The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-24 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 24.

Tintas i only one way in which the Indian
.ques-
tion can be satisfactorily dealt with; and that to the
way first proposed in the columns of the Daily News
months ago, and now supported by all those who
earnestly desire tho welfare of our empire in the
East. The plan is, to pass a Continuanee Act for one,
two, or three years. Such an Act is all that the
Legislature or the public is ripe for. It can serves.
good purpose to dispute about where the fault lies
but it is certain that the term at which the Charter
Act for the Government of India fell to be renewed—
the only time at which it was possible to legislate
comprehensively and systematically for the future
government of Anglo-India, has come upon us, and
found us as unprepared as if the very day
and moment of its advent had not been
certainly known beforehand. The twin corporations
which rule India—the Directors
and the Board of Control in

resuscitations of the two kings of Brent-
ford in the "Rehearsal," sitting in one chair, smell-
ing at one rose—are of course inexcusable. They
have either been idly neglecting their duty, or dis-
honestly keeping quirt in the hope of smuggling
through some jobbing office measure. But the
gentle English public is scarcely less to blame than
they are. The House of Commons has ab-
sorbed the far greater part of the real
authority of the State ; the general public has
successfully asserted the right and power to control
the House of Commons. The home public of Eng-
land are the real wielders of the destinies of India.
Whore the power is, there of right and necessity
must be the responsibility. The general public of
England, and every man in it who can give a vote for
a member of Parliament, or speak a word thet can
influence the opinion of others, is more or less re-
sponsible for the future good government of our
Indian dominions; yet how many ten-pounders have
ever troubled their heads about India ? How many
of those whom the Reform Act of 1831 made the real
rulers of England have taken the trouble to qualify
them for the discharge of the duty they owe to this
Important and interesting dependency ?
At the eleventh—we might almost say at the
twelfth—hour, however, the English public seems to
he awakening to a sense of what it owes to India. As-
sociations in London, and meetings in Manchester,
are symphathetie of a desire to make up fee lost
time. It is not, perhaps, the most creditable of po-
siti3ns for a nation to place itself in, that of asking
for more thus to keen how it can best. set about a

task it ought sow to be Weeny performing i but the
most honest way is boldly to incur the ridisule, if
any is to arias, tether than to act unadvisedly, or to
connive at injustice in others. Whatever taunts
may be uttered, the English people will, it is to he
hoped, cling fast to the resolve not to allow
Ministers to hurry any crude, narrow, or half under-
stood measure for the government of Anglo-India
that may have been got up by mutual concessions of
the India House and the Board of Control, through
Parliament this session, but compel them to rest sa-
tiated with a brief prolongation of the powers of the
actual government in order to gain time for matured
and well-informed legislation. The necessary time
having been gained, the great, the unvarying aim of
those who mho upon them to direct and guide public
opinion on this important question ought to be to
avoid on the one hand any under-estimate of the
magnitude, complexity, and difficulty of the task
they have undertaken ; on the other, all passionate
sad imaginative exaggerations of the faults and
short-comings of past Angle-Indian Governments.
British India certainly is not, and never has been,
governed in a manner that this country has any
right to be proud of. It is so palliation of this to say
that India is at least as well governed under the
British sceptre as it ever has been. If not governed
as well as it can be, this country which has usurped
its government cannot stand innocent is the eye of
reason and humanity. But, admitting this truth
to its full extent, we must still proclaim our
eonviction that India has gained on the whole
by falling under British sovereignty. India, it is said,
is poor ; it imports not one twenty-fifth part of our
British produce and manufactures that North
America and the %Vest Indies do ; its peasantry, and
the bulk of its population, are wretchedly poor.
Granted, but this was the case even to a greater
extent before India became ours. A foolish idea still
prevails that India was rich when invaded by NUM
Sion, because he found immense treasures at Delhi.
He found there all the wealth that the
ktg
rn Govement had extorted from its subjects,
them destitute. Delhi had drained India ink, tie
invader plundered Delhi; India has never boom
so thoroughly lacked under English sway.
Again, our police and judicial establishments
in India airs wretchedly inefficient and cor-
rupt. Bat not more corrupt than under the
thousand petty Governments that arose fungus-
like on the ruins of the Mogul Empire, and
which have, one after *nether, been absorbed into our
dominions ;, not more inefficient than the ephemeral
domination of Princes vexed and harasesd by suc-
cessive swarms of predatory Affghans, Mahrattu,
Pindarees, and so forth, with all the anseropidou
adventurers, European and other, in their pay.
The truth is, that though ninety-nine Indians in
the hundred are little better off than
rit=, and
though
44
eourts•an
" •
ca
a is
, the siiper-
and
2211
B4se
that India has weaved under
des t, the new branches of industry
that have root there, and the new ideas that
have been dialed, have prepared it for social and
civil reform, of dek at any farmer period it would
have beets weinesegithis. It is not alone
that the of res strong and paramount
ghss a power capable of carrying re-
forms into est; the old saheb prejudices of
Data born Assn shaken, ingliel his andossalated
hero sad there; the English nessantile eased that
honesty is the best policy, WHIM regvaler accounts
are indispensable to Wes* erindaor, ha bre'
preached, if it has not always been practised. These
are the substructures upon which it must be sought
to raise a bitter form of Government for India.
The first and dominant evil from which India has
lobe relieved is the pedantry of its aureate Govern-
ment. The English conquered Indiaby emancipat-
ing themselves from the older pedantry of England.
The CLIVU and WARBILN lIASTINOS set at aught
English conventional rules of civil policy and
strategy, and the Company confirmed their conquests
by introducing a counting-house precision and accu-
racy into all departments of public business, especially
of finance. But with time an Anglo-Indian
pedantry has grown up, worse, if pos-
sible, than oar old English pedantry. The
Government of India hes become a mere system of li
book keeping sad letter-writing. Everything must I
be put on paper, and while numberless functionaries I
are scribbling business falls into arrest. Years elapse
before the reports and despatches relative to any
one piece of business can be completed, and in the
meantime the business itself is at a stand. To make
all this worse and worse we have the mischievous
system of double government.
Again public business has become a monopoly in
the hands of a narrow and not the most competent
claw. A comparatively few Europeans engross all
the principal charges, and begin to enjoy place and
precedence before their years or their knowledge of
the country qualifies them for their discharge. Mean-
while the influence and talents of the native aristo-
cracy of birth and property, and the intelligent
half caste class, are allowed to vegetate and run
to seed unused, and bitter feelings of disaffection be-
cause of this neglect allowed to spring up in the
breasts of these closers. The neglected and despised
natives too naturally adopt a low standard of honour
and integrity in their feelings from being hall recon-
ciled by custom to the supercilious trectment of the
governing race.
It is by • dispassionate, calm review of the actual
condition of Indian society, and by cautious but &ar-
eas action upon the results of this review, that