The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-07 00:00:00

eocletnastical,lhave for fifty years been reserved to
men freshly imported from England. The Duke of
Wellington may have been moved by the second
feeling when, after the half-battu mutiny, he ad-
vised that no Company's servant should ever be
Commander-in-Chief ; but her Majesty's Govern-
ment were not. They were perfectly willing when
they found men like Lord Metcalfe, to entrust to
them the most valuable British dependencies; but
they abstained from giving them what might seem
the natural prize of their lives. No Indian was
appointed Governor-General, or Commander.in•
Chief, or Metropolitan, or, with an exception more
apparent than real, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. The Indian officer, however -able or dike-
, tinguisbed, or well informed, laboured, it was justly
felt, under two fatal disqualifications. He had been
bred up among the class whom he was called to
govern, probably married among them, certainly
formed friendships and intimacies which, in that
great family party the Indian administration,
were fatal to strict control._ If he were a nepo-
tist the machine would probably come to a stand :
if he were not a nepotist, everybody would believe
that he was. Sir Chorles Metcalfe was pure in
patronage, but men who heard aide-de-camps call
the ad interim Governor-General "Charley" across
the table, were not predisposed to believe so. So
urgent was the necessity of avoiding this danger
that a rule was introduced, and is still observed,
prohibiting the employment of kinsmen in office in
the same country ; no native, it was known, would
appeal, say from the magistrate to his father-in-law
the judge, nor would any native Prince resist a
Resident whose kinsman sat on the throne. More-
over, and the second difficulty was far more impor-
tant than the first, no Indian coull ever be made to
feel the true relation of India towards the British
Empire. Imported young, and with their minds
still immature, the Indian civilians regarded India
almost as their own land. That terrible vastness of
scale which is the special feature of everything on
the Indian continent, a vastness no man accustomed
to Europe can ever fully realise, possessed their
imaginations, till England seemed to them a neces-
sary but annoying appendage to-their magnificent
empire. To this day, greatly as this tone has
altered, hundreds of Anglo-Indians cannot conceal
their contempt for the "parochial interests of Great
Britain" as compared with the "Imperial interests
of a fifth of the human race." The notion that the
smallest English innovation affects the character of
a race whose daily action will influence the whole
future of man never enters their heads, and they
persistently postpone Imperial interests to those of
the Presidency in which they live. They have many
of them a positive pleasure in tariffs which, as
they think, protect native muslins against the
English invaders, and resent expenditure for the
Empire, as if England did not relieve India
of the cost of a foreign policy and maritime de-
fence. The feeling is immaterial, or even healthy,
in subordinates, but England must have some
link between the Empire as a whole and her
vast dependency, and that link has been sought
in Governors-General not bred up in India. The
habit of English statesmanship, moreover, the con-
stant collision amidst which English rulers work,
lit it does not increase mental power, does develop
intellectual moderation, and intellectual moderation
is the one quality Indian statesmen lack. They are
always for beginning afresh, in preference to im-
proving the old machine, are capable, for example,
of octroying a new code of procedure, because the
old one gives to creditors a little too much power.
In practice the remedy for these detects has worked
exceedingly well. The principles of government
are everywhere much the same, and a succession of
" ignorant" servants of the Queen have since the
days of Hastings built up, consolidated, and re-
fdrmed the Empire, for vet ich the Company had the
credit. It was Lord Wellesley, Sir H. Hardinge,
the Marquis of Hastings, and Lord Dalhousie, who
conquered the martial races of India, not the Com-
pany; the interlopers who built the trade, not the
old officials; Lord Dalhousie who founded the rail-
way scheme, not an Indian engineer; Sir Charles
Wood not the Council, who carried out the recent
reorganisation. The rule was and is a wise one,
but the use of such rules is simply to secure the man
best fitted to do the work required, and there can
he little doubt that in the present conjuncture Str
John Lawrence is that mar. We do not mean
simply that he is qualified only by his services,
though these have been beyond compare. Indian
stories are always so crowded with details that their
drift too often escapes the public ; but the popular
theory about Sir John Lawrence is, as a whole,
quite true. He did most unquestionably save us
from the necessity of having to conquer India. From
the moment the Sepoys seized Demi, to the moment
when its fall made civil government once more pos-
sible, India was cloven in twain, with Lord Can-
ning ruling on one side and Sir John Lawrence
upon the others but with scarcely the faintest means
of communication between the two. For three
months, we believe, not an order from Calcutta ever
reached the Punjaub. There, however, was Sir John
Lawrence, with less than 10,000 effective Europeans,
with 50,000 drilled veterans in revolt between him
and his only source of reinforcements, with the
Afghans threatening him on the West, all lost away
to the South, the Khalsa or fighting Sikhs held in
order only by their personal awe of him, one great
Sikh Prince with an army and treasury at disposal,
and hosts of small chiefs as hostile as mediatized
chieftains always are. For five months Sir John
Lawrence, without help save from within, main-
tained his position, inspired his own Cromwellian
energy into his chief subordinates, induced demi-
hostile princes to guard his communications, hurled
two armies successively upon Delhi, for whose fall
all Sikhs were watching, bribed the Afghans, raised
loans on his own bare word, enlisted the doubtful
warrior clan, the Khalsa, whom we had but just
settled down to the plough, actually ventured to
sanction the Khalsa national rite, " the baptism of
the sword," and when, in September, all seemed un-
availing, sent forward to Delhi his last hundred of
reliable troops, and stood amidst thirty millions of
nearly certain foes, confident only that his duty had
been done. There never was in the whole history
of British India such an interval as the fortnight
which preceded the fall of Delhi—Northern India
was utterly exhausted, the Mahrattas were gather.
