The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

V

in 1843, and bestowed upon him the gloriosa title of
" Friend of the Army "? Every class—the civilians whom
he put down to their proper place excepted—now calls out
loudly for him • and it is earnestly hoped that the people
of England will respond to that call, by sending out Lord
Ellenborough, as under a somewhat similar exigency they
formerly hailed by acclamation his gallant coadjutor, Sir
Charles Napier, as commander-inchief. Sir Charles's
favourite lieutenant, and--longo intereallo--successor, Sir
Colin Campbell, cannot get on with the civilian faction,
which now reigns at Government-house, and evinces the

utmost impat►ence at their feeble and vacillating measures.
lie is, however, powerless, his hands are tied, and he can
do little more than lament over and protest against a policy
which he cannot control—Cor. from Calcutta.
The financial condition of the Government would
appear to be on a par with its political stat us :

It could, indeed, scarcely be worse than it now is. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer is a Mr. Hugh Lushiugton,
a most amiable gentleman, but a very poor financier. He
has made three abortive efforts this year to obtain a loan.
In the month of December, last year, the Government was
aware that it would be necessary to raise money. In the
month of March they opened a loan at four and a half per
cent.; the capitalists offered them as much as they wanted
at five per cent., but they scorned the idea. About six
weeks later, necessity compelled them to sue for these very
terms ; but the market had become tighter, and there was
a sign of dirty weather on the horizon ; the money-interest
offered to buy into the new loan, provided the Government
would accept the Old Four per Cents. at par for halt' the
amount subscribed. Again they rejected. and again, too
late, were they compelled to accept the offer. But little
money, however, has come into the treasury. The Bank
of Bengal itself, governed de facto by a civilian committee,
has actually refused further advances on the security
of Government paper, and everywhere want of confidenoe,
a sense of insecurity, and all those lesser evils the natural
consequences of a feeble and incompetent administrar;-
are beginning to be manifested.—l 6.
Another writer, under date September 9, 1857,
observes :

lUD,

I am in hopes the next steamer will bring oat a lot of
bullion, and this will relieve matters a good deal. Com-
pany's fonr•per cent. paper has been soli at thirty-two per
cent. discount; the niggers in the Bazaar fancying the
Company's rej is over, are getting rid of the Company's
paper as fast as they can; and well they may think so after
seeing the insane acts of the Government: they may be
right, too; but I hope there will be a strong Queen's
Government.

Another letter from tha same writer, dated Sep-
tember 10, 1837, says :

Nothing new to tell you since 1 wrote yesterday, except-
ing that you may conceive what our real position is before
Delhi, when 1 tell you that four-fifths of the mutineers are
intrenehed outside the city, and that they attack us in
rear and flank just as they like, and though always licked,
yet their numbers are so great that they do not feel the loss
of men, while every victory weakens us. The brutes have
lots of provisions, and sally out and collect money from
all the country round, and we cannot prevent them. Delhi,
you will see, will not fall into our hands before the cold
season. has just come in with news that the irregu-
lars that murdered Major Holmes and others have come
back and murdered Dickson, the opium agent near Bet-
fish, and are on their way to Mootiharry. 1 hope there
are some Ghoorkas at Aloortiharry to stop them, or there
will be the devil to pay iu Tirhoot. No doubt great ad-
vantages will be taken of the Government proclamation,
and incite many to join the rebels who would be otherwise
deterred, under the impression that by scheming and
cunning they may evade the gallows or punishment alto-
gether, even should the Government eventually prove the
victors.

The feeling of the Europeans in India is unmistake-
ably in favour of the rebellion being a national move-
mant. Tho correspondent of the Daily News, alluding
t) the surrender of Cawnpore, corroborates that re-
markable statement, that Nana Sahib had offered to
spare the lives of those who had nothing to do with
Lord Dalhousie's Government :

From this it wonld appear that that nobleman's grasping
policy had not only alarmed but exasperated the nati►es of
India, and that the present insurrection is traceable to his
tenure of office. The following facts are certain—that it
has been brewing for some years past, subsequent to the
annexation of the Punj:iub; that the annexation of Onde
brought matters to a crisis; that it is a Mahomedan re-
volt; that the annexation of Oude placed a weapon in the
hands of the Mahoinedans which they used with terrible
effect ; that the greased cartridge was the screw by which
the Mahomedans worked upon the more ignorant Hindoos ;
that it is a general re►olt of the whole country. Messrs.
}teadon, Halliday, and Co , will of course deny the latter
premises, as it tells with so much effect against the fore-
sight and capacity of the civil service; but the general
risings in Behar, the Azimghur, 'Senates, Cawnpore,
Rn-
hilcunul, Agra, Delhi, and Allahabad districts, place the
fact beyond a doubt. Symptoms of disaffection have
broken out in the Bombay and Madras armies ; to your
correspondents !at those Presidencies I leave the duty of
supplying you with details, merely stating that ftnm all
we learn the mutinous feeling appears to be spreading in
Boinbay.—Cur. D.N.—Calcutta.
Another writer, under the same date, makes some
general observations of interest upon the position of
affairs :

