The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-23 00:00:00

THE

THE
T EAST INDIA HOUSE.
The quarterly general Court of Proprietors of East
India stock was held at the East India House yes-

terday, at noon.
Mr. H. ST. GEORGE Tumen, on taking tha chair,
communicated to the Court a letter from Sir G. Pol-
lock, acknowledging a communication made to him
that the Board of Control had confirmed the Com-
pany's grant to him of an annuity of 1,0001.
JUGGERNAUT.
Mr. PoTtrDza, then renewed the motion which he
made at the Midsummer Court, to refer it to the
Court of Directors to review the arguments for the
continuance of the annual payment to the temple of
Juggernaut, having especial reference to their own
dispatch to the Bengal Government of Feb. 20, 1833.
The Rev. C. Lacey, a missionary, in describing the
festival held in June and July, 1846, stated that, on
the day of showing the idols, 180,000 persons sur-
rounded the car ; the deaths from cholera were enor-
mous. Mr. Lacey referred also to the disgusting
ceremonies of the festival, and added, " But it is not
lewdness only that is commended and encouraged;
every kind of vice is applauded. There are few
crimes in the catalogue of human offences which
Krishna is not admired for having committed." No
one could show that any pledge was ever given on the
conquest of Cuttack which required the continuance
of the payment in question ; and manifestly, those
who were dispatched, as mere ministerial agents, to
seize that province, had a very different work to do
from setting up heathenism for ever. Rammohun
Roy, when this question was before the King in
Council, said to him (Mr. Poynder), "It is your own
Government alone who have prevented India from
becoming a Christian country long ago."
Mr. LEWIS seconded the motion.
The CHAIRMAN believed the fact to he, that when
in 1803, on the war with the Mahratta States, Col.
Harcourt went to seize and take possession of the
province of Cuttack, he guaranteed the continuance
to the temple of Juggernaut of those privileges and
revenues which it had previously possessed ; the treaty
concluded by Sir A. Wellesley did not say anything
about the temple, but, if there was not a direct, there
was an understood pledge. Now, a payment of 60,000
rupees a year had been made by the Hindoo Govern-
ment there for the support of the temple. At a later
period lands which had been appropriated to the sup-
port of the temple, paying a revenue of about 24,000
rupees a year, were made over to the Raja of Koorg,
in whose territory the temple was situated, in order
that we might have as little as possible to do with the
management of the temple • and on a subsequent oc-
casion the Government of India, after considering the
subject, saw ground for reducing the money payment
to 23,800 rupees a year. That sum was due by legal
obligation. It was, in fact, a compensation for syah
(a sort of excise duty or tax) abolished by us. Pre-
viously to 1790 the landowners were permitted to
erect bazaars, &c., for the convenience of commerce,
and to levy certain fees ; Lord Cornwallis, finding
that it led to great abuses in the shape of exactions,
abolished the system, but compensation was to be paid
Ito the parties who had the right of collecting these
dues, and a regulation was made in 1793 with that
view, and was recognised by the Act 37 George 111.
Under that regulation this payment of 23,800 rupees
was due, and could be compelled. We had no option
about it. In a communication, dated the 7th of
January last, the Supreme Government of India
stated that they considered the original payment of
60,000 rupees to have been granted as compensation
for syah abolished.
Mr. SULLIVAN would move for a copy of that
dispatch at the next Court. The question was now
put on a new footing.
After some discussion,
Sir J. L. LUSHINGTON confirmed the statement
that the company, in making this payment, were not
acting upon a pledge—that ground had been aban-
doned; but upon a principle of justice, paying com-
pensation for the abolition of certain revenues which
the Raja of Koorg had devoted to the temple.
The CHAIRMAN suggested that Mr. Poynder had
better put his motion in this shape—" That the Court
of Directors be requested to inform this Court whe-
ther the money payment still made to the Raja or
Koorg in respect of Juggernaut be in virtue of any
supposed pledge on the part of the British Govern-
ment, or merely as compensation for syah, under the
obligation of British law."
Mr. POYNDER, however, pressed his motion in its
original shape, and the ourt divided on it. The
numbers were—
For the motion
Against it
Majority —34

