The Press.
London, England, 1856-01-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Mr. DENMAN'S style of wavering Whiggism—
" Liberal, but Conservative." Even while
writing these remarks, proofs have been sup-
plied to us that the Whios intend to make
0
as large a demonstration as the resources of
their party will permit. The zeal of Conserva-
tives must prevent the waverers from boasting
of even a large minority.

LICENCE OF THE BAR AND LICENCE
OF THE PRESS.
AN attempt is being made, it seems, to re-
move the trial of WILLIAM PALMER from the
provinces to London, on account of the
dangerous irritation which prevails in the
former. It is doubtless very proper that this
should be done; but we must remind our
readers that local excitement is by no means
the only obstacle which exists to the impartial
administration of justice. It would be of little
avail to remove the prisoner from the scene of
his alleged crimes if the whole kingdom is to
participate in the prejudices of Shrewsbury
and Stafford. Nothing would be gained by
the proceeding ; while the accused would him-
self lose the counterbalancing advantage of
local popularity. To bring him away from a
spot where a kind of rude balance may, per-
haps, be maintained by the weight of conflict-
ing passions, to one where all would be against
him and none for him, would be to turn mercy
into cruelty; and justice into gross iniquity.
These remarks have been suggested by a
growing disposition in the newspaper press
to assume a jurisdiction perilous alike to its
own usefulness and to the interests of justice
and equity. In every criminal case the jour-
nalist rushes in where the jurist fears to
tread: judgment no longer goes before execu-
tion ; and the prisoner is hung before he is
tried. The advocate, the jury, and the judge,
are all superseded together; and he must pos-
sess a strength of mind beyond that of an
average juryman who, on the day of real trial.
can dismiss from his mind every particle of
the impression which was made on it at the
sham one. This, as our words imply, is lite-
rally playing with justice, and interposing an
extraneous sentiment a tertian' quid—be-
tween the court and the prisoner, which, were
it not for the extraordinary patience, sagacity,
and learning of an English judge, would fre-
quently make the whole business a mockery.
Never has this pernicious habit been more
strongly displayed than in the recent discus-
sions on the Rugeley poisoning. We are
already told of " the terrible dexterity of the
" poisoner." Already blood cries out of the
dust, and " suspicion has grown into conviction."
That this kind of talk should be widely prevalent
in the world is not. perhaps, unnatural. But is
it the function of a journalist merely to give
substance to the shadowy surmises ? to
stamp with a certain air of authority the
fancies of the weak and the dogmas of the
ignorant? or is it not rather his special
and exclusive duty to check public impa-
tience, to temper public animosity, and to in-
vite on all questions of justice involving
liberty or life a calm and passionless dis-
cussion? To this question none of our
contemporaries could avoid giving the same
answer. Yet how little do they act upon
the rule. Populus vult decipi et decipiatur
would appear to be their motto. They seem,
unfortunately, to believe that highly-coloured
statements, gaudy epithets, and violent advo-
cacy are essential to their success, and on this
ground habitually indulge themselves in de-
clamation which is often unjust, and a licence
which is often not poetic.
Strange to say, this licence of the press is
most frequently observable in those journals
which denounce the licence of the Bar. Let
a barrister in the heat of debate be carried one
inch beyond the boundaries of strict fact, and
who so ready to thunder at his venal eloquence
as the journals we allude to ? " Buzfuz risen
" into reality," cries one. " Behold the fee
" with blood on it," says another. Even a

75

previous emicert between the murderer and
his counsel is hinted at as a possibility. ; yet
side by side with these dignified and gentle-
manlike aspersions we find unsparing con-
demnation of untried men, and unscrupulous
assumption of unproved facts. Why has the
advocate so much to answer for, and the jour-
nalist nothing? Why is the former more
venal than the latter? Innocent men have
suffered before now. The writer who aids in
condemning an innocent man has more on his
head than he who defends a guilty. one. His
pen it is which is the really venal instrument;
his are the wages which are truly the fee with
blood upon it.
The evidence in the case of WILLIAM PALMER
has yet to be heard and sifted by the court
legally constituted for his trial. To hunt him
down as a portion of the London press
has been doing is unworthy of their voca-
tion. If their business be to show game to
the populace, they have done wisely ; if to
correct their errors, and to hold up doubtful
facts and hasty prejudices to the mirror of
reason, they have done both foolishly and
mischievously.

