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

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 17,1857.

the crisis. The crisis is indeed a severe one, and
the cry from India is,—Give the direction of affaits
to the party who alone have all along manifested a
real interest for the government of the Hindoos
—namely, the Conservatives—or else the empire of
Clive is hardly to be reconquered.
Let me begin with a sentence, mournful, indeed,
but nevertheless true to the letter. India is fast
slipping from your grasp. The reckless policy, the
shameful indifference with which the British people
left one hundred and sixty millions of human souls
on a distant shore a prey to a greedy mercantile cor•
poratioo, whose all-in-all is money, has at last pro-
duced its fruits. Virtually the Government has DO
native army now. All the sepoy regiments, whether
of the Bengal, Bombay, or Madras army, which were
from the beginning of British advent to this country
the main pillar on which the immense fabric of the
Indian empire rested with security, and which in
aeality have won for England the thousand and one
victories whose honour their whiter brethren have
reaped, are almost all of them in open, and a few in
disguised, mutiny. These mutinies, openly aided
in some places, secretly supported in all, by a dis-
affected population, have since assumed the aspect
of an Rimming, all-sweeping, all-destroying re-
bellion, in which nothing English is spared.
Wholesale massacres of Europeans as the loathed,
and of Bengallees as their loathed advisers, have oc-
curred in every cantonment and station in Northern
India. A fortnight has sent more officers to the
bourne whence no traveller returns than would have
been despatched in twenty Chillianwallahs. The
wide region between Bhagulpore and Peshawur,
and from! Gwalior to the Himalayas, has been
lost through an unsound army organisation
and the incompetency of the Government. A
belief is fast spreading, from Central and Upper
India even to the seashore, that the Company's
dominion is at an end. Government Securities are
at a discount ; beyond the ltajmahal hills ninety
and ninety-five per cent. In Calcutta the day before
yesterday the Bank of Bengal wanted to sell Corn.
pany's papers to the extent of sixty thousand rupee-4.
At what discount do you think the stockbrokers
offered to take them ? Why,—what do you fancy?—
forty-five per cent ! Forty five in Calcutta! And
yet I read that Lord Granville assures the British
Parliament the value of Government Securities
has not been lowered!

All India is in a panic. Calcutta, which of all
cities in Hindostan, like the Governor-General of all
men in the East, should be firm and steady under all
circumstances, and in the severest trials, has given
way to the epidemic. All the avenues to the
town are being closely guarded, and to prevent a
general rising of the Mahomedans a volunteer corps
has been raised to furnish the city with night patrols.
And yet in the face of these stern realities we are
obliged to read the nonsense of Lord Granville.
I had intended, after showing the danger, to show
the causes of the revolt—for it is no longer a
mutiny; but I reserve that for another time. With
the hope that the people of England will at length
open their eyes, and, for the present at least, drive
an effete and—what is more—unprincipled Ministry
from power, I remain, sir,
Calcutta, Bth Sept., 1537.

A PATRIOTIC HINDU.

THE BISHOP OF OXFORD AND MR.
GLADSTONE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS.
THE annual meeting of the Society for the Aid of
Foreign Missions was held at Chester on Monday,
the Lord Bishop of the diocese presiding. The
meeting was held in the Music-hall. The attendance
at the mid day meeting was large and respectable,
but In the evening the hall was crowded in all parts
to inconvenience.
Shortly after two o'clock proceedings were com-
menced. The Lord Bishop welcomed the Bishop of
Oxford to his diocese, and thanked his lordship for
his consent to advocate the claims of the Foreign
Mission Society. Some formal business having been
disposed of,
The Rev. Canon BLONFIELD proposed the first
resolution, which recognised the claims of the society
upon Christian benevclence.
The Lcrd Bishop of OXFORD, in an eloquent and
argumentative speech, seconded the resolution, and
spoke at great length on the beneficial results of
missionary• labours in all parts of the world. Refer-
ring to the Indian mutinies, the right rev. prelate
said our duty in the present crisis was clearly to hold
India for the regeneration of her people. Alluding
to the general neglect of the social wants of the
country, he said he did not regard them as faults of
intentional commission, but with respect to our
honestly and boldly maintaining Christianity in the
face of the native heathenism, he did believe that we
had been "habitually, consistently, and shamelessly
timid." In conclusion, the right rev, prelate ob-
served :

