The Press.
London, England, 1857-11-21 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 21, 1857.

1124

of such unworthy means to exalt the gallantry
or spread the reputation of NEILL, HAVELOCK,
and NictioLsoN, All Europe is their audience,
and half the audience are their friends. The
echoes of their praises will long linger amongst
us, and their actions " blossom in the dust "
till the soil of great deeds is barren.

" IS LORD CANNING EQUAL TO HIS

POST ?"
OUR readers will recollect that our tone
towards Lord CANNING has always been the
reverse of unfriendly, but we never concealed
our anxiety about his critical position. In
ordinary times, and with a mass of routine
work before him, Lord CANNING might make an
efficient Governor-General of India, and it is
really no disgrace to any man that he should
prove unequal to so tremendous a crisis as
now prevails in the Eastern empire. But Lord
CANNING was for twenty years in public life
before he went to Calcutta, and his Lordship
never displayed in our home politics any of
those great leading qualities which signalise
a master.spirit. From first to last his political
resources lay in the sentiments awakened by
the phrase—" his father's son." We shared
largely in those feelings ourselves. GEORGE
CANNING was a famous orator, a shining light
of Parliament, a brave and brilliant upholder
of the Constitution in days of peril, and a
tried chief of the Tories. We hold his
memory in high regard, and the world admires
his dazzling career. But the feeling of sym-
pathy with the son of a gifted sire must not be
carried too far.

That Lord CANNING was surprised in the
first instance cannot be denied, and that he
placed extravagant faith in the opinions
of his Council must be admitted. When
the facts at last loomed plainly before
him, Lord CANNING did just what any other
Governor-General would have done. He wrote
home a strong and urgent statement of the
case, and asked for troops wherever they could
be got, and to whatever amount they could be
sent. He was constantly at his post, was as
punctual as the best clerk in his service, and
as regularly diligent as the most active adju-
tant in a marching army. So far so good
His Lordship also showed considerable moral
and personal courage. We should expect so
much from " his father's son," or from any
Governor-General sent out to uphold Queen
VICTORIA'S power. Courage, really, is not so
very scarce, and so singularly rare a quality
amongst Englishmen, that we should lavish
applause on Lord CANNING because he was
not panic-strickm. No amount of courage
and industry can turn a second-rate
ruler into a first-rate statesman, or atone
for enormous mistakes. The capacity
for reading rightly and rapidly the signs of
the times was not given to Lord CANNING.
The genius which penetrates the character of
numbers of men, which masters their wills,
hushes their doubts, and kin:lles up their
enthusiasm—the attributes of lofty statesman-
ship were not exhibited by Lord CANNING.
There was no originality of design, no breadth
of view, shown in his policy ; and unfortu-
nately, also, there appears to have been great
and positive blunders on a large scale, and on
points where his Lordship ought to have been
well prepared.
How Lord CANNING could have contrived to
alienate from himself so large a mass of
English public opinion at Calcutta seems to
us one of the most extraordinary facts in the
Indian mutiny. One might have reasonably
anticipated that with common prudence, and
some insight into character, any Governor-
General would have rallied to his aide all the
loyal feelings of all the English in India. The

contrary seems to have been the case. The
Calcutta Petition is one of those facts which
cannot be disregarded, for we do not now
recollect so hostile a demonstration from the
Anglo-Indians against any previous Gover-
nor-General. There must have been serious
mistakes, indeed, and very great faults, when
by "a large majority" the mercantile commu-
nity at Calcutta, represented by " The Cham-
ber of Commerce," affirmed the resolution to
bind the Chamber to a petition for the recall
of Lord CANNING. Observe the facts.

At a crisis when our empire is in jeopardy,
when the rebels and mutineers have ap-
pealed so successfully to the traditions of an
effete race, and the sanctity of a false religion,
Lord CANNING has thrown contempt on the
patriotism of British subjects and the piety of
the Anglo-Saxon race. Like the cosmopolite
satirised by his father, Lord CANNING'S aspira-
tions are for large masses of mankind in India,
and not for the English race threatened with
extermination Does " his father's son " recol-
lect who wrote the admirable lines in " New Mo-
rality "