The insurrection is holding its ground, and even ex
Minding it, the large district of lioruckpore haring most

"IriE g

unaccountably been abandoned to the rebels. The work
of plunder is going on all over the upper, and over great
part of the lower, provinces of the Bengal Presidency.
Articles of food have risen to exorbitant prices, and, as
large tracts of laud are left uncultivated, famine appears
imminent.

_ .....
We still consider ourselves safe in Calcutta, but frightful
tragedies have been enacted at Cawnpore, Jhansi, Hisser,
and other places, particulars of which are now coming to
light. The mind is scarcely able to compass the horrors
to which our countrymen and countrywomen have been
subjected, and the heart sickens at the recital of the
wholesale massacres. Men made to sit down in a group
and deliberately shot down by the sepoys, in the presence
of their wives and children, who had previously been torn
away from them, and these women and ebildren afterwards
collected in a large hall aud slaughtered by butchers and
executioners, headed by a few stpoys; children literally
torn to pieces, or crucified against the walls, or flung in
the air and caught at the end of the bayonet. Then the
dead and the dying heaped up together, and two days later,
when they were thrown into wells, some were still alive,
but they were thrown along with the dead. Such are
some of the incidents of the Cawnpore massacres. About
a thousand persons perished in that station.
Painful aud revolting as are our feelings at the thought
of these atrocities, they become more so when we reflect
that these disasters have been brought about by the dis-
honesty, the rapacity, and the incompetency of our own
rulers. Religious prejudices are not the primary cause
of the insurrection. They are one of the means em-
ployed to stir up a disaffected people who bad no watch-
worJ to unite them. The real cause will be found in our
misgovernment of the country, in the heavy taxation laid
on the people, and which could be levied only by means
of torture; in the corrupt and inefficient state of our
courts of justice ; in our police, who, instead of protecting
the people, plunder and oppress them ; and the rapidity
with which the country has been wrenched from our
hands is to be ascribed to the fact that our hold of it has
ever been weak and precarious, resting as it did on im•
pressions and prestige, not on actual strength ; for years
past the whole of the native army has been in a mutinous
state, but the Government here and the Directors of the
East India Company have always concealed the real state
of things, and trained all officials to this work of conceal.
ment and falsification. Each man was trying to fill his
own pockets, trusting the edifice would stand his time.
Bold spirits, honest men, have from time to time risen
to denounce the real state of the country, and warned the
Home Government of the impending danger—the Hon.
Frederick Shore, in 1830, Lord Metcalte, some years later,
and Sir Charles Napier, when commander-in-chief here in
1849 and 18.59—but the whole strength of the East India
Company was raised to discredit their reports, and in this
they sucoecded but too well.
If this country is to be saved, the East India Company
must be swept away ; for those whose rapacity could never
resist temptation (despoiling even women of their jewels,
as was again lately done by Lord Dalhousie with the Nag•
pore Bailees), and who were unable to grapple with lesser
difficulties than those which beset the Government now,
are not the men to save the country, and the resources of
troops and money which are on their way from England
are sure to be frittered away unless a wholesome change
takes place in the direction of affairs. Sir Colin Can't).
bell has to fight with the officials as well as with the
rebels, and the former have already so harassed him that
he feels ill. Many important posts, both civil and m►li
tars, are still held by incompetent and dishonest men,
and you may be prepared to receive accounts of fresh dia.
asters, unless fortune favours us more than we deserve.

