The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-06 00:00:00

'it PRESS, FEBRUARY 6, 1858._

140

Government in the one case as in the other,
and there is much more danger in wounding
the sensibilities of foreign sovereigns in al-
liance with us here than there. Nothing can
be a greater absurdity than to say that it is
necessary to accord to the feelings of a Scin-
diah or a Holkar what we necessarily deny to
those of the Emperor of Austria or of France.
In point of fact, however, the whole case of
the Government rests ou a pretence which is
utterly false; and it is very little to the credit
of Lord Canning that he should have allowed
himself to be made the instrument of the
Directors, and their favoured proteges the
•civilian clique of Calcutta, in perpetrating
such an act. The true cause of the suppres-
sion of the press was a desire to screen them-
selves and at the same time carry out a policy
which they had long previously impressed
upon Lord Ellenborough, but which that
nobleman, with his usual sagacity, had de-
clined to adopt :
Coupling this (as Mr. Connon puts it) with the ex-
treme displeasure of the Court of Directors at Sir Charles
Metcalfe's liberation of the press, and with their hasty
approval of the existing extinction of it, as well as the
manner in which that extinction is defended, I think
every one must see that the sepoy mutiny is made a mere
pretence for a foregone conclusien. The free press of
India is not liked, and must be pat down at all hazards—
even on false pretences.
We think it particularly sad that this ex-
tinction of the liberty of the press in India
should have been so quietly acquiesced in by
the public here, and we shall consider it a
great proof of the degeneracy of Parliament if
it be allowed to pass without some formal
mark of its disapproval during the present
session—not merely because the grounds for
the freedom of the press in India and those
for the freedom of the press in England are
identical, but because this outrage on so che-
rished an institution in any part of our terri-
tories is calculated to give great additional
weight to the attacks on it that are constantly
being made by foreign sovereigns here. Nay
more, it tends equally to cut the ground from
under• our feet when any other• of the institu-
tions are impugned bi- them, on which our
liberties are supposed to rest. It is the
driving into the whole fabrio of our Constitu-
tion the thin edge of the despot's wedge.
As regards the press in India, Mr. Connon
corrects the popular error which dates its
freedom from Sir Charles Metcalfe's measure.
He shows that all Sir Charles Metcalfe's
enactment did was to free it from the pressure
of the regulation establishing a censorship,
which, however, was only operative in Bengal.
This regulation had the force of law there,
because a subservient Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court at Calcutta ,had been content
to register it. But it had never been law in
Bombay, because the judges of the Supreme
Court there, Sir Edward West and Sir Charles
Chambers, had peremptorily refused it regis-
tration ; and before the Charter Renewal Act
of 1833, no regulation of a local government
had validity at a Pres:dency which the judges
of the Supreme Court there declined to re-
gister. The only check, therefore, on the
press at Bombay before 1833 was the power of
deportation ; but this extended not to men of
English blood who were born in India, or to
natives, and by the Charter Aet of 1833 it was
wholly taken away. Thus the press of Bom-
bay was just as free before Sir Charles Met-
calfe's law as after it—its legal position being
precisely that assigned to the press here by
the laws of England at the period. It is no
small proof of the absurdity a great man may
write on a subject with which he is but im-
perfectly acquainted, that at the time Sir
Thomas Munro was predicting such evils from
granting freedom to the press in India, the
press of Bombay was really free. Here is
what Mr. Connon says upon this subject :
While Sir Thomas Munro, then, was inditing in 1822
that long minute on the Indian press, now produced with
an air as if we must all bow to his dictum on any point
of Indian policy, without so much as a question, foretelling
what would happen if the press became free—mutiny,
insurrection, the loss of our empire, and so forth—the
press at Bombay was actually free, and so continued un-
interruptedly without any mutiny, insurrection, or other
particular trouble. till the passing of the Act XV. of NM
in the month of June, after which period came our muti-
nies, insurrections, and so forth. Resin), I think I could
make out a better case to prove that it had been the
Gagging Act itself, at least so far as Bombay is concerned,
and not the freedom of the press, that has led to all our

public troubles; but sneh inconsequentiality of reasoning
would require the power of a Government to make it pass
muster, and I leave those that command that to descend
to such pnerilities. Justice and logic seem the only
friends left to our cause now, but with these I do not fear
for the result. _

