The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-12 00:00:00

WEDNESDAY EVENING, JULY 12, 1848

present session, then to a Commission, whose duty it
should be to inquire, not only into the conduct of the
particular individual named in the motion, but into the
acts generally of all parties concerned in the deposal of
the late Raja of Sattara, and into the claims of his sur-

viving relations up( .n the property, territory, and Go-
vernment, which had lapsed by the death of the late
Prince Appa Sahib. From the beginning it had been
his (Mr. Thompson's) constant desire, that instead of
that question having to be determined by the vote of a
General Court of Proprietors in one place, or a large
assembly, by a debate in the House of Commons in an-
other, it should be submitted to the calm, patient, and im-
partial examination of persons wholly disinterested, free
from improper influence, and capable of judging between
conflicting evidence, and of duly estimating the opinions
of parties more or less biassed in their feelings and
judgments. Still cherishing that desire, he would say
no more on that occasion than should appear to him to

be necessary to establish the necessity ft,r such a tribu-

nal, and to prove that there was a bona fide ease for such
an investigation. Finally, ere he went into the details

of the evidence, he would state, that punishment was
not the end he had in view. Free from all vindictive
feeling, he sought the redress of the wrongs of those
whom he believed to have been injured, the restitution
of rights, as he conceived unjustly forfeited, and the
correction of errors and abuses in the administration of
the Government in India which not only inflicted grie-

vous injury upon the natives of that country, but im-
paired the influence, by lowering the character of Bri-
tish authority amongst the countless millions there sub-
jected to its sway. Colonel Ovans as an officer in the
Indian army, after holding various posts, was appointed,
in June, 1837, to the situation of political resident at the
Court of his late Highness the Raja, of Sattara. For
the sake of brevity, he (Mr. Thompson) should pass
over the circumstances attending the removal of Colonel
Lodwick, the predecessor of Colonel Ovans, and merely
state, in passing, that it was obvious, upon the face of
the printed papers, that the former officer was removed
from his residency in consequence of his known disin-
clination to take an active part in those secret and dis-
honourable proceedings which had been already com-
menced with a view of criminating the Raja of Sattara.
The duties of a political resident at the Court of Sat-
tara were those of a friendly adviser of the ruling

Princes, and he (Mr. Thompson-) was bound to say, that
few better selections could have been made than those

which had placed near the person of the late Raja such
gentlemen as Captain Grant Duff, Major-General Briggs,
the late lamented General Robertson, and his immediate
successor General Lodwick. During the whole period
of their administration of political affairs at Sattara—an
administration commencing in 1818, and extending to
the middle of 1836—50 straightforward and confiding
had been the conduct of the Raja, that not a single se-
cret communication had ever been recorded amongst the
proceedings of the residency; a fact which he (Mr.
Thompson) believed was without a parallel in the his-
tory of British rule in India. It was of importance that
he should state to the House, that General Lodwiek was

