The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-13 00:00:00

INDIA.

CALCUTTA, Jan. 8.
If I were asked what is at the present moment the
most pressing of India's wants, I should say the want
of timber. It is as difficult to realise this fact in a
country one-third of which is supposed to be coveted
with forests as it was lately to believe that our
Eastern Empire is so under-populated as to render
the immigration of Chinese and others desirable.
But the want of wood is more and more felt every
day, and the country is scoured by contractors eager
to supply railways and other public works. Take
the one item of railway sleepers. India is a country
where damp, dry-rot, and white ants consume the
best sleeper in six years. For the past ten years
all over the country we have been busy in laying
down new lines, and all attempts to use iron or
stone sleepers have proved unsatisfactory. We
have still nearly 2,000 miles to complete, besides the
*numerous feeders and branches which are being
constructed. Creosoting has been tried, but it is
doubtful if that is of any advantage. At this mo-
ment the railway might be open to within 12 miles
of Delhi right from Calcutta, instead of only to
Agra, if sleepers could be procured. And what
will Government and the shareholders say to the
cost of renewing the sleepers, which, on the Cal-
cutta and Delhi line alone, in estimated, at present
prices, at £130,000 a year ? Except in Burmah,
where Lord Dalhousie strictly shut up the forests,
so that now, under a good system of conservancy,
they yield perennial supplies, we have cleared
the forests away wherever we have gone. In-
deed, the old rules for grants of waste land insisted
on a certain extent of clearing every year under
pain of forfeiture. The result is that wood is not
to be got in our own territories, unless in very in-
accessible places, and timber from the north of
Europe begins to figure largely in our imports. Not
only so, but by clearing away trees, especially on
the sloping ridges of hills, we have made the cli-
mate in some places rainless, and in others, because
their is no belt of wood to catch and keep the
periodical rain, the district has become barren, just
as Palestine is, and from similar causes. With
some degree of thoughtlessness, Lord Canning gave
away to Sir Jung Bahadoo r, of Nepaul, our finest
forests, which he has closely shut up as a hunting
ground; and in another case, after the late Viceroy
had promised a district, containing our next best
forests, to a Mussulman chief for loyalty in 1857,
he had to submit to the humiliation of asking it
back when he found that there was no other well-
wooded tract in the North-Western Provinces. The
waste land rules provide for the State reserving
wastes covered with marketable timber or good as
grazing grounds. Assam, where, under Lord Can-
' ning's rules, there has been the greatest rush of
capitalists to purchase land, is covered with small
wood, which the Bengal Government will allow the
settlers to clear away. If this is done on the ridges
of the hills, as well as elsewhere, there is reason to

fear that the physical character of the country will
gradually deteriorate from the want of belts of
forests to collect and utilize the periodical rains.
All these considerations have left the Government
of India seriously to consider how it may best con-
serve and extend the few timber tracts left, with.
out interfering with what is so desirable as the
spread of settlers and the clearance of really un-
healthy jungle in the plains. There is a conserva-
tor of forests in every province of India except
Bengal, and one is now about to be appointed there.
Dr. Brandis who has done so well during the last
seven years in British Burmab, the country of the
teak tree, is now in consultation with the Public
Works Department as to a general system of con-
servancy for all India.
A roost deplorable story has just been made pub-
lic by a court-martial held at Mooltan. Lieutenant
Jackson, of the Engineers, was stationed at Dora
Ismail Khan, on the Punjab frontier. On the 25th
of June last he was robbed of some silver plate,and
suspected his servants. Not one would confess, even
when sworn on the Koran, and the master took ad-
vantage of their superstitious belief to call in a Mus-
sulman priest, who administered to each the ordeal
of rice. It is supposed that fear will so influence
the guilty person that ho will not be able to chew
a grain of rice. All the servants passed the test ex-
cept a table attendant named Munnoo Khan. He
w4s pronounced the thief accordingly, and urged
to confess. He refused, and was tied up to a tree,
where, when ho had received a few blows with a
cane, he began to abuse his master. Jackson—l
take the statements in his own defence—very much
irritated, himself gave the man 10 blows, when the
cane sprit, and he sent for switches, which were cut
from'a neighbouring date-tree. He confesses that,
with intervals of a few minutes, the man was
flogged for three-quarters of an hour. The man re-
ceived at least 50 blows, when Jackson ordered the
flogging to cease, and went into his house. Work-
men were repairing it, and their noise, he says,
prevented him from being aware that the flogging
was continued by one of his servants in his ab-
sence. Some neighbours saw the occurrence, and
sent for Major Nicene, the Deputy Commissioner,
on whose arrival Munnoo Khan was released and
sent to the hospital, where he died in 10 days.
After much doubt as to how Jackson and one of his
servants should be tried, he was brought before a
court-martial, which sat at Moultan from the 12th
to the 23d of December. Colonel Boyle, of her
Majesty's 89th, presided ; Mr. Scoble, a Bombay
barrister, assisted the accused, and a military offi
cer in civil employment prosecuted. Jackson was
tried on a charge of murder, under the Penal Code.
His fate hinges on the medical evidence. In nis
defence he expresses deep contrition, declaring
that he meant to do no more than to give the
man a " sound thrashing" and turn him out of
his service. The majority of the medical witnesses
prove that the man was diseased from smoking a
drug known as " churns" and from bronchitis at
the time he was flogged. Otherwise he was a
healthy, muscular fellow, whom flogging with date
switches for three-quarters of an hour at intervals
would not have fatally affected. Others, again,
considered the bronchitis the direct result of the
flogging. I doubt if a court-martial is a fit tribunal
to try such a case as this, or to decide so difficult a
question on conflicting medicaldeivaidneonteoe.nlyThe case
because
has excited great interest
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it is without a precedent in India. It is a mistake,
made and propagated by new-comers or casual
visitors to India, to suppose that Anglo-Indians are
in the habit of beating or abusing the natives.
Those who are guilty of this are young men on their
first arrival, who are ignorant of the language, hot-
blooded, and irritated by the climate. They soon
discover their mistake, for no servant as' ill remain
with a master who is harsh or unjust to him, while
the natives are not slow to have recourse to the
equal laws and courts for protection. Equally
mistaken is the supposition that English gentlemen
in India are in the habit of calling the natives
" niggers." In all my experience I have never
heard the expression, either in the interior or in the
Presidency towns, from the mouth of any one who
had bLen six months in the country. Mutual
respect and goodwill are essential between master
and servant in India as well as elsewhere, and an
ordinary amount of careful housekeeping will check
the pilfering tendencies of the latter till they are
no worse than those of Enalish servants at least.
New-comers, moreover, generally engage one of
that disreputable class of menials, who, turned
out of all respeotable employment, and not un•