It is unnecessary for us to go into detail
into the admirable ease which Mr. Connon
makes out for the freedom of the press in
India ; indeed, we are ashamed that in Eng-
land and among Englishmen thEre should be
any question on the subject. We feel it a
disgrace that our• Government should dare to
try and enforce a principle, which if right
when applied to politics must be equally right
when applied to religion, and would fully
justify every persecution that has been inflicted
for promulgating opinions opposed to the
ruling creed. But if any proof were wanted
of the good which freedom of the press in
India is calculated to do, and of the evils of
its repression, we should find it in the in-
stances which Mr. Connon of his own ex•
perience gives. In one case he tells us he was
the cause, by the publicity he gave to the
matter, of forcing on the Government an in-
quiry into some frauds in the collection and
application of the municipal funds of Bom-
bay, which " led to the removal of a magis-
" trate of police who should never have been
" appointed, and paved the way for a series of
" improvements in the police, &c., of which
" Bombay is now reaping the full benefit."
He then shows how different must have been
the result under the existing state of the
law :

But it may he said that if the Government had had the
power then that it has now over the press, it could have
made short work with troublesome journalists. It had
only to withdraw their licences, and if they were still cal-
eitrant to sieze their property and clap them into gaol.
That would have been an effectual way of ruining indi-
viduals no doubt ; but it is not the way to eztingnish the
breath of scandal, which percolates all the more freely
where there is no free press, and which in that case it is
so much more difficult to meet and refute.

The following is another instance of Mr.
Connon's having fearlessly stood forward, at
great personal risk, to expose a monstrous
public scandal, and he shows convincingly
how the public interests must have suffered
had the present law been in existence to gag
the press :
It was in the early part of ISM when, as editor of the
Bombay Gazette, I was led to speak of the reputation of
the then Bombay Sadder Adawlut, and especially of
two gentlemen, then judges in that high court, as very
different from what such reputation ought to be, specifying
particulars to which I would rather not now allude, as it
is not to revive any unhappy qrarrels that I notice the
matter now ; it was then that the Bombay Government
addressed itself to those gentlemen to ascertain if the
charges made against them were true, signifying that if
the charges were false, it would prosecute me for publish.
ing them ; but finding that they were so far correct in
substance, that in the opinion of the Government's chief
legal adviser, the Advocate-General, the answers which
the parties could only give were not in either case suffi-
cient to proceed to move the Supreme Court for a writ of
criminal information against me, it (the Government)
thereupon said that the necessity was plain and urgent—
that the highest court cf judicature under Indian admi•
nistration should not be exposed to libels which could not
be refuted ; that the characters of the judges should he
each as to raise the court above suspicion, and give the
people confidence in the justice it awards. And as those
judges had shown they were not in a position to punish
me, or in any way vindicate themselves in a public manner
against the public defamation to which they had been
subjected, Government deemed it an obvious and bounden
duty to remove them from the bench of the Sadder Court,
and they were removed accordingly.
If I had been such a calumnious person as Lord Harris
(in his minute on the proposed press law) says, erro-
neously, that the Larger portion of Indian journalists are,
here was the opportunity to crush me that he would have
desiderated and that I would have deserved. I could have
been made responsible for my statements, the burden of
proof could have been thrown upon me both as proprietor
and editor, and on failure the act would have been penal,
and no mistake.

