The Express.
London, England, 1858-04-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL 22.

Tim question of the future government of India
ban degenerated so much into a question et party—
It has so long been the habit in all political circles to
dimes it with reference solely to the stability or the
instability of one Cabinet or another—that a large
number of our countrymen, we are afraid, have for-
gotten that the question really to be solved is, not
whether this or that meunre will secure a certain
number of votes in the House of Oemmelar, but
whether it will affect beneficially or *juries* the
great main of the people of India. Boas di►
every other question dwindles into a question of the
most pigmy proportions. It matters very little
whether this day six weeks Lord PALMLBSTON or
Mr. DIBRAILI is the leader of the House of Com-
mons ; but it matters greatly whether this day ten
years India is a dependency of England or of Ramie.
Now, we believe that as we have gone more and
more hotly into the strife of antagonistic Ms, we
have more and more lost sight of the fact that, after
all, this is not an English, bat an Indian question.
How little, for some time past, has been said or
written about the feelings of the people of India
Bat our Indian fellow-subjects are not merely to be
viewed in the concrete as so muck area of red on the
map of India. They are men with feelings and pee-
Mons, and opinions too ; and, though the millions
may be sunk in ignorance and apathy, until
roused by some intolerable wrong, there are
" upper ten thousands " in the Eastern as
in the Western world, who have • clear
and penetrating insight into matters which abet
their interests, and who, if need be, eau sway the
multitudes for evil or for good. It is a source of
unbounded gratitude that, up to the present time,
the hearts of the people at large have not been
turned against us. If the multitudes bad risen
against us, we must have been swept into the sea.
But that which the imputed mal-administration of

the East India Company has not effected, the con-
duct, in this present conjuncture, of the most vehe-
ment masers of the Company is going far to effect.
With sorrow and with shame, we declare our belief
that the very class which, some little time ago,
was denouncing the indifference of the governing
authorities to the welfare of the people, is
now exerting itself to alienate from the
people the hearts of their English masters.
The independent English of the large Residen-
tial towns have done, and are doing their best, to
diihise among their countrymen a suspicion and a
hatred of the natives of India, which, if not speedily
Checked, will result in a war of races which must of
necessity be followed by our expulsion from the
country.

We do not exaggerate. There is more real
danger in the diffusion of these feelings than in a
Bspoy revolt. The tocsin of alarm has already been
sounded in the capital-towns of India. The more
Intelligent and influential native claims are begin-
ning now to perceive that their rights are threatened
by the very men who, not long ago, were hounding
them on to avert those rights, if possible, to the
embarrassment and confusion of the governing body.
They are sensible of the vehement anti-native cry
which is arising from the independent Europeans at
the capitals and in the vicinity of the capitals.
They me that these Europeans, who were once so
willing to enlist them as their allies in all their
amanita upon Government, are now clamouring for
their exclusion from all offices of trust--are now
painting them in the blackest colours, and contend-
ing that henceforth they must be trodden down by
the iron heel of the dominant Feriughee. They see
that these men, once their pretended friends, are send-
ing their delegates to England. They me that these
men are inscribing upon their banners the words,
0 India for Ow English," and are endeavouring to
close the hearts of the generous people of Great
Britain against their dark-faced, white-garmented
hillow-subjects in the East. Seeing all this, they
believe that the time has come for them to end's-
your to counteract these evil influences. And they
are rousing themselves to action under the conviction
that the outcry now raised against the sat:iris of
India will affect all legislation consummated under
the influence of the present excitement.