I for one firmly believe—firmly—that God will give us
one other trial in India. I believe the crisis of England's
greatness—the crisis of her own possessions, of her own
Christianity, 861 depend upon the manner in which she
uses that trust, if again it be committed to us. And there.
fore I say, I desire every one of you, as Christians and
Englishmen. to study this matter over, and to be ready to
take a positive attitude of resistance, if God blesses our
arms, to the resettlement of the Indian question upon any.
thing but a Christian basis. And let there be no mistake
amongst us upon this point. By a Christian basis Clod
forbid that I should teach you to understand that we
should use one iota of force or fraud or earthly favour to
draw one man into the profession of the faith of Christ.
Our duty seems perfectly simple. It is, that we should
maintain, in the first place, peace, truth, and quietness—
that we should say, no man shall suffer for religion, be
disgraced for religion, or be punished for his religion ; but,
having declared that, we should declare, with just as bold
a front, that we are the servants of the Crucified. It is
our duty—it is our blessing—it is our birthright. We
desire to see converts to our faith, because that faith, and
that faith only, will elevate them here, and save them
hereafter. We are Christian men administering a heathen
nation. We will not attempt by force or favour to draw a
single heathen man over, but we will make no secret of our
own Christianity—our belief that we hold our power on
this condition, that we should use it for God ; and with this
responsibility, that it will be taken from us if we use it fox
ourselves.

The resolution was adopted.
At the evening meeting, the Right Hon. W. E.
GLADSTONE moved a resolution to the effect that the
crisis in India called for an extended effort to spread
the Gospel. The right hon. gentleman, who was
received with loud and continued cheers, after some
preliminary observations, in touching terms alluded
to the sufferings this " great visitation " had inflicted
upon us :

Now, my lord, I think, if we read the manner in which
Divine judgments come upon man, we may perceive in
these great national affairs lessons of the Divine purposes
conveyed to us. Unfortunately, if over there was a people
who had cause for great national humiliation in respect of
a great national crisis, I do not hesitate to say it is the
people of England at the present moment. But here
again I must avoid going into a question of who is to
blame and who is not to blame. That is not a question
to be settled here. It is perhaps a question difficult to be
settled at all. India has been governed upon a system and
a principle originally devised by the British Parliament—
a system by which it was thought necessary to dissociate
the government of that country from the popular institu-
tions of this country. The effect of this most curious
contrivance for governing in India was that it mide it to
us as a foreign country ; and I do not hesitate to say that
no man in England knows or can know India unless he
has made or chooses to make it a subject of special study,
as he would make the affairs of any other foreign country.
England knows nothing of India. Our public men even
know nothing of that vast empire, unless, indeed, they
devote their time and labour in acquiring a knowledge of
its affairs. As they would learn the affairs of Russia, so
must they learn the affairs of India, because we have con-
tinued a system of government fur India which interposes
an impenetrable screen between the ordinary and habitual
and daily routine of government affairs in England and
the administration of Indian affairs. Therefore, Ido not
at all presume to enter into the question who is to blame,
or whether any one is to blame. It may be that it has
been our own fault, the fault of our divided responsibility,
the fault of our system of absolute secrecy; it may have
sprung from the difference in the system of administration
in this country and that administered in India; but what-
ever the cause of outbreak, you may search the records of
history far and wide before you come across an instance
of so vexations and extraordinary a failure on the part of
a governing power in the administration of its political
trust.