THE RAJA OF SATTARA.
Mr. LEWIS then moved, that the following corre
spondence, viz., copy of a dispatch from the Secret
Committee to the Governor. General, dated the 24th
of March, 1846; of the letters of the 7th of June
and the 18th of July, 1846, in reply thereto, with
their enclosures, and of a letter from the Raja to the
Governor-General, dated December 12, 1844, and of
the Governor-General forwarding the same to the
Court of Directors or to the Secret Committee
thereof, and of all minutes and correspondence con-
nected therewith, or relating thereto, be printed for
the use of the proprietors. It would be remembered
that at a Court held on the 18th of March, 1846,
Mr. G. Thompson stated the substance of a certain
conversation between the Raja and Major Carpenter,
the Governor-General's agent at Benares. It now
appeared, by papers laid before Parliament on the
21st of July last, that the Governor-General, by
desire of the Secret Committee, applied to Major
Carpenter "to submit any explanation he might
desire to offer" upon the subject. Major Carpenter,
in his answer dated May 25, 1846, denied the alleged
conversation, but, in accounting for various commu-
nications with the Raja, with a view to soften and
ameliorate his condition, said :
" When the Raja was consigned to my charge,
early in 1840, I considered it necessary, for the effi-
cient discharge of my duties, to make myself fully
acquainted with the causes of his dethronement, his
general reputation for intrigue, and other circum-
stances connected with his character and conduct, to
enable me to form a just estimate of the man with
whom I had to deal, and to guard against the conse-
quences which might arise from any laxity of surveil-
lance on my part. To this end I carefully studied
the whole of the voluminous documents connected
with his case, and the result was a belief in his inno-
cence; and this belief has been confirmed beyond a
doubt by subsequent disclosures, and by his pledging
himself to prove it, if permitted to do so, in his letter
to Sir Henry Hardinge of the 12th of December,
1844, forwarded through me, and which pledge I am
fully persuaded he is able to redeem."
This assertion of a conviction of the ex-Raja's inno-
cence, and of his ability to prove his innocence, was
censured by the Governor-General as " unbecoming
and uncalled for." For this correspondence Mr.
Lewis now moved, and stigmatised the censure as
wholly unmerited. The Hon. Proprietor also went
briefly over the case of the Raja, observing that copies
of the depositions against him were refused to him on
the ground that the commission was a secret one, and
that all that he could obtain was, that Mr. Willoughby
read over to him " the substance" of the evidence
taken against him on one of the three charges of which
he was accused.
Mr. SULLIVAN seconded the motion.
Mr. FIELDING denied that there was anything in
these papers material to the Raja's case. There was
only the opinion of Major Carpenter • and there had
evidently been an attempt to impose Upon a man who
wTahse agood old soldier, but nothing more.—(A laugh.)
Major had no right to go into the political
question.
Mr. u
he
i‘
r.eTwßa°silinPos° evidenceNiM.P
.iinsisted that to this
h
produced directly crimi-
nating the Raja. The sole argument was that of
authority—that this and that person believed the
Raja guilty. Major Carpenters was an honest
'
opinion, formed and avowed in the teeth of his in-
terest; and that opinion was shaking the judgment
of many in the Court at that moment—(Hear, hear)
and would decide the question with the people of
Great Britain and with Parliament.—(Hear, hear.)—.
But why were these papers suppressed so long, and
not produced till two nights before the prorogation ?
Why, because they contained this opinion of Major
Carpenter, and in order that Sir J. Hobhouse and
one or two others might get re-elected without being
confronted by such a paragraph as that.—(Hear,
hear.) How monstrous, too, to censure the Major !
Why, if the Governor of Norfolk Island sent such
a statement respecting the meanest prisoner in
his
custody, would the Home Secretary censure
him ?--(Hear, hear.) The people of India uni-
versally believed the Raja innocent • and ask any of
the Company's old officers
in the streets of London,
and, if they had not set their hands to minutes of
Council, they almost to a man laughed at the idea
of his being reahlleyargiiilt4,of the charges made against
11. to the 4 G Ivye'r n oerv-eGn
nlo2nthseonft
111,11nia.71 _(Hear,
ow,
by the House oft
Dofecthenel en ne
datedwawas
thete
not produced ? It was or-
deredbePrresildBent Commons in
made
o the Board of Control ; yet
1845, with the
still the only returnwas,i that it bad not at
a:omenntry. (Mr.
present been received in this
Thompson) believed that letter
c
accompanied by a deliberate tiss, ibis country
oVanon of the Governor-
General of India une,-0,
case.—(Hear, heap "le Merits of the Raja's
prop
M
The „
iRAN could have no objection to the
-action of the letters mentioned in the former
part of this motion ; they had, as had been stated,
been laid before Parliament already; but he believed
the
,Raja's letter of December 12, 1844, was not in
the possession of the Court of Directors. He (the
Chairman) had never seen that letter; he knew
nothing of its existence ; the motion must be quali-
fied as to that, or else the return could only contain
such papers as could be produced, with an explana-
tion why the other letter was not.
Mr. LEWIS supposed it might be in possession of