The Press.
London, England, 1856-01-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

neither of extortions nor confiscations, but
simply the unappropriated revenues of the va-
cant thrones.
Such was the ql4 Wory regarding India ;
such the policy by *lnch that empire was
won; the 'principles by which the posses-
sion o 0 has Often sq successfully maintained.
The new theory IS as ppposed to it as possible,
and up less tl4e pub' voice in England bq
Taise4 go strongly it as to compel the
India Government" 'retrace its steps, there
can be no doubt t, -0 the result will be a
struggle between the natives of India and our-
selves far more deep, more wide-spread, and
more determined, than has ever so fur
threatened our existence. Already we see
unmistakeable signs of the coming storm.
May Heaven grant us a fitter pilot than we
have now at the helm to meet it ! _

The new theory is that our whole conces
sions to the natives in the shape of principali-
ties, feifs, estates, and pensions, are an entire
mistake. We have conquered the country,
and ought to have all the revenues intact for
ourselves. To give twenty-five thousand a
year to a govermr-general, with fifty thousand
a year more for house and travelling expenses,
is a wise liberality, but it is the extreme of
foolish goodnaturedness to allow anything,
even his hereditary property, to a native noble
or a native prince. It is true that in most
cases these hold a written, and in all have a
moral, contract with us, that whatever might
have been done in the outset, the rights which
they have so long enjoyed ought to be now
untouched. But the new theorists say that a
contract wrong in principle from the beginning
can never be binding afterwards, and that all
contracts are wrong in principle which have in
view the alienation to individuals of any part
of the lands or revenues of the State. It is in
vain that the natives plead that it was only by
such concessions in the days of our weakness
that we have acquired our present strength.
Such arguments are deemed an impertinence
by the descendants of men whose abjectness
outdid even Oriental subserviency when they
were endeavouring to obtain the right to es-
tablish factories from the then great Mogul.
Proceeding, then, on this plan, the natives are
publicly informed that native rule, native pro
petty- in land, native pensions guaranteed on
the revenue, and, in fact, vested rights of all
kinds, are as soon as possible to cease. To
Hindoo princes the right of adoption, a right
by many Indian lawyers held to be indefeasi-
ble, is flatly denied. If the heir yields, the
country is annexed ; if he opposes us, we recur
to the argument of the sword. To Mahome-
tans we deny similarly the right of collaterals
to succeed, or, in other words, refuse to them
a principle of inheritance sanctioned by their
own laws and customs, and according to
which estates and property are daily inherited
among ourselves. Pensions guaranteed in the
mass iu perpetuity to families in lieu of lands
we now cut into detail, and confiscate the
share of each member of the family on the
death of the existing holder. Commissions
are set at work to investigate titles, and as the
public records of few of the provinces of India
are entire, many of them having in our wars
been burnt by ourselves, it is not very easy for
any landowner to make out such a title as a
commissioner anxious to confiscate will be
pleased to accept. Long possession, our
guarantee as given in our proclamations at
the conquest of the district or upon its annexa-
tion, go for nothing, and men are daily turned
out of their estates as beggars after an unin-
terrupted holding under our own rule—setting
aside their previous possession—for a period of
above forty years. Lesser tenures are even
more summarily dealt with, under the plea
that the only landlord in India, and therefore
the only pc wer that can grant a lease, is the
Crown. The result of all this is that all outlay
on land is put an end to, and estates, like
estates in Chancery, are on every side allowed
to go to rack and ruin. The landlords are
beggared, but the Company is in no degree
bettered by the act, for when it gets possession
the more respectable tenants have departed,
and there remain none but pauper squatters,
without cattle or capital, to stock the land.
The holders of mortgages on such lands are
on our entry told that their mortgages are
waste paper, and thus the moneyed interest is

SATURDAY,

involved in one common ruin with the pro-
prietors of the land.
The public may, perhaps, think our state-
meat of these mattor4 exaggerated, but a Par-
liamentary inquiry would show that our
t
assertion*, as in ref ect tit the torture case,
are far within, in* d 91 being over, the
truth. I* it wonilerb , tllO, that we should
feel anxlinis for the Stay* of India when, in
addition tq what may lio done by external
eneniks, we have the 4mbers of universal con-
flagration thus smouldering on every side be-
neath our feet? There is but one way to save
the empire, and that is to reverse this shame-
less policy, to rule India again on principles
of truth and equity, and turn our hundred and
fifty millions of subject enemies into so many
subject friends. Unite their interests with
ours, and we may defy the world, if arrayed in
arms against us. But the plan of grasping
everything too often ends in having nothing;
over-rapacity defeats itself everywhere, and in
no part of the world is it more likely to do so
than amid the once luxurious, but now
beggared, nobles and warriors of Hindoostan.

MR. COBDEN'S FUNERAL ORATION.
As a damned poet always appeals to posterity,
BO Mr. COBDEN, sinking as a politician, pre-
tends to the office of a prophet. When a
talkative tribune turns pamphleteer, we may be
sure that the platform is breaking under his
feet. A demagogue without dupes, a de-
claimer without an applauding audience, are
as ridiculous in their failures as they would be
mischievous in their success. Mr. COBDEN'S
career exemplifies both these characters ; he
has ceased to be a popular leader, and, from a
railer against the aristocracy, the Member for
the West Riding has now turned into a cynical
commentator on the people of England. He
has appeared in public this week with the help
of Mr. RIDGWAY. Fifty closely-printed pages
of letterpress, containing a farrago of tiresome
tautology and strange contradictions, are a
serious infliction on those who are compelled
by duty to peruse them. The pamphlet in
argument is an outrage on common sense; in
its unpatriotic tone it is an affront to the
national spirit ; in its practical purpose it is a
" Hurrah" for Russia. Its excessive stupidity
will save it from doing serious mischief. In-
fidel writers, without the wit of VOLTAIRE or
the eloquence of ROUSSEAU, are rarely infec-
tious. Their sophisms, like the fallacies of
Mr. COBDEN, being neither decked in the lan-
guage of genius, nor animated with brilliant
vivacity, soon shrivel, and are swept away like
the last autumnal leaves.