I say nothing for a Government that allowed itself to
be driven to perform its admitted duty by such means ;
but the facts, on the face of them, speak well and honour-
ably for the press. Under Act XV. of 18.57, however, while
no action as regards the Sadder might have been taken, I
would have been simply ruined for saying what I did, or
Government, would have been shamefully negligent in
enforcing the act. Would the former alternative have
been justice to the public or to me—the latter, one that a
Government should be left liable to ?
He further on speaks of the act as one
" under which those who are to be at once
" judges of the law and of the fact may at the
" same moment make the accusation, pro-
" nounce the sentence, against which there is
" to be no appeal, and carry it into execution
" thereupon"

I am sure Lord Harris's better sense and better feel ings would revolt against arrant injustice and tyriony
that. Yet such is the nonsense that excellent and
ere:
able men bring themselves to speak when they allow feel.
ing instead of judgment to get the mastery of them, and
forsake the slow but sure method of working on first 'prin.
ciples, to get at the seemingly quick method of disposingof things which empineiaru promises, only to disaypolui
or bring more and greater evils in its train.
Such are some of the unanswerable argil.
ments which Mr. Connon produces in support
of his position, and we would strongly recom-
mend all to peruse his pamphlet who would
desire to make themselves master of the ease.
One point, however, his good nature has in-
duced him to omit, which, as we think it
exhibits more clearly than all the rest
what kind of men these press-gaggers are, we
shall take leave of our own knowledge to sup.
ply. The reader will have read with much
interest the issue of Mr. Connon's dangerous
struggle with the judges whom he ended in
compelling the Government to eject so igno-
miniously from the Bombay Sudder Adawlnt
Court. He will have thought that, after all,
there was some sense of honour and decency
under the Company's rule. Poor deluded
mortal ! he little knows the nature of that
rule, or the shield that protects the culprit
who happens to be of the favoured civilian
caste. Will it bo believed—yet it must be
believed, for it is a fact—that one of these
very judges whom Mr. Cannon caused to be
dismissed with such disgrace from the Bombay
Sudder Adawlut Bench in 1853 is now, by the
favour of Lesdenhall-street, a member of the
Legislative Council of Calcutta, and was ac-
tually one of the very men who passed the
act to extinguish the Anglo-Indian press !
No wonder at the Council's hatred of the insti-
tution, with such a spectacle of its power
daily before them ; no wonder that they should
have seized on any pretext to terminate for
ever that liberty of discussion which was
found to work so disastrously for themselves!
But, if they had no sense of decency, our own
legislators, it is to be hoped, possess some ;
and with this damning fact before them, we
cannot have a doubt as to what will be the
decision of the House. The steps already taken
by Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Disraeli are
sufficient to show what is thought by the Con-
servatives of' this most disgraceful as well as
most impolitic affair; and we cannot think for
an instant that the same view will not be
taken by all the independent members of the
Liberal ranks. It would be a libel on these to
suppose that they could sink so low as to
endorse such a proceeding as this ; and we
have no doubt, therefore, that when the ques-
tion comes on, such a demonstration will be
made as shall show the Premier that there
are limits to the forbearance which even the
most subservient of Parliaments is prepared
to accord to his acts.

PERIODICAL

THE magazines this month are all good. Bluckwood
leads off with a capital article entitled "The Condi-
tion of Women," the pith of which is to expose the
absurdity of bewailing the evils which civilisation
entails upon women more than those which it entails
upon men. The writer points out very forcibly that
the governess, the needlewoman, and "breadwinners "
generally of the one sex, have each their double in
the other; and that the position of those unmarried
ladies who, while removed by one step from the
necessity of earning their livelihood, are " sickening
" of a vague disease" for want of something to occupy
them, is not a whit worse than that of a numerous
class of young men in a corresponding situation of
life. Sir Bulwer Lytton gives us one ef the most
interesting instalments of his story we have yet had.
"People I have Never Met" is a very facetious
jeu d'esprit. One of the classes so described is
" The man whose word is as good as his bond ;"
" though," says the writer, " I ought not to 'Jay ab-
" solutely I have never met with this variety. I
" have occasionally done so in the person of a man
" whose bond was good for nothing. More than
" this, there are men who, like Micuwber, believe that
" when they have given you their I 0 U the amount
"is squared. Such a man's word may fairly be
" thought better than his bond." A very long article
on East Africa, which looks good—two Indian ar-
ticles, which are not without sense and spirit, though
we cannot endorse them all—and laudatory reviews
of Lord St.. Leonards' " Handy Book " and that
strange book, " Thorndale "—constitute a varied and
Interesting number.