In the city of Calcutta there is a general absence
of all sense of security. The English residents were
sending their families home. One writer gives us
the following instance of the singular indifference of
the authorities to the safety of the city:—

A few days ago a statement appeared in the editorial
columns of the Englishman to the effect that 1,000 stand
of arms bad been purchased by a native in Calcutta.
The statement attracted the attention of the Government,
and Mr. Wauchope, as Commissioner of the Police, was
directed to report on the matter. He did report that
no such sale had taken place, and that so largo a sale
of arms could not have escaped the observation of the
police. This off hand way of treating the matter was
not considered satisfactory, and he was directed to make
inquiry and then report. He sent in a second report,
stating that there was no foundation for the statemetit
wade in the Englishman. Somehow or another this did not
exactly satisfy Lord Canniug, or it may have been that he
was desirous of visiting with has displeasure the originator
of the report. The report was traced to Mr. A. G. 11—,
the gentleman who succeeded Mr. C— in charge of the
Military Orphan Press ; he was called upeu to account for
having assisted in spreading the report, and he gave OA his
authority our friend Mr. D—, and from him, at last, Lord
Canning ►as learned the truth of a matter which escaped
the vigilance, or perhaps was concealed by the treachery,
of the pollee. Messrs. T. E. T. and Company a short
time ago received a consignment of 1,000 Enfield rides,
complete with ail apparatus. D--, hearing of this, went
to purchase four of them, and was then told that the whole
1,000 had been sold togethi rto a native. lie talked about
it as a strange circumstance, and an it got into the columns
of the Englishman, and to the knowledge of every one in-
terested in the fact except the Commissioner of Police,
whose business it was to know it.

No one can be surprised at a sense of insecurity
existing when the sale of arms among natives is
unrestricted. Another writer, speaking of the suf-
ferings of our people, observes :
Yon will, no doubt, read long accounts of the terrors of
this, thegmateat and moat sanguinary rebellion ever known.
You will read of the hardships and sufferings of Poor

fugitives, men, women, and children, who are bunted
like wolves or foxes from one cover to another; but I
defy any production of pen or pencil ever to give an
idea of ►he actual sufferings of those who escaped by
flight. Some, finding refuge in the tops of large trees,
were shot down like rooks; others, who lay in holes and
caverns, were drawn forth and put to a slow death by
lopping off first a leg, then an arm, then the nose, then
bursting out the eyes; after which the further operations
of the brutal murderers cannot be described. Some
persons have escaped altogether, but so worn out by
starvation and fatigue that death must shortly terminate
their lingering existence. The thermometer in the fort
at Allahabad was 118 degrees in the shade from the 10th
to the 30th of June. l'ut your foot in water at that, and
think what it is to breathe into your lungs a fluid of the
same degree. The rain in July, and up to this, has cooled
the air, but troops in camp have suffered unparalleled
hardships. I accompanied General Havelock's column in
its first march from Allahabad to Cawnpore, end then
oniy did I estimate rightly a soldier's sufferings. The
rain fell in torrents, and the troops, wet to the skin, were
obliged to encamp in a swamp without bedsteads, lying
down on a piece of oiled canvas. The general himself
was just as badly off. He is a small man, with grey hair
and lively energetic manner. What he does, he does at
once ; there is no indecision, no fumbling—he forms his
column into shape in a second, and had he only cavalry
and horse artillery, I think he would drive his men
through a stone wall; but 1 have seen those confounded
bullocks which draw his cannon become frantic, rushing
at the drivers and scattering all around in confusion.
The rebels have horses--Government horses—to their

guns, and can do much to harass us by the rapidity of
their movements. If the kitmagar had not announced
tiriin (lunch), I believe I would never stop. I will end
by one line more after I despatch a biscuit. The biscuit
is done for, and I now finish. The Ranee of dhansi has
embodied 12,000 fighting men against us. The Rajah, or
one of the Rajahs of Ruudfecund, has embodied 14,000
men, but not yet declared against us. Now, depend upon
it, others will do likewise unless a heavy blow is soon
struck.

Among all the enormous treachery with which
this insurrection is stamped, it is well to rescue an
instance of filelity, however humble. An " English
Lady " writes to the Times this week that she and
another English lady w're rescued at Aurungabad
and taken to Ahmednuggur by one Boman Bucksh,
a sower of the 3rd Hyderabad Cavalry. The mutiny of
his corps occurred on the 12th June. Booran had told
these ladies, "Fear nothing, sleep quietly, and the
moment danger approaches I will be with you,"—
and well he kept his word. At eleven o'clock that
night Booran returned to them, and said they must
prepare to leave, as the cavalry were again arming.
We leave the English laby to tell the story in her
own words .

