The Press.
London, England, 1857-09-19 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 19,107.

judge and magistrate of a place so pillaged, and by such
means reduced to an utter mass of mural and ph)sieal
degradation ; and Sir Charles Napier has proved that my
experience was not, as it could not be, singular, by de-
claring that the Governor-General of India did not know
that his own camp was at once a scene and a cause of
curses on our very name.
Who, then, shall wonder at an outbreak which practical
men declared imminent unless India were better governed'?
When we hear of outbreaks in native States (an opportu
nity which we always seize to appropriate them to our-
selves), we invariably impute them to tyranny. If the
people of a country throw off one Government, it is with
the hope of obtaining a better; and I can take upon my-
self to say that a worse they never can have than that
which has brought matters to this pass with us.
In no Government that ought to be permitted to exist,
or that can possibly exist for any length of time securely,
can outrages and judicial robberies, such as I have wit-
nessed, be perpetrated and upheld. Yet the British Par-
liament and the British public have suffered such a
Government to flourish unquestioned. Now, however,
that the spectacle afforded by that country has at last
turned the eyes of the world towards Indian matters, the
truth may perhaps leak out, in spite of the Court of
Directors and the Board of Control, who have been so
long playing into one another's hands, and been corrupt-
ing everybody. At all events I will lend my assistance to
the promulgation of the truth, and only regret that I cannot
(to quote the language used of me in the London Mail of
January 9, INS-t) reveal, under circumstances which
would insure a wide publicity and extensive perusal of my
evidence, those monstrous perversions of justice to which
I have been for years endeavouring to direct the public
attention.

Mr. Luard then proceeds to make a number
of statements, as he avers, on his own know-
ledge, regarding the iniquities, and misgovern.
ment, and corruption that prevail. He winds
up these by telling us that one of his own
assistants, a Bombay civilian, caused the death
of a native by beating him and having urine
put down his throat by the lowest caste that.
could be procured, having previously with his
own hands dragged him to prison by a rope
tied about his heels, beating him with a bridle
on the hack all the way. And for doing this he
adds that the civilian escaped scot-free. He
says that a commander-in-chief in India once
ordered his aide-de-camp to shoot a trooper of
the Bengal cavalry, and that the trooper was
shot accordingly and the case hushed up. He
affirms that he has known respectable native
officers tied up and Hogged before the whole
regiment, and then dismissed, without any
sort of inquiry ; and that, though they com-
plained, the commanding officer was related
to Lord Dalhousie, and that of course there
was no redress.

Such are some of the charges brought by
Mr. Luard against our rule, and he winds up
his pamphlet as follows :
- -

. -
Colonel Sykes says an inquiry into the causes of this
mutiny must take place. It ought; but no inquiry ever
has taken place yet into Indian crimes, simply because
they are too disgraceful and too numerous ; but the affairs
of India have now become history. Its people have
thrown off our rule, and this they never would have done
had we governed them better than their native princea ;
nor would anything have caused the Hindoos and
Mahomedans to combine saving a great common cause ;
and no other cause yet assigned wculd affect the preju-
dices of both. This outbreak has been foreseen for years.
Sir Charles Napier foretold it ; so did the tree press ; so
did the natives themselves ; so did I ; so did every honest,
practical man who had courage to speak his real
opinions. The annexation of Gude was the last inciting
cause of it by bringing so large a number of Bengal
sepoys under our rule; but the origin of the revolt is to
he found entire in these pages, and need not be sought fur
elsewhere.
And now, reconstructors of the Indian empire, stiy what
shall be done with this people of whom rightly or wrongly
you have aasutned the government and all its fearful
responsibilities towards God and min? Shall the sun
which never sets on our dominions only shine on this
portion of them to display a scene of suffering, degradation,
and brutality on the one hand, and crime, corruption, and
rapacity on the other, which the world has rarely seen
equalled and—in its atrocious details of misery—never
surpassed ? Shall we who proudly consider ourselves the
salt of the earth ( how aptly do the words apply, if the salt
have lost its savour wherewithal shall it be savoured ), the
champions of Christianity, the promoters of civilisation,
shall we first commit by the hands of our Government and
then wilfully ignore, and by ignoring sanction, the bribery,
corruption, falsehood, murder, and tyranny of which these
pages contain an outline too scanty to convey the faintest
idea of the fearful reality ? Whatever the late atrocities
may have proved the natives of India to he, we have
undertaken to rule them—sad we cannot escape the
responsibilities that rule imposes on us. The day of
reckoning must come, if it be not already at the doors.
Our armies may reconquer Indian ground, but Indian
hearts and the great object of our mission to India are
lust fur ever. That object was to benefit our fellow.
creatures, advance the interests of civilisation, and aid in
the propagation of Christianity. We have disgraced
God's holy name in a heathen land ; we have deliberately
made ourselves a curse to those whom it was our duty to
have protected and defended; we have driven them to