ing round Lord Elphinstone, and the Sikhs even
before Delhi were muttering that the hour for them
had arrived. It Delhi did not tall, the Empire would,
and it was then that the application was made to
Sir John to choose between en assault which, had it
failed, would have been followed by the massacre
of every white face north of the Nerbudda, and a
suspension of the siege. Lord Lyveden is right
when he says that Lord Canning had no intention
of retreating from before Delhi, wrong when
he implies that retreat was out of the
question. Lord Canning could send no orders,
and did send none ; but every purely mili-
tary reason was against the assault. The responsi-
bility was thrown on Sir John, and to his prompt
reply it is owing that we had not to reconquer India
against, instead of with, the Sikhs. He authorised,
without legal power, an act of military madness—
the storm of a fortified city supposed to be defended
by twice the besieging force and by a hostile popu-
lation tenfold the assailanta' number, with an army
which ten minutes' check would instantly have dis-
solved. Three days later the tidings, Delhi has
fallen," were flying along that rapid telegraph of
successive human voices which so often puzzles ob-
servers in Asia, Bombay was subsiding into its
usual discontented calm, the Sepoy army was flying
to Rohilstund, the Sikhs as a nation were rallying
to the British standard, and Lord Canning was
able to write that the neck of the rebellion was
broken before a man had landed to his aid. That
Sir John had marvellous assistance—Edwardes,
who held the. dangerous valley of Peshawur with
a garrison his foes could have eaten ; Nicholson,
in whom England lost that boundless source of
power, an original General; Montgomery, who en-
abled his chief to double himself, is true; but then,
who saw and selected these men ? The first attri-
bute of a born ruler is his ability to pick his own
tools, and that ability is possessed by Sir John Law-
rence in the highest degree. There was one point,
moreover, on which even these men could lend him
no assistance, for it required a quality always in-
communicable. Major Edwardes could have crushed
the Sepoys with just as heavy a hand, Nicholson
might have planned an even more perfect campaign,
Mr. Montgomery could infuse into all classes equal
zeal and equal hardihood, but the Sikhs were the
true masters of the situation, and they looked to
" Jan Sahib" alone, feared him only among men,
quailed only before the thought of his unchangeable
fortune, and had cholera or over-exertion carried
him off—as seemed once only too probable—
energy, and generalship, and skill in the guidance
of men would alike have been unavailing. The Sikhs
would have conquered India for another race than us.
It is not, however, on account of his services that
we believe this appointment wise. Better pay men
for services in any coin than governments for which
they are unfitted. But we believe Sir John Law-
rence is, at this juncture, the very man to fill his
splendid position. Thu two Indian difficulties are
at this moment the disturbances on the frontier and
the necessity of maintaining severer discipline
within the new Sikh force, and the mere arrival of
the Viceroy will probably terminate both. The
frontier tribes will not face the man who for fivet
years kept the bit so strongly within their
gained
that every raid cost them more than they gne
in money as well as lives, and Sikhs will Ydistrust
the dangerous prophecies which
requir®
hero should
urire for their
fulfilment that the " forehead" °
pass under a cloud. They will face English
bayo-
nets sooner than Lis fortune, and while
heyare
faithful the disaffected throughoht North. India
must perforce remain inactive. That is itself
equal in value to a greet victory; but bit John