The Press.
London, England, 1857-07-04 00:00:00

THE INDIAN MUTINIES.

MR. DISRAELI was quite right when he said
in the House of Commons on Monday that
the first thing to be done in regard to the
Indian mutinies was to put them down, no
matter at what cost of men and money to the
State. When this is effected, we trust that
nothing will be allowed to prevent a full, com-
plete, and searching inquiry into the causes
which have led to so disastrous and so discre-
ditable a revolt. The readers of this journal
will have no difficulty in guessing at them, be-
cause they are the very fruits which we have
all along proclaimed that the mismanagement
of the Government must sooner or later pro-
duce; and, however criminal the Sepoys may
have been, their guilt is morally of a tar lighter
dye than that of their rulers, whose miscon-
duct has brought about the crisis, by acting in
defiance of the warnings they have so re-
peatedly received. More than once did
the late Sir CHARLES NAPIER, when Com-
mander-in-Chief in India, tell tile Government
there what its mismanagement would
lead to, but the only reception his warn-
ings met with was mockery and jeers.
Others of high rank and great experience have
pressed similar views on its attention, but
always have their representations been at-
tended with the like ill-success. General
TUCKER, the late Adjutant-General in Bengal,
distinctly informs us, through the columns of
the Times, that this very question about the
cartridges could never have arisen had the
Government of India but attended to his and
the Commander-in-Chiefs advice. The Govern-
ment, however, as if in the very wantonness of
the power with which it seems to have been
Latterly intoxicated, set the admonition at de-
fiance and pursued its course.

To the Ei►glishman, the prejudice may seem
absurd which makes it so obnoxious to the
Sepoy to be compelled to handle a cartridge
greased with materials which he cannot touch
without loss of caste. People here appear to
think that less of caste is a mere trifling
matter, similar at the worst to being cut at
Brookes's or White's Loss of caste in India,
however, and in England, are very different
things. The dreadful ostracism to which the
time•expired convict is here liable is the
nearest approach, but even that is a very faint
approach, to the ostracism entailed on the
Hindoo by loss of caste Excommunication,
as enforced in the early Christian Churches, is
the only thing that at all resembles it. By it
the man becomes an outcast, and never more
can be associated with by his family or friends.
No house in the village will receive him ; no
one will eat or drink any more from vessels
polluted by his touch. His wife and children
will no longer dwell with him ; they are sepa-
rated from him for ever by the law. Ho is
incapable of inheriting property of any kind.

I.

The embrace of brother and sister he must
never look for again ; even the mother is
taught to regard him with horror. If he is
unmarried, none but an outcast will give his
daughter to him in marriage, and wherever he
turns he is an object of loathing and of dis-
gust. The consolations of his religion are
denied to him; the temples of his gods are
closed to him, as are the ministrations of his
priests. He lives the life of the accursed, he
dies the death of the dog ; and, when he is
dead, the funeral rites of his creed are with-
held from him, and, instead of an eternity of
happiness, he looks forward only to an eternity
of woe. Such are the penalties of loss of caste
to the Brahmin and Itajpoot There are
natives in Calcutta who affect atheism, and
profess to ridicule it; but these are not the
men of whom our army is composed. They
are men who laugh at all creeds—the Christian
and Hindoo alike—and who show their libe-
rality by the shameless and horrid licence of
their lives. These it is now the fashion of
our Government to patronise ; but it will find
such freethinking in the long run an ill ex-
change for the honest, though mistaken, super-
stition which it supersedes.
We quite agree with the Times in thinking
that the system of double government which
leads to such disasters as have occurred in
Bengal during the last few months cannot last.
India has been governed by its present complex
agency long enough. Les.denhall-street may be
all it. boasts itself to be, but it is clear that its
wisdom is not our wisdom ; and be it what it
may, it no longer suits us. We have plenty of
other use for our money than to waste it in
subsidies to prop up their bankrupt credit, or
in expeditions to restore their failing power.
As long as India asked nothing of us we
might have been content to leave it to the
Directors to deal with as they pleased. That
day, however, is now past, and past for ever
The time has come when the burdens of
India must be shared by us, when its disasters
must be participated in by us, and when the
follies and crimes committed there must fall
back upon ourselves. Wu have now become
responsible for India; and we must transfer
the trust to those hands in which we are
accustomed to see the responsibilities of the
empire rest There are not wanting among
u 3 statesmen of Indian experience ; still less
are there wanting among us men of superior
rank in the country who are perfectly willing
to lend them all the aid which local and
special knowledge of the subject can confer.
These would make a more fitting council for
the Indian Minister than any that the elec-
tions of the proprietors of India stock could
produce. With such a council, aided by the
wisdom of Parliament, the errors of the past
may be redeemed—the clouds that now lower
around us may be effectually dissipated—and
centuries of good government may make the
follies be forgotten which jeopardised at one
time England's Eastern empire.