The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-05 00:00:00

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41110

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1853.

Another, and, this time, crushing blow, has
recently been administered to the odious policy
hitherto pursued by us towards our fellow-sub-
jects in Hindostan. Another shock has been
given to the colossal and dilapidated system known
as that of the Double Government—a system that
has passed more crushingly over the necks of the
unfortunate Asiatics than ever could have done
the terrible and detested car of the demon Jug-
gernaut. Dismay must consequently have been
excited once more among the Leadenhall-street
potentates. Anxiety must have been renewed
among the clerkly sages constituting the Board of
Control. Discomfort must have re-awakened in
the bosom of its august President, notwithstand-
ing that delectable soporific to none more welcome
than to the Right Hon. Sir CHARLES WOOD—the
pleasant anticipation of an official salary increased
by one or two thousand pounds per annum addi-
tional. Allusion is here made, we need
scarcely observe, to the remarkable pamphlet
informing the public precisely and categorically
how it is wars are, from time to time, as occasion
may render desirable, got up in India for the
purposes of predatory spoliation. The notorious
Burmese war is adopted in this pamphlet* as about
the aptest possible illustration : and this because
it constitutes not merely the latest, but, all things
considered, about the most rascally example that
could well be selected from among all those nume-
rous expeditions by which we have attempted,
during the last century, at the expense of more
than one oriental sovereign, to satisfy our insa-
tiable greed of power, and our lust of territorial
aggrandisement. The pamphleteer who has thus
opportunely dragged to light the contents of the
Burmese Blueßooks, stringing together in one lucid
narrative the facts which must otherwise, for the
most part, have remainedhidden in that voluminous
mass of quibble and prevarication—is no other than
that same shrewd observer who, a short time since,
contrasted 1789 and 1853 to the chagrin of those
who would fain deliver up v
France
the provisionally
cor in perpetuity into the hands
of
revolution-
ists. Had not the name of RICHARD
oe on. e
been inscribed upon the' title-pageNe question
zti thisO new
COBDEN
brochure about the Burmese, v ry
much if one intelligent reader in the United
kingdom could have failed to recognise in its
contents the unaffected earnestness, or the un-
sparing logic, any more than the " unadorned
eloquence " of the Hon. Member for the West
()-
rkshire. As here narrated with
Biding of V
pitiless precision, tbe facts of the case " tell" in
a manner the most damnatory against all those
individuals who were implicated in the origin
of the war With the unoffending Burmese
Sovereign. A,gainst Commodore LAMBERT—
especially and peculiarly against Commodore
LAMBERT —as the Marplot of the whole
of the preliminary negotiations ! Against Com-
mander FISHBOURNE, who may be said to have
blown the smouldering embers of the first, and at
that time almost extinguished, quarrel into a blaze
with the fuming and blustering of his unfortunate
deputation ! Against Lord DALHOUSIE, as that
phenomenon among the Governor-Generals of Hin-
dostan, a ruler who not only countenances the
flagrant violation of orders by a subordinate, but
goes so far out of his way as to pronounce upon
those glaring derelictions of duty the warmest
phrases of uncalled-for and reiterated panegyric.
Colonel BOGLE is the only Englishman involved in
these untoward and most lamentable transactions
of whom Mr. COBDEN has found it in his conscience
to speak in terms of commendation. Nay he
himself asserts distinctly (p. 44), that cc '
the letters
of this officer are almost the only part of the
correspondence which an Englishman ought to

" How Wars are got up in India : the Origin of the
Burmese War." By Richard Cobden, Esq., M,P.
pp. 58. London Cash, 1853.