removed from his post at Sattara, on the plea that he had
lost, to some extent, the confidence of the Prince, and that
it was necessary that some gentleman should succeed him,
who had the power to win back that confidence, and
cause the communications between the resident and the
ruler to be as free and unreserved as they had always
been before the misunderstanding which had occurred
on a question relating to the Raja's power over certain
feudal chiefs. This fact it was of importance should be
borne in mind by the House, while he (Mr. Thompson)
proceeded to notice the manner in which Colonel Ovens
commenced his official duties at Sattara, which he did on
the 16th of June, 1837. The first act which he (Mr.
Thompson) had to allege against that officer—an act
contrary alike to the letter and the spirit of the
existing treaty—was committed on the day be-
fore specified. The charge which he (Mr. Thomp-
son) had preferred against Colonel Ovens was, that
being hound by treaty to give his advice to the Raja for
the good of Sattara his state, and for the maintenance
of the general tranquillity, did, on the very day of his
arrival at Sattara, on the 16th of June, 1837, and of his
assuming office as resident and commanding officer of
the British troops, authorise his staff officer, Captain F.
Durack, to pay to one Bhow Leley, a man Col. Ovens
bad never seen, and of the " worst character," the sum
of two haadred rupees for the production of certain do-
cuments purporting to criminate the Raja, and also to
give to the said Bhow Leley a written assurance that he
should be further rewarded, in proportion to the services
he might render; and that when Bhow Leley failed to
produce such documents at the time appointed, Colonel
)vans authorised Captain Durack to give him another
trial; which acts of Colonel Ovens were a subornation
of evidence against the Raja, a gross violation of his
duty as resident, and such as proved him to have come
to Sattara as the unscrupulous enemy of the Raja; fur-
ther, that these acts were concealed by Colonel Ovens
from the knowledge of his Government.
Sir J. HOBHOUSE—Whose statement is that?
Mr. G. THOMPSON—It is my charge against Col.
Ovans. In the first place, he would prove the commission
of the act itself; and here ho would refer to 9, letter from
that officer, addressed to his Government, on the 24th of
June, detailing most minutely his proceedings since his
arrival at Sattara, but containing no allusion whatever
to the important event which had taken place on the 16th
of the same month. Charged by his instructions to give
the_Gdvernment the fullest information relating to the
alleged intrigues of the Raja, he nevertheless omitted to
inform his Government of the important fact that he
had authorised the employment of an individual, who
had stated his ability to obtain certain treasonable docu-
ments, which would establish the guilt of his Highness.
He (Mr. Thompson) would request the attention of the
House to a most important document, addressed by the
Raja of Sattara to the Government of Bombay, on the
17th of July following. Cognizant as he (Mr. Thomp
son) believed the Raja was at that time of the existence
of secret machinations to effect his ruin, he, nevertheless,
offered, in a document which then lay before him (Mr.
Thompson), to resign his power and kingdom into the
hands of the Government, in order that the friendship sub-
sisting between himself and that Government might not be
interrupted, and expressing, moreover, his willingness
to retire into obscurity, if he might be thereby spared
the disgrace which secret accusations were calculated
bring upon him. That conduct was in perfect keep-
ing with a similar request, preferred in 1836, when first
Accused, and again in 1339, when offered the restoration
of the friendship of the Government, on condition of
admitting his guilt. That most important letter was
sent to Bombay; and there was a minute, recorded by
Sir. Robert Grant, the Governor, dated July 21st, in the
same year, in which he stated that " he did not think
any notice should for the present be taken of that com-
munication, which he thought betrayed the Raja's un-
easiness, arising from a consciousness of guilt. The
Acting resident should be requested to follow up the in-
quiry he had so ably commenced. The Raja never
received so much as an acknowledgment of the receipt
of that letter, still less any expression of the opinions
of Government respecting it. But to return to the
means taken by Colonel Ovens to- obtain evidence
against the Raja. In a voluminous defence, which
Colonel Ovens had deemed it necessary to
furnish to the Right Honourable the Presi-
dent of the Board of Control, in anticipation of the
motion then under consideration, there was found an
admission of the fact that that officer did employ the
person referred to, and in the manner described, but
Colonel Ovens denied altogether the accuracy of his
(Mr. Thompson's) charge of having concealed such act
from the knowledge of his Government. It had been
proved that his letter of the 24th of June contained no
reference to that act. He (Mr. Thompson) would show
the House that the first information furnished by Colonel
Ovens to his Government of having taken so extraordi-
nary a step as that of employing a servant and subject of
the Raja to obtain evidence to criminate his own Sove-
reign, was extorted by the fortuitous 'discovery of his
having done so, through the confesThion of the guilty man
himself of the compact into which h bad entered with
the resident. He (Mr. Thomp) had before him a
letter, addressed by a highly respectable European, Dr.
GMoi Ivneer,n lateo rGMedical
fS
lunpde
irai nesanldhetingt
hisof Ba
tot
emnbt yon,
totoctehr-e
tain transactions connected with the secret proceedings
to the
affair against
oftheßhoßw Leley and,
and amongstaja'ans That
letter was dated the 18th of September, being
Colonel them,:ov
more than three months subsequent to the 16th of
June. Having to pass through the hands of the Bombay
Government, on its way to Calcutta, it was copied in
the Secret Department, together with its enclosure, and
forwarded to Colonel Ovens for his remarks thereupon.
Down to that date, the Bombay Government had re-
ceived no single syllable of intelligence respecting the
affair. From that letter, and its enclosures, it appeared
that the man Bhow Leley made certain confessions to his
Highness the Raja of Setters, of the manner in which he
had been tampered with by Colonel Ovens and his staff
officers; and that his depositions, with other documents,
were forwarded to Dr. Milne, to be used by him as he
might think fit in his communication to the Supreme
Government. In his letter of the 18th of September,
Dr. Milne called the especial attention of the Governor-
General to the circumstances referred to. On the receipt
by Colonel Ovens of a letter from his own Govern-
ment, dated the 21st of September, he thought
it necessary to furnish the information he had
previously withheld, and accordingly they found
a letter from him, dated the 27th of De-
cember, confirming the truth of Bhow Leley's state-
ments, and enclosing a letter from his own staff-officer,
Captain Durack, giving, a detailed account of his nego-
tiations with Bhow Leley, and of his finally having paid
him, by the order of Colonel Ovans, 150 rupees, as an
instalment, and given him a certain promise of future
reward, according to the services he might render, con-
nected with the secret prosecution of the Raja. He
(Mr. Thompson) would leave the House to determine
the character of the act thus proved to have been done
' by Colonel Ovens; to say whether the charge of con-
cealment was not made out, by the fact that it was not
till after the lapse of more than three months, and then
only in consequence of the accidental discovery of the
secret steps he had taken, that he acknowledged his
connexion with a man whom he had never seen, for
the purpose of obtaining evidence wherewith to accuse
the Raja of treason to the British Government.
He (Mr. Thompson) left the House, too, to say
whether or not such conduct did not prove
that Colonel Ovens was the enemy of the
Prince towards whom he was bound by treaty
to act the part of a friendly adviser, and whether
the means which, in that instance, he adopted did not
deserve to be designated by the term "
unscru with which he." (MrIt
was for the House, too, to say whether, in their judg-
ment,p
Thompson) had designated them,
British officers were legitimately employed, when
they were thus entering into secret combination and fel-
lowship with persons like the traitor Bhow Leley, and
whether the publication of such facts as those which had
been detailed throughout India, was likely to beget in
the minds of the princes of that country the confidence
and respect with which they would be inspired towards
those who represent the British power it their respective
courts. The second charge was, " That Colonel Ovans