The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-09 00:00:00

deductions made by a leading journal
from the manner in which the Hindoos and
Parsees of Bombay observed the day of prayer
and humiliation. This observance, it would ap-
pear, is deemed to be the most satisfactory
indication possible of the extent to which the
Company's rule is loved and revered in

India.
A little examination will serve to dissipate
this idea. In the first place, demonstrations
in favour of any absolute Government are
things to which but little weight can be
attached, for we see the Wallachians welcome
ODIER PACHA to-day, having welcomed the
Russians previously. In the next place, the
conduct of the Hindoos and Parsees of Bom-
bay affords no indication of the feelings of
other natives -of India, men of races dis
tinct from them and existing under circum-
stances wholly different.
The Hindoos of Bombay are sleek men of
business, " pursy traders," as the Times would
call them—people who never girded on a
sword in their lives, and who under no com•
pulsion whatever could be made to do so—
men who never touch a gun even when un-
loaded, for fear it should go off, and who
have about as much in common with the
Sikhs and Mahrattas, the Goorkas and
Rajpoots,—in short, with the warlike races of
the Hindoos of India,—as a bailie of the Canon
gate had with a Highland cateran in the year
of grace 1745. indeed, the ridiculous panic
which these people were described to be in,
a mail or two ago,—suspending all business,
burying their money, and preparing for flight
into the interior,—at the bare thought of two
or three Russian vessels-of-war being in the
Indian seas, must be sufficient to prove the
value of such men's aid and support to us, by
showing precisely the stuff of which they are
made. That they acted very meritoriously,
and showed great good feeling in praying for
the success of her Majesty's arms, we most
freely admit ; but their adherence to us is not
to be taken as an indication that we have laid
a secure foundation for our Eastern empire
in the respect and affection of the people of
India.
As to the Parsees, they are the small re-
mains of the fire-worshippers, persecuted out
of Persia by the Mahomedans, and are as much
aliens in India as we are ; and, though person
ally men of great manliness and courage,
they on principle eschew the profession of
arms, like the body to which they bear a great
resemblance—the Society of Friends in Eng-
land. They are content with the influence
derived from their intelligence, their energy,
and their wealth. But, so far from being ad
mirers of the Company's system, they are for
the most part the bitterest enemies to it which
that system has Though warm friends of
the English connection, they are strongly op-
posed to the arbitrary spirit of the Company's
rule, and, in order to protect themselves from
being subjected to it, they always when they
can locate themselves within the jurisdiction
of the Supreme Courts ofJ udicature appointed
by the Crown at the different Presidencies.
There, as far as person and property are con-
cerned, they are as safe from injustice as any
man in England, for there neither person nor
property can be attacked, except through the
Instrumentality of a process in courts presided
over• by judges independent of the Company,
and selected by the Crown from the bar of
England. Before one of these courts the
lowest native at the Presidencies stands as the
equal, in the eye of the law, of the highest ser-
vant of the Company. Beyond the magic circle
of its jurisdiction, his house may be levelled or
his lands resumed by the collector ; within it, if
the attempt be made, he files his suit and his
title under the plea of immemorial possession ;
prescriptive usage is affirmed, and proves
destructive of the illegal pretensions of the
Company.
Beyond the magic circle, a public func-
tionary may deal with any native as he
chooses ; within it, the magistrate who goes
beyond his functions is subjected to an action,
and the dread of this keeps him perpetually on
his good behaviour.
Beyond the magic circle, the Company
violates the engagements entered into by
its servants with the cultivators at plea-