And when we asked ourselves whether we had dis-
charged as efficiently as we might have done the
great trust we undertook in the country, the question
would not be whether the government of India was
better than in the former times of bloody-minded
tyrants and ferocious conquerors, but whether we, as
a Christian people, had done all that we might and
ought to have done—whether we acted as unselfishly
as we ought to have acted—whether we gave to the
natives the full benefit of Christian example, and
whether we set before them a pattern of moderation,
and truth, and justice, and mercy :
I frankly own. I fear upon that score, when our account
is made up, we shall have but a sorry story to tell. lam
afraid, even at the present moment, when we are humi•
hating ourselves before God, and imploring pardon of sin
and a blessing upon English arms in India, our hands
are not altogether clean. lam bound to admit that for
the last twenty five )ears, during which I myself have
taken part in public affairs, I have observed grievous
instances of policy in respect of our Indian empire—
measures undertaken without a shade of justice, and
a perfect scandal to English history ; and no page of
that history has fouler blots upon it than that which refers
to our Eastern policy.

The right hon. gentleman then discussed our obli-
gations in this great crisis, and expressed his belief
that the duty of England was to maintain her hold
of India, and for the future to abstain from either
force or fraud in respect to the propagation of the
Gospel. At the same time the Government
should separate itself from any remaining practices
by which it appeared to be in,plicated in the acknow-
ledgment of the prevailing false religions and false

worship of the country. But wo had a duty beyond
the establishment of toleration in India, and that was
a atrict adherence to propriety of conduct on the
part of our European residents there :
The avoidance of unjust and unnecessary wars—the
avoidance of all countenance, and especially of all direct
connection, and substantial connection, with all demo-
ralising practices, under whatever name they may be veiled,
and with whatever apparent practical advantages or neces-
sities they may be allied. Indeed, my lord, Ido not know
how, although it is not always that the language of Scrip.
tore seems to fit easily into the notions of modern policy,
but I don't know how the rules of our policy in India can
be better described than in one part of the Epistle ap.
pointed to be read in the services on Wednesday last—l
mean a portion of the 7th chapter of Jeremiah, in which
it is said :
Trust ye not in lying words, saying the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these. For
if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye tho-
roughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour;
if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,
and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after
other gods to soul hurt; then will I cause you to dwell in this
place, in the land that I gave to sour fathers for ever and ever.
In these words, MT lord, I believe are conveyed the duties
of the State and of the public as far u regards the govern-
ment of India.

Mr. Gladstone deprecated the exercise of indiscri-
minate vengeance:—
We feel that England has at this moment a great and
even an awlul vocation before her. She has got to admi-
nister strict and stern justice; but to administer it, as I
trust, even in a spirit of merry, which never can be sepa-
rated from that of justice ; and, above all, to recollect
that vengeance is not an instrument which we are per-
mitted to take into our hands. The cry that went out
from this country for vengeance was, I hope, but the
passion of the moment. Unhappily, we cannot fail to
perceive that the going forth of that cry from some portions
of the organs of public opinion in England at once pro-
duced throughout the civilised nations of Europe a strong
reaction in feeling unfavourable to us as regards the Indian
mutiny. And as to those Englishmen who are afraid that
there will not be enough blood spilt to wash out the
crimes of the mutineers, let me say that there cannot be
any ground for such a fear. The frightful atrocities that
have been perpetrated must necessarily kindle to the very
greatest heat the passions of those whose duty it is to put
down the rebellion in India. They do not require to be
inflamed and inspirited by missives sent from hence. In
fact, that severity may—even that rage which can be un-
derstood and accounted for—which can be palliated and
excused in those who have before them perhaps the reeking
remains of English women and children—those passions
which may be excusable there become odious and unna-
tural when they are cherished here.

Mr. Glad•ztone, in conclusion, made an eloquent
appeal on behalf of the society for which he sought
to interest his hearer:, and resumed his seat amidst
loud and long-continued chtering.
The resolution was seconded by the Rev. W.
Welch, unanimously adopted, and the meeting sepa-
rated.