greater in the States if it
be generally thought that they are not an
isolated body of emigrants, but that they have
still power and connection in the old country.
The question now arises, " At what do they aim,
and what is it that they expect to effect by this
Phcenix Club." Their first objects are to organize
and to keep up Irish democratic sentiments of a
revolutionary kind, as opposed not only to Con-
servatism, but as antagonistic to Whiggery and
to "respectable Cawtholics." Many of the new
disturbers have been bred up in the school of
O'CONNELL and of GAVAN DUFFY ; they have
something of the political artifices of the first,
and of the peculiar talent for organizing of the
last. They recollect the preparatory machinery
which O'CONNELL put in force to distinguish his
Repeal year of 1843. There had been a most
careful rehearsal in 1842 of the political drama
which was offered to the imperial public in 1843.
The Agitator and three of his colleagues each
took up a province in Ireland in 1842, drilled it
for the part it was expected to play in the
ensuing year, and accordingly the world was
amazed with the multitudinous displays of the
Monster Meetings in 1843. O'CONNELL used to
be asked, " Did he really think that Repeal would
come b 3 such means," and he used to say
nothing, but with a wink tell his cautious
friends " that something great would come from
it • " and, beyond doubt, the Agitator himself
believed that even if he failed in procuring
Repeal, he would achieve "something great" by
it. In his admirable novel of" The Cantons," Sir Alli