The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-17 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1857.

THE news from India that came by the last
mail is satisfactory so far, that in some
respects it is more encouraging than it might
have been. The Mohurrum having passed off
safely is a great point gained. Still, it will
not do to (jump to conclusions, as some are
doing, and suppose that we have virtually
broken the rebellion's back. There are many
indications in the intelligence just received
that this is far from being the case. It was
NAPOLEON, we believe, who used to say that
the success of battles depended less on the
number of the enemy that are killed than on
the number that are frightened. It is for this
reason that the experienced Commander waits
till the infantry he is opposed to have been
torn and awed by grape and round shot, before
he launches at them his squadrons whose
clanging trumpets, brandished satires, and
thundering crash of horses, as they tear down at
the charge, complete the terror of the wa-
verers, and so turn the scale. Who that has
passed through such scenes as these can fail
to see on the instant when a struggle is vir-
tually terminated, and the cessation of the
contest become a mere matter of time.
There are many who appear to think that
this point is already attained by us in India,
but we confess that we are not among the
number. The mutineers may have made no
impression on us lately; but we, on the other
hand, have made little impression on them.
We seem to bo safe on all points, it is true,
but it is not our safety, but their destruction,
that is what we have got to look to. And to
wards this object we have not as yet made any
real advance. It is plain that the natives them-
selves are of the same opinion, or we should
not have tales of fresh mutinies by this mail,
and fresh desertions from our banner of the
contingents of native States. As long as the
ulcer continues to spread we may be sure that
our caustic has not touched its core. Indeed,
so little awe do we appear to have established,
that Colonel NEILL tells us in his despatch
that he considered even the Sikh regiment
at Allahabad as not to be relied on,
and that he had been within an ace of
coining to blows with it when he decided, in
consequence, to remove it from the fort. Had '
he attacked them there is little doubt that the
Sikhs in our service in the Punjaub would have
revenged the act by turning against us in a
body, as there is nothing to prevent them
doing, now that all our Hindostanees there
have mutinied, been disbanded, or been sent
away. Nor is the late news regarding the
state of the Punjaub finances quite so good as
the previous mails had led the public to
expect. Then we were told that the Maha-
rajah GIIOLAE SINGH had lent a largo sum to
our Commissioner ; it now appears that he had
only promised to lend it—a very different thing.
There would, however, be nothing extraordi-
nary in the old traitor's really lending us any

amount we wanted to expend in levying and
equipping Ponjaubees and Sikhs. He afforded
us equally efficient aid in the second Sikh war,
and of course it was not his fault if the levies
showed their ingratitude to him and to us by
joining the enemy at the most critical period
of the campaign. Why, even animal instinct
surpasses the wisdom of our agents there. That
at least keeps its possessor out of the trap
where it has once been caught ; while we go
on enlisting the very people who so signally
betrayed us in the Sikh and Affghan wars.
There are other points which are now dis-
cernible, and which are likely to prove con-
siderable difficulties in the approaching cam-
paign. In the first place, the Europeans
appear to a certain extent to have lost their
discipline, and without the strictest discipline
no permanent success can be obtained. We
know that it is very hard indeed to maintain
it trader the circumstances—never, indeed,
were officers in a position more arduous than
they are placed in at present in India in this
respect. Separated in small detachments
over a country where they have nearly all the
population against them, they are masters of
their men by the articles of war ; hut
de facto they are the reverse. It will redound
more than anything that has ever yet been
recorded in history to the army's credit if it
escape with honour out of the ordeal through
which it will have to pass. The ordeal most
trying—that of observing, from pure loyalty
and self-respect, a degree of discipline which,
if the soldiers be not deeply imbued with
these sentiments, it would be impossible for
any commander to enforce. Knowing, how-
ever, what may be done with soldiers when
their sense of honour is appealed to, we have
no doubt that they will nobly support their
officers in this, the most arduous of their tasks.
But this can only be done by the good men
putting forth all their exertions to keep in
order the bad. Under such circumstances, it
is a great satisfaction to have at the head of
our army in India a man like Sir COLIN
CAMPBELL, a most admirable officer and a
strict disciplinarian, who is both respected
and loved alike by officers and men.
The next thing to be considered is the diffi-
culty that will be found in respect to carriage.
Troops can do nothing without carriage, as
we found to our cost in the Crimea; though
Lord ELLENBOROUGH had vainly attempted to
impress the truth upon the Duke of NENV
CASTLE at the outset of it, when, if his advice
had been accepted, the disasters of the early
part of that campaign would have been avoided.
Colonel NEILL clearly feels this difficulty
greatly at Allahabad, and it will not be felt
less lower down the country, we may depend.
We have no doubt that Lord ELLENBOROUGH
and the Conservative leader in the House of
Commons had this in view when they recom-
mended the adoption in our main operations
of the line of the Indus as a base; for
along that base lies the great camel country
of India; and of camels from the deserts, carts
from Rajpootana, and ponies from the hill
countries beyond the Indus, we might have
had as many as we could require. Nor
is this all ; for the commonest country
boats will do to go down the Ganges
and the Jumna, while steamers alone can go
up them at a pace at all adapted to the re-
quirements of war. Thus in the one case
there would not only have been ample land
carriage, but the whole of the craft of those
rivers might have been made available for our

