The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-11 00:00:00

bribery of a gang of commercial monopolists and landed
proprietors. To hasten this union should be theleading
object of every true Reformer. The plan so often and
powerfully advocated by your excellent journal of spread-
ing through every town and village of the land Reform
and Registration Societies, appears to me the
surest and simplest method of achieving this
all-important point. The creation, the triumphant
progress, and daily increasing importance of the Anti-
Corn-law League, should encourage us in the attempt ;
it is in miniature what a national league might be upon
a scale as extensive as the greatness of the cause, the
dignity of the nation, and the certainty of success should
demand. A central society of this nature, with provin-
cial branches, delegates, talented lecturers, with periodi-
cal meetings, and general conventions, vigilantly watch-
ing over the registration of votes, and affording practical
political information to all requiring it, might, by the ex-
ertion of a few talented, courageous, and persevering
minds, form an engine, of popular power formidable enough
to batter down those fortifications within which the food-
taxing oligarchy has been sheltered, and shake to its very
centre the citadel of Toryism. It will encounter
and 'break up that spirit-crushing centralization system
now rampant in every village of England—a system of
centralization to which we have too long and patiently
crouched, and too constantly beheld in active operation
easily to admit its extent, to credit its danger, or to be
startled by its tyranny. I will intrude no longer upon
your valuable space, but I hope to prove to positive de-
monstration in another letter the existence in this land
of liberty of a complicated, comprehensive, and powerful
plan of tyranny which may be traced from the house of
hereditary legislators to the parish clerk and the
vestry-room, its machinery worked by Tory lords-
lieutenant, Tory parsons, Tory magistrates, Tory
squires, backed by a Tory army, navy, yeo-
manry, and the great bulk of the learned professions
—a compendious scheme of oppression, which cramps
and withers the mental and physical powers of our rural
and town population—which Louis Philippe, the genius,
the evil principle of centralization itself might admire
and envy, even behind the fortifications of Paris, and the
bristling bayonets of his guards; a system which might
appear almost hopeless to endeavour to uproot, but for
the liberty of the press and the courage of our national
character. I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
Aug. 2, 1841. CIVIS.