Shall one half-peopled island's rocky round,
A love, that glows for all creation, bound ?
No narrow bigot he—his reasoned view
Thy interests, England, rank with thine, Peru!
In fact, the allegations of the Calcutta Petition
for the recall of Lord CANNING may be summed
up in the assertion that in an internecine
contest Lord CANNING exhibited towards the
English race in India the feelings of what his
father would have called a " candid friend."
The Times assuredly is no enemy to Lord
CANNING ; and that journal in its Calcutta
correspondence contains facts which cannot be
refuted. The Europeans, or English, are now
placed exactly on a par with the native
Indians. Every Englishman in Calcutta must
register his arms, and is liable to punishment
for carrying them in the street. By an act of
power resembling the wild and wayward deeds
of the French revolutionary leaders, there is
no distinction made between classes, preju-
dices, traditions, and ties of race and civilisa-
tion. Lord CANNING acted as if he were a
political alchemist, who had been gifted with
some magic crucible, by means of which he
could at one experiment melt the English into
Indians, and at the same moment raise the
native dross into the true British metal. There
has been, and is, a large party in the Govern-
ment of India which holds that, while the
country should be ruled by Europeans, the
Civil Service should have the chief superin-
tendence. They hold, as the Times corre-
spondent admits, " that all other Europeans
" should be placed exactly on a par with the
" natives, he tried by native judges (!), 'and be
" reduced to a powerless section of the Indian
" popularity." In other words, and in plain
English, the virtue of their blood and lineage
should be washed out of them. They should
be squeezed out of their Anglicism. " This
" party in the Government almost felt a pity
" for the sepoy." They actually appointed a
Mussulman, named MEER ALI, over the heads
of Europeans to put down an insurrection of
Mussulmans. They forgot the native cha
meter, and believed it to be " murders, not-
" withstanding as good as the European."
We are not surprised accordingly to read that
" the measures adopted by this party produced
" a burst of hatred towards the Government, such
" as Englishmen accustomed to party spirit
" cannot even imagine." In short, the feelings
of the English at Calcutta have been aroused
against Lord CANNING. He is stated to have
shown that maudlin travestie of a virtue which
his father denounced :

Thou drivelling virtue of this moral age,
Candour, which softens party's headlong rage—
Candour, which spares its foes. nor e'er descends
With bigot zeal to combat for its friends,
And finds with keen, discriminating sight
Black's not so black, nor white so very white.
It is strange, indeed, that " his father's son "
should in a great crisis of English nationality
have exhibited the want of national sympathy
so lashed by GEORGE CANNING.

But who is responsible for the original
nomination of Lord CANNING to the Governor-
Generalship. Lord GRANVILLE, with unlucky
" candour," has confessed that the appoint-
ment was accepted by Lord CANNING after

"very mature consideration." His Lordship,
probably, had " candid " doubts about his fit-
ness for the post. Lord GRANVILLE made a
" candid" apolJgy for the Governor-General,
but the Premier disliked " candour " as much
as GEORGE CANNING did, and therefore put a
bold face on matters, and pledged the credit
of Government as a sort of " rate in aid " for
the threatening insolvency of the Government
dis-"union" at Calcutta. The town was told
on Thursday that `• the middle classes die-
" tate the national policy and govern the Go-
" vernment," and it remains to be seen
whether Parliament and the public will endorse
the reckless certificate for Lord CANNING
presented by Lord PALMERSTON.
Certain it is, however, that it is matter of
universal regret that a statesman of tried
abilities, and of long experience in emergen-
cies, had not been appointed to such a post.
When people asked, " Why was Lord CANNING
selected ?" they received as an answer, be-
CSLISC GEORGE CANNING had first given a place
in the Cabinet to Lord PALMERSTON. The
words of the Premier on this point are known,
and cannot be denied. As we said before, we
go some way with the feelings for " his father's
son," but it is worthy of note that GEORGE
CANNING never was happy in dealing with indi-
viduals. He was not able to obtain ascen-
dancy over others in council, though all
admired him as an orator "on his legs." His
whole conduct in the transaction which led to
the duel with CASTLEREAGH Was maladroit,
and eventuated in his losing the leadership of
his connection ; and the mode in which he
dealt with the Tory chiefs at the death of
Lord LIVERPOOL undoubtedly broke up the
Tory party. It is of evil omen that GEORGE
CANNING accepted under peculiar circum-
stances the Governor-Generalship of India
(though on the death of Lord CASTLEREAGH he
resigned it), and exposed himself thereby to
the merciless invective of Lord BROUGHAM in
1823, of being " scorned by his enemies and
" pitied by his friends." Management of men—
one of the best gifts of statesmanship—was
the exact quality in which GEORGE CANNING
was deficient, and will any one say that his
" father's son " exhibits that great quality at
Calcutta?'

Government originally should hava appointed
a stronger statesman, with a confirmed reputa-
tion, and with that tried character which would
potently influence the public opinion of Eng-
lishmen, whether at home or in India. The
selection of Lord CANNING was a Palmerston
job, and a Governor-General should have been
made from purely public motives. The Go-
vernment at home had for two years previously
been kept well informed as to the irritable
and excited state of India, especially during
the Russian war, and nobody can affirm that
Lord CANNING was the best person that could
have been chosen for discharging the duties
of so great a post.

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