My husband, hastily commending us to his care, left
us to make preparations to man the bridge between the
cavalry and infantry lines, and Booran, placing us in a
country cart, and covering its open front and back with
sheets, in the fashion practised by the families of Mossul-
mans when travelling, armed himself, and, mounting his
horse, proceeded at our side to a place some twenty miles
distant, where we halted for a time. We continued the
journey for several successive days, till we reached Ahmed-
nuggur, and he endeavoured the whole time, by the most
vigilant attention and kindness, to lessen the discomtbrts
of the road. In the course of the four or five days I
several times offered him a bag of rupees, which I begged,
nay, besought him to take ■nd use as freely for his own
wants as for ours, but I could only persuade him to take
very small sums from time to time, as they were required
for our expenses. Again and again in the course of our
subsequent intercourse, knowing him to be much em-
barrassed by a large and unavoidable addition to his usual
expenses. I begged him with great earnestness to allow
me to relieve his necessities, er even (as I found it impos-
Bible to induce him to listen to this proposal) to accept
any sum he might require for a time, and till, possibly, he
might be in better circumstances; he said it would be a
" great disgrace " to him to accept money hom me, and
that he only desired " that his name might be good "
among the English and neither by tears nor entreaties
could I ever persuade him to change his mind. I had
some difficulty in inducing him even to accept as a memo-
rial a ring of little value which I chanced to have on my
finger when 1 bade hin► farewell, but the tears streamed
from his eyes when I told him I felt I owed him more
than I ever could repay, and that to the latest hour of my
life I should consider him one of my most valued friends.
Since the above circumstance occurred Booran's house

hrs been burnt down, as it is supposed, by some one
inimical to the English. Up to the time I left India—
now about two months ago —this good and truehearted
man had not been promoted, but I hope and trust he may
be so ere long, for surely both policy and gratitude would
suggest that in times like these no instance of fidelity and
attachment on the part of the Indian soldier to the Eng-
lish should fail to be both publicly and privately recognised
and rewarded.

Several touching letters have appeared from the
martyrs at Cawnpore. Those from Lieutenant-
Colooel and Mrs. Ewart are especially aff,:cting. Poor
Mrs. Ewart writes on the 28th May

Yesterday we were in expectation of news from Delhi,
but none arrived. All depends upon the c nomanderio-
chief striking a successful blow there ; but we hear nothing
sud this suspense is dreadful. You see, my dear people

~T

that we are living face to face with great and awful realities
—life and property most insecure, enemies within our
camp, treachery and distrust everywhere. We can scarcely
believe in the change which has so suddenly suspended all
the pleasant repose and enjoyment of life. Here we are
almost in a state of siege, with dangers all around us—
some seen, some hidden. We can only put our trust
in God, and try to maintain an even and tranquil
spirit to go through all our trials and perform all our
duties as long as God sees fit to assign us any.
• •

--- -
On the 31st she writes to her sister in a spirit
breathing the purest piety and resignation :
The crisis is apparently near, and all we can do is to
pray for courage and strength to meet it. Dear A—, I
am so grieved to have such sad news to send you, but it is
useless to shut our eyes to the dreadful probabilities. We
must meet them, and implore our Father in Heaven to
enable us to keep up a firm and tranquil spirit. I cannot
write to dear Harry this time. If I am spared another
fortnight I hope it may be to give brighter accounts.
Dearest A—, we cannot hope to weather the storm with-
out disaster ; so let us be prepared. I cannot answer your
dear, kind letter. It gives us immt nse comfort and satis-
faction to have your assurance of kind intentions with
regard to our poor little ones. If we live over this crisis
we shall say more about it. If these are my last words
to you, my dearest sister, be assured that we think of you
with most grateful and affectionate feelings, and that we
consign to your charge our dear boy with the utmost con-
fidence that you will ever be a mother to him and do your
very best for him. My sweet one here will share whatever
is my fate, most likely, and that I trust to our Almighty
Father, without venturing to look forward beyond the
present hour.

On the same day Colonel Ewart writes :
lithe troops should break out here, it is not probable
that I shall survive it. lily post and that of my officers
being with the colours of the regiment, in the last extremity
some or all of us must needs be killed. If that should be
my fate, you and all my friends will know, I trust, that I
die in the execution of my duty. And you and my brothers
will be kind to E— and my children. Ido not wish to
write gloomily, but there is no use disguising the fact that
we are in the utmost danger ; and as I have said, if the
troops do mutiny, my life must almost certainly be sacri-
ficed. But Ido not think they will venture to attack the
intrenched position which is held by the European troops.
So I hope in God that E— and my child will be saved.
And now, dear A—, farewell. If under God's Providence
this be the last time I am to write to you, I entreat you to
forgive all I have ever done to trouble you, and to think
kindly of me. I know you will be everything a mother
can be to my boy. I cannot write to him this time, dear
little fellow. Kiss him for me.