And in his politics Mr. COBDEN might be
looked on as a sort of political infidel. He has
no loving veneration for the glory of his native
land. He does not repeat the ritual of her
time-honoured patriots ; his heart does not
swell with the pealing anthems heard in every
household ; he does not believe in the spirit
of England, and prefers to bow in an abject
money-worship, far more debasing than the
most perverted desire of martial glory ever can
become. Yet we rejoice that this production
has appeared. It effectively silences those
rumourmongers who for sordid objects circu-
lated malignant reports that some members of
the Conservative party sympathised with Mr,
COBDEN. There is not, we can undertake to
say, a solitary Conservative in the Queen's
empire who would give the faintest approval to
these views of Mr. COBDEN on the war. There
is a broad and palpable difference between
the sentiments of statesmanlike lovers of the
peace of Europe founded on a recognised
balance of power, and the fanatical cant of a
peace-at-any-price faction. Our natural feel-
ings revolt while reading this pamphlet of
" What Next, and Next ?" Mr. COBDEN forgets
that, to a great extent, the present con-
test is a war which no man in Europe did
more to promote than himself. To a great
extent the war is his own. His absurd peace
theories sowed mischievous delusions here,
and fostered wild presumption at St. Peters-
burg. NICHOL&B of all the Russian accepted
u true prophecies the oracular assertions of

JANUARY 12, 1856.

RICHARD of the West Riding. The house of
liomanoff endorsed the bills drawn on credulity
by the eminent Manchester firm of Cobden
and Co. The Czar mistook the tribune for
a represemative man. It is not the first tune
that foreign Powers have misinterpreted the
harangues of itinerent speakers for true reve-
lations of English opinion. Because Mr.
COBDEN would not fight, the Czar conjec-
tured that the countrymen of CHATHAM and
the compatriots of NELSON had become the
serfs of the King of Calico, that they could be
bound in gyves of bobbin, and that balls of
cotton would be the only ammunition that
they would pile in store. The Czar chuckled
when he read of Mr COBDEN'S prophecy that
"he could crumple up Russia," and the Czar
was credulous of Mr. COBDEN'S vogue in
England. Too late NICHOLAS' awoke from his
fatal delusion His heart broke as the Peace
Society melted into air. Mr. COBDEN may at
least plume himself on having destroyed an
Emperor
The pamphlet would vainly attempt to
defend his inconsistency. He says (p. 26)
that when he talked of crumpling up, he
referred only to the case of Russia acting
aggressively against Europe. He was not at
all, forsooth, referring to the case of a defen-
sive war on the part of Russia.
Now, there are three reasons why this plea
should not be received from Mr. COBDEN.
firstly, it is most suspicious that the excuse
is made so late ; secondly, Mr. COBDEN has
no right to decide that the war is a defensive
one on the part of Russia—all Europe knows
that it was an aggressive one ; thirdly, if he
knew any mode of crumpling up Russia, his
knowledge ought to be available without any
regard to the origin of the war.
It is a puerile artifice for Mr. COBDEN to pre-
tend that the present war is not aggressive on
the part of Russia. All parties (Mr. COBDEN
has no followers) are agreed, that originally
the Czar was clearly and positively aggressive.
Fiance and England thought so; Lord ABER-
DEEN vacillated ; and Mr. COBDEN'S silly
themes fortified the credulity of our demo-
cracy as to the ease with which Russia could
be conquered, and increased the temerity of
the councils in the Kremlin on the non-
pugnacity of England. There may be, as
there has been, grave and statesmanlike dif-
ferences as to what should be the final point
aimed at in the war, and as to when proposi-
tions for peace should be deliberately enter-
tained. But Mr. COBDEN'S assertion that the
waiis not aggressive on the part of Russia is
obviously a poor artifice male to give him a
plea for sheltering himself from the recoil of
His former asseveration—lightly made by his
tribunitian tongue, but long to be remembered
by the popular memory of England.
The presumptuous confidence of Mr. Cos
DEN is really downright indecorous Is it for
hint to talk (p. 5) of " the bunglers of our day"?
Mr. COBDEN talks, thinks, speaks, and writes
like a transplanted American, with whom the
climate of English opinion does not agree. His
concluding proposal, that there should he a
general reduction of moral establishments at
the end of the war, " an approximate, as far as
, possible, to the naval standard of the United
" States," is the last proposal of his pam-
phlet, and ought also register finis to his
career.

To conclude, we cannot forget that Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, while he still retained the
leadership of the Whigs, referred in thttering
terms to Mr. CouDEN's former pamphlet of
" 1793 and 1853," in which the fallacies of the
old Whig Opposition were reproduced. We
should like to know whether in certain Minis-
terial circles hints were dropped that a pam-
phlet like " What Next .2" might be a most season-
able new year's gift to statesmen afraid to ventilate
their private opinions on the war.

OUR FRIENDS IN THE CRIMEA.
THE beginning of a new year during a war se-
riously differs from the same period in times of
peace. Scarcely a domestic circle can be found
which has not its personal anxieties. Affection
belongs to no particular class, and the toast
of " our absent friends " brings to the social
board the recollection of those endeared