This is no mere conjecture. We have before us,
as we writs, a striking illustration of the
present state of the native mind as wrought upon
by the truculent activity of the independent Euro-
peans of the large towns. A letter from Calcutta
informs us that a highly intelligent Brahmin, the
editor of • newspaper called the Hisao* Patriot, is
coming to England as the exponent of the views of
his influential fellow-countrysien in the Metropolis
of India. The journal which he edited had advo-
cated an edam' ced Liberalism, generally in opposi-
tion to the Government. He had been stimulated
In this caner of antagonism to the authorities by
the very use against whoes virulent hostility he is
now about to seek the protection of the British Go-
yernment for his countrymen. Though a Brahmin,
he is 'enticing upon the " black water," regard-
lees of caste, to protest against the cry of " India
"for the English." There is a growing feeling among
the natives of India that the new system which, it is
believed, we are now about to inaugurate, is to be •
system of exclusiveness of the most tyrannical kind
.—that we are about, not earcere subjects's, but 4.
Were staijortos. It is bellow:4d that henceforth the
natives of the cum' ry are to be owe a subject race
—to be more abject slaves than ever. It is believed
that the transfer of India from the Coinpany to the
Crown is a measure of retribution. We bare evi-
dence that the feeling, which we have spoken of as
existing at Calcutta, is existing with equal
at Bombay. Can anything be more
inevitable, than that the mints

THi . I

imperfooth inf‘rij

intelligent (though still.;
(dames of the Indian community, perceiving the feel-
ings of hostility which have grown up against them,
among Englishmen in India, should associate with
this knowledge the fact that England is alma to im-
pose upon the country a new told more stringent
yoke. The cry for vengeance is ringing in their
ears ; and they believe that the legislation of
the English Parliament, at rook a time as
this, is the natural response to it. And
now they are seeking protection of the Go-
vernment from the virulent animosity of the
very people whom, a year ago, under a strong
delusion, they had believed to be their beat friends.
It is hardly neesmery th►t we should draw any
inference from thews facts. The unaided intelligence
of every reader will assist hiss to his own conclu-
sions. It has been mid that not to legislate at once
will be to unsettle the public mind in India. Bat we
may be sawed that to legislate will be to unesttle
it tar mere iadurionsiy—far more fatally—
at a time when whatsoever we do will be
looked upon as the effect of temporary excitement,
renting itself le a great effort to crush the people
with the iron heel of despotic power. What, in
comparison with each a oensideration as this, is a
Parliamentary majority ea one side or the other?
The very tact that a question of votes is uppermost
in so many English minds is a convincing proof that
the present is not the time to inaugurate a new
system of government for India. But still more
emulsive on this point is the state of the public
mind in India; and we should grossly fail in our
duty if we omitted any opportunity cf calling public
attention to the feelings and opinions which are
now paramount in the breasts of our fellow•subjeots
in the But.

As long as Social Science is in its infancy it must
happen that some of the best endeavours of philan-
thropy will be more remarkable for the light they
strike out to guide fame effort than for their imam-'
diate success. Those who have worked hardest and
most intelligently to establish and maintain Ragged
Schools would, we believe, be prepared to confer
that the fruit of their labours is of this indirect
kind. An under tone of disappointment per-
vades the speeches and the reports heard at
the meetings of our Ragged School Societies, which
it requires all the aid of the sanguine curate and the
humorous barrister, ever available on these occasions
to counteract. It is not that good, and much good,
has not been done. But the result too little answers

to the number of the agents and the extensive appa-
ratus of means. If, however, we look to the peso-
tical knowledge which earnest men descending to
the depths of social degradation and working for
high purposes there have gained, as they could have
gained in no other way, we shall not say that a
single hour thus employed has been spent in vain.
It is very doubtful whether we should have had the
Industrial Schools Act of last session without the ex-
perience which Ragged Schools supplied. Under
the operation of that statute, with some necessary
amendments, we may expect to see the stream of
juvenile vagabondago which now flows through our
streets before long seriously diminished. That Act,
however, was devised from a legislative point of
view, and the aid of the Justice of the Peace is neces-

sary to its full application, whereas the founders of
Ragged Schools have rather approached their work
as Christians anxious to save their fellow-creatures

from a life of misery, ignorance, and guilt.
It is in this spirit that a number of gentlemen not
new to the enterprises of enlightened benevolence

