The Press.
London, England, 1857-11-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 28, 1857.

put. The gloomy condoler, who sighs when we sigh and groans when
we groan, who assures us that he never in his life saw us looking worse,
really hopes we may get over it. and winds up with a condemnation
of the general management of the universe, bad as he is, is much more
to our taste than the Pharisee who can hardly conceal his joy that we
are fallen so low, because pain strengthens and purifies the soul,
and the enforced indolence of convalescence may give us greater oppor-
tunity of spiritual advancement. It is entirely in this professionally
pious spirit that Lord SHAFTESBURY, as might have been expected, has
dealt with the subject of our Indian disasters. His speech at Crosby-
hall on Thursday nigut, lauded in some quarters for its " spirit," is
full of ill-concealed exultation that such an opportunity should have
occurred for the dissemination in India of Christianity, by which, of
course, his Lordship simply means the narrow and sectarian views of
the Evangelical party. England has been terribly ill, he says, tortured
by the most frightful suffering, worn by anxious watching, stricken to
the very heart's core ; but we are to rejoice greatly, because now that
she is a little better, she may turn her attention to Messrs. Stiggins and
Chadband, and allow a little more liberty to the conventicle than
she has hitherto done in the days of her health and strength. "If
"we could sever the unutterable atrocities that have occurred
" from the event itself," says his Lordship, in anticipation
and excuse, " I do not hesitate to say that I myself
" should rejoice, and I call on every one connected with the British
" name to rejoice from the bottom of his soul that that fearful mutiny
" took place." There is a little confusion here, for, in the first place,
wo cannot separate the atrocities from the mutiny any more than we
can separate the ruin which follows a blast of gunpowder from the
keen flash which accompanies it ; and, in the second place, if we could,
then the mutiny fur which our jubilations are solicited could not pro-
perly be said to be in any sense a fearful one. But it is evident that
this hypothetical disunion of two things which it is impossible to dis-
unite is merely intended as a vehicle for the bitter principle which
mere carnal people find such very great difficulty in swallowing with-
out protest, the pious principle of rejoicing over our own sufferings
and those of others. Assuredly the class of professing Christians
called Evangelical entertains conceptions of the Divine nature and
attributes very difficult to be reconciled by uninspired common sense
with anything like the reverence due to so awful a subject of thought.
What FEURBACH attributes to all men is certainly true of them ; they
oreate their own Deity, and by a frightful inversion of the true order
make Him in man's own image, and not always, it is sad to think, in
the image of the wisest or the best of men. If Lord SHAFTESBURY, in.
stead of lamenting over the sad necessity of suppressing some of the
most revolting details of the atrocities practised by the mutineers, and
going, on the highest ground of course, as your especially pureminded
people always will, just a little too near the improper, had contented
himself with simply proposing a vote of thanks for the excellent
lecture only, and not for the mutiny also, he would have
set a good example to the party of which he is the
lay head. But then he would have missed making a pious
hit—he would have lost the great opportunity of putting forth
another now and original explanation of the shocking sacrifice of
India--he would have had to suppress those dear allusions to a new
species of nastiness which seem likely to become as fashionable at
Exeter-hall as the details of the Romish confessional, and even to run
the Beast and the Seven Vials rather hard in popularity. What great
Evangelical teacher could forego such temptations ? So let us, on our
side, be also thankful, and rejoice that his Lordship did not talk a vast
deal more nonsense, and that for an amateur he really, on the whole,
managed to do as little damage to true religion as could have been
expected under the circumstances.

Our African squadron has long been an eyesore to certain persons
who have no faith in abolition and a fondness for African labour. It
is asserted, and with that audacity characteristic of assertion without
fact, that, as we have failed to put down the slave trade, we may just
as well withdraw our squadron, throw open the coast, and compete
with the slave dealer by carrying free African emigrants wherever they
are wanted, but particularly to our West India possessions. Now this
is a dangerous theory to entertain. It strikes at the very root of our
African policy since 1808, and threatens at one blow to destroy the
efforts of half a century. In the first place, to say that we ha' e failed
to put down the slave trade is incorrect. We have put it down, at all
events in our own possessions; and we have induced France, Holland,
and Brazil to put it down in theirs. That we have not suppressed it
in the Spanish and American possessions is simply because those
nations prefer the degradation of' maintaining, to the honour of abolish-
ing the vile institution. But that is no proof that our efforts have
been of no avail, or that it is desirable we should relinquish the fruits
of fifty years' arduous labour because entire and complete success has
not crowned our exertions. The fact is that we have arrived at that
point in African history when it is incumbent upon us not only to
redouble our exertions, but to extend the field of operation. Hitherto
we have employed, and in a limited sense, force alone to suppress the
slave trade. This undoubtedly has been an error. The profits of
slave traders are two hundred per cent ; consequently, casual cap-
tures and pecuniary loss will not affect them much. They can afford
to lose ; but make slave trading piracy, or spoil their hunting ground
by introducing legitimate commerce, and by teaching the tribes that
the worst use to which they can put their domestic slaves is to sell
them to the foreign trader, and you will put down that foreign trade
effectually. We must not withdraw our African squadron for a moment
from the coast. Brazil is passing through an abolition crisis ; slave
labour is dying out and free labour has not yet come in ; she thirsts to
revive the slave trade, and both her coasts and those of Africa must be
narrowly watched. Meanwhile, let us try what persuasion will do in

the interior of Africa, and for this purpose we should encourage legiti-
mate trading. establish factories, and, while we strictly blockade the
coast, use every effort to open up the country to commerce and Chris-
tianity. But, above all, we must at present discountenance any free
emigration scheme, from whatever quarter it emanates. It is altogether
premature, and fraught with the greatest danger.