THE INCUBUS THAT SMOTHERS INDIA.
WE were glad to perceive from an article on
torture in the last Edinburgh Review that the
only party in the State which has latterly
shown itself deaf to the wants of India is be-
ginning to open its eyes and perceive the true
incubus that weighs down that empire. Men
ignorant enough to be totally unaware of what
is now proved to have been a universal prac-
tice, or dishonest enough if knowing it bare-
facedly to deny it, are certainly not the
persons to assist the Crown in the government
of any dependency, much less so important a
one as that of India. Still more was their un-
fitness for this duty evinced when it appeared
afterwards, from their own records, that the
practice had frequently been brought under
their notice, and as frequently elicited from
them orders which, like all their other orders
issued in the interests of justice and good
government, were habitually treated as dead
letters. To say that they were so treated with
their direct sanction, is to say more than we
have actual warrant for ; but everyone who
knows anything of the India-house knows
what adepts they are in that kind of
trickery which consists in writing high-
flown instructions to deceive the public,
which are habitually violated by the func-
tionaries addressed in them, with the Direc-
tors' entire concurrence or connivance. What

the Crown requires from the Directors is not
so much statesmanship, for that i4is enabled
to provide from amid the circle of its own
immediate servants. What it needs in these
official advisers of the President of the India
Board is great truth, great energy, great
singlemindedness, and a thorough and inti-
mate knowledge of India. In every one of
these great requisites the Directors have
shown themselves entirely wanting ; and it is
not surprising, therefore, that with such broken
reeds to lean upon the Crown should find it-
self unable to govern satisfactorily that vast
empire. Happily for the country, there is
abundance of Indian experience to he found
out of the India-house; and when the time
shall come for a reconsideration of the Indian
question, there will be no difficulty in any
Ministry selecting ten times more talent and
local experience for its assistance than ever
was concentrated in Leadenhall-street from

the earliest period of history to the present.
The Directors have, in fact, proved an
incubus on India in all times, seeking
only their own selfish ends throughout, and
thwarting and paralysing all the efforts of the
Ministers of the Crown for the good govern-
ment of that country. These have had no
interest in misgoverning it ; on the con-
trary, their interest has lain all the other
way ; and whatever of goodthas been effected

IN

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76

has been effected by themselves or by their
nominees, the Governors-General, acting with
their sanction, but in most cases in open
hostility to the Directors' views. A. low and
sordid policy is, in fact, naturally repug-
nant to any but the men to whose guid-
ance the affairs of this leading City Company
have been. so long committed. Men like
CORNWALLIR, WELLESLEY, HASTINGS, BEN-
TINCK, and ELLENBOROUGH, instinctively loathed
it ; and it was in spite of opposition that
they carried every one of those measures
that can be said to reflect the slightest credit
on the administration of British India. What
they might have done for it under happier cir-
cumstances can only be surmised with toler-
able accuracy by those who know by expe-
rience what an undercurrent of this kind can
effect in impeding the course of the pure and
singleminded among statesmen in every land.
Pm, in his India Bill of 1784, for instance,
declared that the principles of justice and the
honour of this country required that the com-
plaints of the rajahs and zemindars and other
native landholders of British India should be
forthwith inquired into and fully investigated,
and if founded on truth effectually redressed.
But the details were urhappily left to the
Directors, and they have ever since managed
to4evade the injunction, as they have evaded
almost every similar injunction having the
mere welfare of the natives, and not the exten-
sion of their influence, patronage, and emolu-
ments from Indian contracts, for their end. In
the same manner the India Bill of 1833
opened every kind of employment in the
public service to the natives, yet for twenty-
two years the Directors succeeded in making
the enactment nugatory and the door was
only really opened to natives when the taking
away of the civil and medical patronage from
the Directors made it a matter of no per-
sonal importance to them on whom it was
bestowed.

But the most remarkable case of all has
been that of the Supreme Courts. With such
a set of men at the helm, it was soon seen that
the only possible check against misgovern-
ment lay iu affording to the people the
guarantee against oppression and illegal en-
croachments on their property enjoyed by
the people of every other dependency of the
Crown, in the shape of Crown-appointed
judges, presiding in duly established Courts.
Accordingly, in 1773, such Courts were es-
tablished in India, wish jurisdiction embrac-
ing all living within British rule. But the
Directors and their agents soon managed to
get up a cry against these curbs to their exac-
tions, and they had influence enough to cause
the Act to be so modified as to make it in-
operative beyond the Presidency capitals,
where it is still in force. The glorious results
exhibited there show what might have been
the effects had the Minister remained firm,
and the jurisdiction remained as extensive as
at first proposed. Through the security af-
forded by these Courts, the people at the Pre-
sidencies do really enjoy those blessings of
British rule which are often so much vaunted
of. but which the millions in the interior
neither see nor feel. At the Presidencies only
is seen the constitutional spectacle of a Go-
vernment subject to, and not above, the law.
Here only is the wantonness of might re-
strained, and here only does right habitually
triumph. Here only are those unseemly col-
lisions between the Government and the
people unheard of that so perpetually take
place in the interior of the land—here only
are those spoliations unknown which bring
disgrace on the British name—here only the
Government knows exactly the extent of its
power and the subject the limit of its subjec-
tion, while the reverend Majesty of the law, the
reflection of the Biitish Sovereign in person,
sits on the judgment-seat, to hold even the
balance between both. Beyond those narrow
limits the incubus of India has it all its own
way. There the sons of the Director); oppress
the country as they please, with none but their
brothers and cousins presiding in the local
courts to check them. There the only alter-
native for the natives aggrieved by such mis-
government is to appeal to the fathers and
uncles of the wrongdoers in Leadenhall-street
for redress. But there, too, blood is found to
be thicker than water, and the ties of relation-