have within these few weeks founded in the Easton-
road the "Boys' Home," an institution where destitute
boys may have domestic, educational, and moral advan-
tages not inferior to those which are elsewhere extended
to the convicted young offender. It will not be a
Reformatory, because it will have to do with those
who merely need trailing in the right way to pre-
vent their entering on the wrong one. At some of
the Reformatories in and near London unconvicted

boys are received and mixed with the others, but the
" Boys Home " being founded specially for such
stands alone. It is intended that the inmates shall
be clothed and fed, and taught to clothe and feed
themselves. As a rule, those who have desired
to benefit the boy of the Ragged School have found
him utterly unprepared for either domestic or me-
chanical occupation—his ways untidy, his garb tat-
tered, and his habits irregular. The boys at the
" Home" will be taught to be neat and orderly, and
be trained to the use of eyes, head, and hands. They
will learn to polish a boot, scour a floor, and clean a
window or a knife. A workshop is provided, where
they acquire the use of the axe, saw, hammer, and
plane ; while others will go out to be taught, return-
ing in the evening. One boy, an inmate of the
" Home," goer every morning to the joiners' workshop
of one of our largest builders ; another works at brick-
laying ; and a third is footboy at the house of a
swims. While the boys are thus trained to get
their living, and thus extend the usefulness of the
" Home" by lightening its burden., their minds are
not allowed to lie fallow. Daily instruction is given
in reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, and
also in the Bible.

The managers state that they will "carefully
" avoid the substitution of the ' Home' for the
" proper and natural guardianship of the parents."
Without such an assurance it might be doubted whe-
ther their good intentions could preserve them from
doing an immense amount of mischief. The divinely
appointed institution of the family is not to be super-
seded by the best deviaedof our inventions, and what-
ever diminishes the parents' sense of responsibility
is to be deprecated. The promoters of the
"Home," however, understand this thoroughly,
and have no thought of setting it above that home
which nature has provided. One of the boys who
was first received was born and brought up at Croy-
don, where both hie parents died of cholera. He
was 14 years of age, too old to go willingly into a
workhouse, and, having no relative who would re-
ceive him, wandered up to London, fell in with
other boys, begged, shivered, nestled under arches,
and generally led the life of the vagrants among
whom he was cast. Eventually he found his way
to the Field-lane Refuge, the active master of
which sent him to the " Home." Casual
help in this instance would have been of '
no
nee t but for some comparatively per-
maned stay and support the boy must have been
ruined. In another instance a gentleman's coach-
man died, leaving his widow helpless, with a son.
She had been a cook, but with the burden of the boy
could get no situation. A lady, who wished well to
the widow, but could not afford to take the entire
expense of the lad on herself, endeavoured to get
parochial help, but in vain, She was told that the
mother might enter "the home" with the boy. In
the end the lady prevailed on L'ut Committee to re-
ceive the lad temporarily, and obtained a situation
at 161. a year for the widow, who now` pays for her
eon's maintenance. Very soon he will be able to
rapport himself in the house, and no longer be a
harden M nay one.
These are specimens of the kind of work which it
is proposed to do at the " Boys' Home;" and looking
at the large number of families which must be
violently broken up every week in a population
of two millions and a half, we offer the came

A

•
our bgnmslahea Hundred/ can reenemheathedillieulty
they have experienced when trying to deal single-
handed with cases like the two we have instanced.
It would be easier, in London, to tell what to do with
a cub elephant, than with a stray boy whom, for
charity, you have taken upon your hands. Where
to put him—what to give him to do—how pro-
vide for him in the future, are perplexing questions.
There are •ot too many boys, nor is there too little for
them to do here, but the ways and channels of em-
ployment are unknown. The " Home " is designed
to be a central point for the patrons of poor boys
and the employers of labour; and should it under
wise management become such, we may hope that it
will be only the first of many similar institutions.