The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-20 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY MAY 20.

Now or never is the time for the friends of India!
Reform to be up and doing, fur last night Lord Joint I
ItussELL told the House of Commons that on Fri- I
day, the 3rd of June, the President of the Board of
Control, Sir CIiAttLES Wuou, would state the views
of the Cabinet with regard to the future government
of India. Now or never, we repeat, is the time for
bringing public opinion to bear upon the question at
issue, and to put the chief facts of the case before
England and the Parliament, that the present oppor-
tunity may not be lost for doing the greatest good
possible, under the circumstances, for the 100
millions of our fellow-subjects in Ilindostan.
The one great evil of all to be upset is the sys-
tem of double Government—and the one great series
of facts to be urged in support of such change is the
proved impoverishment of the natives of India—and
the neglect of our national duties—under the opera-
tion of our existing system.
If it be said that the natives could not use their
natural wealth without our instruction, it is neces-
sary only to point to the products of their industry
before we went among them. It is necessary to go
back into history to estimate these; for the arts and
manufactures of India have been decaying ever since
we landed there. The best ships of a former age
were t.o be seen there; and the beet carving in wood
and ivory; the best shawls and carpets; the best
fabrics in silk and cotton ; the choicest filagree
work, and embossing in metals, and inlaying in
wood. The carved stonework of their temples and
hewn caverns are the most astonishing specimens of
skill and industry yet extant, whatever we may
think of their purpose and their taste. Damascus
was rivalled by India in steel weapors ; and its
guns of all orders are amazing to Europeans even
now. Its cities contained each a nation ; and the
temples, palaces, and tanks, were for the accom-
modation of nations and their rulers. Whole provinces
which ure now dry and desolate were once fertile as
a garden; and where the tiger and the wolf now
make their lair, there were marble palaces, such as
Europe saw only in fairy tales. We were proud of
a country which had once known splendour like this,
and where many of the ancient arts were still alive
and productive. We professed to intend to arrest
their further decay, and to renovate the condition of
the inhabitants by our protection, which should give
them peace and the benefits of European civilisation.
We proposed to give them material prosperity, edu-
cation, law and justice, and a better security for
tranquillity and content than they had ever known.
It is necessary now for us to ascertain how far
we have failed in our promises, and why.
The first in the list of blessings that
they were to derive from us was peace.
It was with this intention that Lord IVEL-
LESLEY'S subsidiary system was established.
He found the tribes and nations perpetually
fighting about successions and other local feuds, and
united only by their hatred of us as foreign intruders,
and his policy was to aid in the settlement of such
quarrels, and to use each occasion for making entai-
-1 diary to us each state with which he interfered. The
• grandeondition of this system was, that each state
should preserve its native rulers, religion, and cus-
toms; and his full expectation was that peace would
thus be secured, and that the condition of the iiiha-
bitants would rise under such a reign of tranquillity.
To judge of the event (without going into a history
of the causes of such a result), we need look back too
further than the period of the existing charter. Of
that vast area of territory, ten times as large as
France, little more than one-third now belongs
to our subsidiaries or allies; and we have
possessed ourselves of the rest : and, out of
the nineteen years of the present charter,
fifteen have been passed in war. Moreover, by these
wars we have brought into our empire new and war-
like races to disturb whatever tranquillity had before
been obtained, and to defer indefinitely the chance
of peaceable consolidation. So much for our pro-
mise of peace.
We promised plenty. To secure this, a solvent
and prosperous condition of government is indispen-
sable; but there bas been a deficit in the Indian
treasury every year but one since 1838. The im-
provement and happiness of the people have not
been promoted by government loans and debts to the
amount of fifteen millions and a half. Lord Area-

LAND proposed great things in the way of such public
works as should encourage the industry and revive
the welfare of the people; but, instead of construct-
ing the promised roads, bridges, harbours, tanks, and
systems of irrigation, he went to war—into a war
which Englishmen can scarcely endure to think of.
To this hour, the outlay on public works has been
only a forty-second part of the Government expendi-
ture ; and of this, almost the whole has been given
to the north-western provinces. The Court of Ditto-
tors inform us that "there has been a diminution in
the total receipts from land in the old provinces of
Bengal since 1843.44;" and certainly no one can be
surprised to hear it. In the Madras Presidency the
people are wretchedly poor, the land of little value,
and cultivation kept up only by forced methods, the
inhabitants being unwilling to cultivate it on any
terms. In Bombay, "the receipts have fallen off,
and the country generally," we are told, "is not
pruperous." From a member in the Council of that
Presidency we learn that India "is verging to the
lowest ebb of pauperism ;" and that the payments to
Government are made by the inhabitants pawning or
selling their personal ornaments, and even their cattle,
furniture, and tools—that is, the capital of the coun-
try is encroached upon to pay the taxes. It was
he same officer who told a Parliamentary Committee,
five years since, that the condition of the cultivators
in India was "greatly depressed, and he feared, de-
clining." The aristocracy among the natives are
sinking out of sight; the race of native gentry has
almost everywhere disappeared, and the peasantry are
becoming reckless through ruin. Every few years
a famine occurs; and Government spends, in hopeless
efforts to keep the people alive, the money which
would have made roads to the granaries, to the ports,
and to the surplus of happier provinces. Where food
should have been passing, in exchange for other com-
modities, the way was strewn with the gaunt corpses
of half millions of people starved to death.
We promised these people good laws, and a sound
administration of justice, and the Act of 1833 was
supposed to provide fur the redemption of our pledge.
A costly provision was made for the purpose, and
we sent over Mr. MACAULAY to make a code.
The charter is expiring, and India has obtained no-
thing of the sort. Mr. MACAULAY'S code would not
bear examination. There is no occasion to dwell on
its unmanageable defects. It was bandied about
among the authorities till 1848, and it is law
shelved, having operated only to impose a heavy tax
on the resources of India. The administration of lite
law is worse than the state of the law itself. The
topic is a large one. It in enough to refer to the
character of Indian Judges u to capacity and know-
ledge, and to the notorious facts of the heavy ex-
penises and uncertain issue of all appeals to the law
by natives. And then ensues the question, how
society is to improve is civilisation and morals when
any social injuries are considered more endurable than
the penalties of seeking redress?
We proposed to give India a police. British offi-
cials themselves tell us that our police in India are
no protection, but a mere vice and oppression. The
criminals are found to be the lesser evil of the two.
When we think of the gang robberies of Bombay, of
Thuggee, of the infanticide, and of the wholesale
ship-burning of recent years, we want no other evi-
dence that India is as yet without police protection.
We promised education. When we first set foot in
India, and for long afterwards, every Hindoo village
had its school. We broko up the local associations
which were so remarkable a feature of native life,
and the schools with them; and we have given no-
thing in their stead, except in certain favoured spots.
There is not a Government school in all the 140,000
square miles which constitute the Madras territory;
and out of a population of 22,000,000, Government