operations. In the other ease, we can only
use vessels scanty in number, very liable to
he disabled and put out of order, and for
which it will be in itself an enormous busi-
ness to provide an adequate supply of fuel.
Then, again, with steamers only, our opera-
tions must necessarily be confined to the
navigable channels of the river and their im-
mediate neighbourhood ; for any attempt to
march our Europeans without carriage against
the highly-equipped rebels in the interior
would signally fail. It would be like follow-
ing the will-o'-the-wisp ; and, by com-
pletely prostrating our soldiers in the pug•
suit, it would be playing the rebels game.
As to land-carriage, there may in a military
sense be said to be none procurable in Lower
Bengal ; and we think, therefore, that it will
tax Lord CANNING'S powers not a little to plo-
vide it for even a quarter of the number of
.troops that will be now pouring in. The
Nobleman we have before named is the man
in England of all others most competent for
such a task ; but after the imbecility shown
both here and in India, we should not wonder
if the army we have sent out were left to
languish at Calcutta or make its way up
the country as best it can. It is easy to
amuse the public here with details of the
number of troops that have been sent to tho
seat of war ; but we should like to know what
provision has been made for tbeir moving
when they get there. We should be glad to
hear what has been done in the shape of com-
missariat and transport arrangements, and in
the way of procuring horses and saddles for
the cavalry and horses and batteries for the
artillery when they land. In the way of pro-
viding those requisites, in short, to make
these branches of the army effective which
the sagacity of the War-office decided in.
nearly every case to have left at home.
There retn&ns one subject to be remarked
on in the news arrived lately, which, we think,
will be admitted on all hands to prove the cor-
rectness of the policy which we have all along
advocated in respect to native States, We
have always protested against the annexation
of these, not out of any peculiar admiration for
native institutions, but on the broad principle
of right, and on the more interested ground of
direct advantage to ourselves. We have over
and over again, during the past three years,
explained the position in which the absorption
of every native State would leave us, if mutiny
should infect our Sepoys, as it might be
expected to do, when there remained nothing
between them and the supreme authority. We
showed the obstacle that large native States,
interspersed amid our territories, would inter-
pose to any general outbreak in the army
proving successful, as but for such check it
necessarily must. We, therefore, strenuously
contended for the preservation of these States,
not merely as an act of justice and good faith
to the ;princes of them, but as an act of the
very best policy as regards ourselves. And
what has this rebellion shown ? Why, that if
India had been all abe^--" Lord
DALHOUSIE'S admirers
been all lost to us at
would not have been
native chief's soldier
sula. There would h
own Sepoys, and our
everywhere proved fall
the Putteeala Rajah, p
Thursday last, explains
are deriving along the

,Z
~'

lbsorbed by us as Lord
3 desired, it would have
t a single blow. ...There
n a native ~ ower ity.
left in the oiiiiirPi i
have beep, el ...
own Se 4..1hi1i40 • ..• 4
Ise. Th e‘, r,.. ',, •,::.
publishe 'i, ~ • . IF
ns how ...,',. • .....t:.,
...
e Sutlej ' i',. ' •;-: • . .4 -
L,..„, • . Isil c,f4

1002

ration of the various chiefs there of native
States. The only men we can rely upon, the
only men to furnish us with money, carriage,
and supplies the only men, in fact, who
enable our establishments to subsist there
and maintain the contest at all, are these very
princes whom Lord DALHOUSIE appears to
have considered it our interest, in every quar-
ter, to sweep away. The letter further shows
how deeply the wrongs inflicted by annexa-
tion are everywhere felt, and how difficult our
political agents find it to keep such princes
true to us, while our enemies are daily dinning
into their ears the fate that sooner or later
every native sovereign or chieftain meets with
at our hands. We have thus not only the evils
of the present to contend against, but the
results of our bad faith during the past.
Results which have proved too strong for us
to bear up against so successfully elsewhere
as our agent with the Rajah of Putteeala has
done. We hope that the lesson will not be
forgotten when peace shall be restored. If we
wish the princes and people of India to be
loyal and true to us, we must be loyal and
true to our engagements with them.