CONDUCT of-the BRITISH in INDIA.
We have had occasion for some time past to remark a
very great improvement in the Anglo-Indian press, and
in the manner in which the affairs of our immense Asiatic
dependencies are recorded and discussed by our Oriental
Contemporaries. The circulation of these journals in
Europe has increased fifty-fold since the opening of the
steam. communication ; and the public in the mother
country are learning to devote a more enlightened at-
tention to the acts of the British Government in India
and to the distant achievements of our people in the
most unknown and inaccessible parts of the eastern Con-
tinent. In spite of the difficulties of out-of-the-way
names and strange topography, we shall avail ourselves
of some of the more recent communications from these
sources, to follow the course of Lord Auckland's agents
and Sir John Hobhouse's policy beyond the Indus.
The first Afghan campaign, in which we include all
that occurred between the arrival of the Bombay army
at Kurachee in November, 1838, and the withdrawal of
the troops in January, 1840, was attended with all the
splendour of uncontested success. Shah Soojah was
restored to the throne of Cabul ; the coalition of the
Sirdars of Candahar was dissolved, and the great for-
tresses of Ghuznee and Khelat captured ; the loss of the
British army was estimated at less than 400 men ; the
Dooranie Order and the more substantial rewards of a
peerage and a pension were lavished on the fortunate
Generals of that bloodless expedition, which left a burden
of 9,000,0001. sterling on the Company's exchequer, and
a worthless tyrant on the throne of Cabul.
The subsequent events, which belong to what is called
the second Affghan campaign, have a very different cha-
racter. From the beginning of January, 1840, to the
month of March in this year, our troops have been
engaged in 23 conflicts, chiefly with the fierce predatory
clas of the country. We have sustained 13 defeats or
checks in the mountains, or before their natural for-
tresses. We have lost 1,400 men and 17 European offi-
cers ; and the service on which the British army is en-
gaged, at an expense of 3,000,0001. or 4,000,0001. per
annum, is a perpetual desultory warfare carried on in
support of the authority and the revenue of an in-
secure
ally—the feeble and detested Sovereign of a
wild and independent people. The Affghan empire,
from the sea to the Tartar mountains, and from the
Indus to the confines of Persia, covers about 13 degrees
of longitude by 13 of latitude ; and over the mountain
clans of Central Asia, which people that vast wilderness,
the Court of Cabul, backed by a handful of foreign
troops, has no more authority than it has over the waves
of the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, our forces are con-
tinually engaged in levying tribute from tribes which
have hardly paid their allegiance to the King, or in ex-
pelling freebooters from the strongholds in which they
defy his authority. The consequence is that our inter-
vention is execrated by this fierce aristocracy and their
dependents. The Beloochees, the Murrees, the Kud-
jucks, the Bralibes, and as many more tribes as the
children of Israel subdued from Dan to Beersheba, are
all converted into inveterate foes of England, without
having been subdued as subjects of England's ally.
Some of the proceedings of our agents towards these
native tribes appear to have been hut little adapted to
conciliate their good-will or to command their respect.
Every claim of Shah Soojah to collect tribute from this
or that mountain chief is supported, without being in-
vestigated, by a force which attacks the stronghold,
plunders it, if possible, and drives the inhabitants into
the mountains at the inclement season of the year, either
to starve or to turn into banditti, and to harass our
convoys.
A few of the cases which have occurred under the
diplomatic sanction of Mr. Bell, who appears to be the
acting Viceroy over the King of those countries, deserve
particular notice.
One of the mountain chiefs, named Beerjar Khan, the
leader of the Dhomkies, had attracted the notice of our
agent as a contumacious freebooter. He was induced,
however, to submit upon certain stipulations, and, upon
the invitation of Mr. Bell, he came down from the
mountains, accompanied by a Scind of great authority,
whose presence was to have been his protection. But
after he had made his salaam to the agent at Shikar-
poor, and been fed for some days, as the custom is, he
was kidnapped with his people, and conveyed as a pri-
soner to Bukkur, whilst his horses and arms were sold
by auction.
In Cutchee the administration of the province and the
revenue was confided by Mr. Bell to Mahomed Shurreff,
a man of the very worst character, who seems to have
swindled the Government and oppressed the people. In
conjunction with this notable functionary, Mr. Bell pro-
ceeded to issue a proclamation, by which all the jaghires
of the province were attached. or, in other words, se-
questrated, subject to the production of proof of rightful
ownership, on which the landed proprietors and sirdars
were allowed to reclaim them. The consequence has
been, that for every fraction of land or revenue thus
resumed by the Crown, a host of implacable enemies has
been created, to assail the authority by which they have
been beggared and to sack the country.
But the conduct of Mahomed Shurreff and his coadju-
tor, Mr. Bell, to the unfortunate natives of Kudjuck, in
the gelied country, in the month of February last, far
eclipses all the other fiscal excesses which have reached
our knowledge. The people of Kudjuli' had- facilitated
the passage of the British force under Major Leech in
1839 ; and they appear to have been much better dis-
posed to us and to their Shah than the warlike moun-
taineers to whom we just now alluded. At the getting
in of their crops they had offered to pay the revenue
by making the " buttai," or usual division of the
grain ; but this opportunity was neglected, and the corn
was housed. When the Naib Mahomet Shurreff after-
wards claimed the " buttai," it seems that some de-
lay arose ; however, an interview took place with
the Chiefs of the towns, and they agreed to make
the payment on the 19th of February. On the day
before that which had been thus fixed a strong party of
troops was sent by Bell to Kudjuck to enforce the pay-
ment. A collection was instantly made by the inhabit-
ants to pay the sum agreed upon within two hours. The
Kudjuck chiefs were in the act of bringing out the trea-
sure, when they saw our guns and troops advancing,
and they retreated to their homes,_ declaring that they
were betrayed. The unequal combat (f©r the town was
defenceless) was interrupted by the women coming out
with korans on their heads to supplicate for peace; and at
nightfall the firingceased. On the following day the place
was occupied, and all that it:contained was declared prize-
property. The crops were destroyed by the bullocks and
camels of the army; the town was sacked ; and the troops
which were sent to collect revenue carried off everything
in plunder. But the frightful act was not yet consum-
mated. An order was issued by Bell that the very walls
of the town should be razed to the ground, and that
Kudjuck should never be reinhabited I That order was
obeyed. The old and bedridden were removed from the
roofs which they and their fathers had inhabited for
seven generations. Men, women, and children were
turned forth upon the scorching plains of Cutchee, house-
less and ahungered, to expiate a crime of which they
were not guilty.
These facts are fully recorded in the Bombay journals,
and they are corroborated by our own accounts from
India. Wherever these lines are read, they will excite
a burning blush, that such enormities should have been
perpetrated under the sanction of an. English agent, and
that the pretended policy of this country should have
been supported by acts so cruel, unscrupulous, and im-
politic.-7'imes.

EXTRAORDINARY CAPTURE OF A SHARK.

-
—The following instance of cool intrepidity and presence
of mind has been related to us by a gentleman who was
an eye-witness to the fact. A sailor, an African by
birth, commonly known by the name of King John, was,
about three or four weeks ago, diving in the Pass of Sa-
vanne, in search of copper from the bottom of the
schooner Louisa, which was wrecked there some
time before. On his first plunge, King John remained•
a considerable time under water, and, coming up. was
observed by his comrades in a boat close by to be en-
gaged in a severe strugglewith a fish, which he soon
succeeded in bringing to the boat. It was a shark of
five feet in length. King John states, that on descending
towards the wreck, he found the monster lying quietly
by the side of the vessel's hull ; fearing that he would
be soon seen or scented by the grim creature, from whose
jaws there could be no hope of escaping, the expert diver
determined at once to make a desperate effort, and, care-
fully avoiding the direction of its head, he clutched it at
the small of the tail, and thus secured, the monster was
conveyed to the boat from a depth of six or seven fa-
thoms water !—St. Lucia Free Press. May 29.
VALUE OF GROUND IN GLASGOW.—Last
week the remaining portion of the estate of Kelvin-grove,
lying to the north-west of the old botanic garden, and
extending to about twenty-thren. Scottish acres, was pur-
chased by Colin M'Naughton, Esq., of this city, for the
sum of thirty thousand pounds.