The sentiments of this country towards that nation of traitors
and villains who have banqueted on the blood and the shame of
English gentlemen and ladies, are too manifest, too vehement, and too
general to allow, we should hope, of any doubt or misrepresentation.
We shall therefore offer a few comments on the speeches lately de-
livered at Willis's-rooms, in the full confidence that our motives will
not be misinterpreted. In the first place, then, is it or is it not true
that the alienation of the native race has been caused by our own
religious backslidings ? On the assumption that it has, what, we would
ask, is to be our conduct for the future? And more especially during
the critical period between the cessation of armed resistance and the
complete pacification of the country ? Are we to inaugurate a more
truly Christian regime by the violation of the spirit of Christianity. or
are we to let our enemies see that even their worst atrocities
cannot drive us out of ourselves, or make us depart one inch from our
accustomed formalities. When NELSON, in the heat of the fight at
Copenhagen, wished to send a letter to the Crown Prince, some one
offered him a wafer to fasten it. " No," said he, calling for sealing-
wax, " it must not be imagined at such a moment as this we were too
" flurried to stand upon ceremony." Such ought to be the spirit in
which we deal with the mutineers. Whatever effort it may cost us to
punish them, let it be made to appear that we " take it in one stride,"
and are not so flurried or discomposed as to forget our usual noncha-
lance and rigid observance of law. Let us think rather of
what is due to ourselves than of what is due to them, and so
shall we strike the greatest terror into their hearts, and estab-
lish the surest safeguard against a recurrence of the like horrors.
We cannot quit the subject without entering a protest against
the language which is now too often indulged in on
the subject of heathens in general. We now see, it is said, what
even refined heathens are at bottom, and how worthless' is human
culture separate from Divine truth. Worthless in one sonse no doubt
it is; but we cannot allow that NANA SAHIB and the Princes of Delhi
shall be classed with SOCRATES and CICERO as "refined heathens." The
difference of race and circumstance is entirely overlooked by those
who make this assertion ; and we sincerely hope that our missionary
exertions for the future will not be conducted in any such spirit
as this.

FALL OF DELHI.
To arms ! to arms ! once more the cry rolls round our island world ;
To arms ! to arms ! once more we wave the flag so lately furled.
The temple gates were scarcely closed, the sword had yet its stain,
When, rudely shook, the glass of time ran crimson sands again.

No despot on his polar throne now throws the challenge down,
The breath of battle on his lips, the blood upon his crown ;
The sun-god dies a ruddier death, the moon sheds warmer light,
Where under mosque and minaret the turbaned traitors fight.

The stillness of our summer life a shameful whisper stirred,
The lightest-hearted hushed their laugh, and shuddered as they heard ;
And as each fearful fortnight flashed its message through the land,
Men griped and drew their sabres with a firmer, fiercer hand.

The dusky chiefs of Hindostan had blown the trump of war,
And sworn by all the gods they serve to bear our yoke no more—
To lift the Crescent o'er the Cross triumphant in the fight,
And set once more on swarthy brows the Diadem of Light.

Their thousands to our hundreds—yet our England kept her fame,
In those nine immortal onsets which are stars round Havelock's name ,
On that day of great deliverance, when the British guns at noon
Seemed to beleaguered Lucknow sweet as wedding bells in June.

Delhi fallen ! peals the triumph, floats the banner from the keep ;
Delhi fallen ! gleams the wine-cup, shoots the beacon from the steep
Women read with leaping pulses all they did that fighting week,
When through the streets together swept the Saxon and the Sikh.

Home and Salkeld at the gate—a sudden crash, a sudden glare !
Up the ramparts, on the bastions, die the tigers in their lair!
Six days shall see the dark Moglee before the Frank go down—
Six days shall Vengeance slake her thirst on his accursed town.

The Gieour treads his jewelled courts—imperial now no more—
The British cheer rings through his halls—the Ghoorka spoils h

• store;
Tho glare of hate, the steam of blood, the wild despairing yell,
Have turned his "earthly Paradise " into an earthly hell.

" Remember us—revenge us "—was written on the room
Where mothers, maidens, children lay waiting death and doom ;
And in the breach of Delhi's walls, by sword and shot and shell,
Avenged were Cawnpore's slaughter-chamber, Cawnpore's crimson well
R. f. S.