The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-29 00:00:00

LONDON,

by the sceptre of his proconsulship. And he was so.
Not—remember—by adopting the obsolete and worn-
out ideas of the " Old Indians," of those who would
regulate the conduct of a statesman by the notions of
a shopkeeper, of men who would fain bring the ideas
of the counting-house into the supreme councils
of a Government. Alluding to the course invariably
pursued by these men towards the warriors
whe have so miraculously extended the
boundaries of their dominions, the Conqueror of
Sinde has himself observed, " the bravery and devotion
of their troops, not their own commercial skill and
enterprise, have expanded their original small settle-
ment on the Hooghly to a mighty empire ; and yet [he
exclaims with a bitter sense of his own treatment]
on every accession of territory the soldier has been
treated as unfit to govern what his sword has won ;
on each new acquisition a civil establishment has
been fastened, incongruent with the military barba-
rism of the people to be governed, but fulfilling the
conditions of patronage and profit which make
the Direction an object of desire." Fortunately for
the maintenance of English power in Sinde, the
administration of the affairs of Hindostan was then
presided over by a Governor. General with a genius
adequate to his august and responsible position, one.
capable of recognizing the peculiar requirements of
the population, and not only of recognizing, but of
acting also upon the dictates of that appreciation.
The Conqueror of Sinde was consequently intrusted
by Lord ELLENBOROUGH with the duty of completing
his victories over the Ameers by a regular course of
administration. To this end he was invested with the
supreme authority of a military dictatorship. And
Sir CHARLES NAPIER was happily by no means the
man to employ that power rashly, or without due
premeditation. In the masterly record of his rule,
as penned by Sir WILLIAM NAPIER, will he found
evidence, of the adroitness with which, blending
rigour with clemency, the Governor of the Sindians
contrived to secure in an almost incredibly short in-
terval the obedience of the vanquished population.
Regarded with terror in arms by the Asiatics he was
familiarly known as a kind of double to Fra Diavolo
—while, in council, as adminstrator, as Governor, Sir
CHARLES NAPIER received from them the honourable
epithet of The Just Padishatv. Despotic and miltary
hough his authority was, it was yet something
more than regarded with terror, it was viewed with
respect and with confidence. It mattered not that
the people he had to deal with were unaccustomed
to British domination ; that twenty thousand
roving swordsmen were hovering on the wes-
tern frontier; that SHEER MOHAMED remained
yet to be overcome ; that he, himself, was to a con-
siderable extent a novice in this gigantic and terrible
form of government. Guided by his experience in
Cephalonia, and following the direction of his own
sagacity, Sir CHARLES NAPIER, within four months,
had vanquished the difficulties of his position, had re-
moved the suspicion of the Sindees towards their British
conquerors, had effected in a strange province, and
under a variety of most disadvantageous and discourag-
ing circumstances, a complete and admirable system
of political organization. Even the most redoubtable
of the Sirdars had been disarmed by his magnanimity,
their rich swords being spontaneously restored to those
who made their salaam, as had already been
done in reference to several among the Ameers.
Belonging by right to himself as their conqueror,
he nevertheless returned them to their original
owners—for, says his brother, in recounting the cir •
curnstance, " between gain and greatness it was never
in his nature to waver"—cornmandiog their respect
by his firmness while extorting their admiration by
his munificence. It was by this bold and
original course of policy, by the abrupt
and total abolition of slavery, by releasing
the debtors of the Am eers from all further
liabilities, and by maintaining the native system of
administering justice, with various additions and im-
provements, that Sir CHARLES 'Careen completed
his conquest of a vast province by a most satis-
factory and effectual scheme of administration—a
scheme so effectual that Sinde has since then con-
tinued firm in its obedience to English authority, and
so satisfactory, that Mr. PRINGLE, the Company's
civil servant, appointed to be ,his successor, has
since then voluntarily proffered his acknowledg-
ment of the extraordinory capacity for civil go-
nernment evinced by Sir CHARLES NAPIER
in his Sindian institutions. That some surprise
and some little anxiety also should have been
manifested by the " Old Indian" party, in reference
to proceedings of a character soevigorons and unusual
as those of Sir CHARLES NAPIER, was of course to be
expected, " startled from their monotonous self-
sufficiency," as they were, according to the
admirable phrase of the historian, " startled by
the rustling wing of genius passing over their official
dormitories." That surprise, we repeat, and even,
indeed, some degree of anxiety should have been
displayed by the old and obsolete faction referred
to was precisely what might have been antici-
pated, but it must be avowed that we were
altogether unprepared for such fl)grant and in-
famous ingratitude as that which has been evinced to-
wards the Conqueror and first Administrator of the pro-
vinces of Sinde. Further time and a later oppor-
tunity is required to demonstrate the heinousness of
the treatment thus accorded towards one of our
greatest soldiers and one also of our most illustrious
Proconsuls.

warned magistrates and jurors
of We
the havedangerrepeatedly
of yiel ding too easy credence to the
hasty and inconsiderate evidence so ;frequently
brought before them. The summary jurisdiction
which the former are enabled to exercise, induces
them, in too many instances, to dispense with juries,
and to inflict stringent punishment, destructive of the
future prospects in life of the victim, en testimony
that could not possibly satisfy twelve men on
their oaths, and bound to give the prisoner the bene-
fit of any reasonable doubt. Imprisonment with
bard labour, for one, two, or three months, as the
case may be, appears to be considered by the modern
Justice SHALLOWS as a matter of the most trivial im-
portance, which may be inflicted on mere suspicion.
His Worship will possibly retire to lunch with excel-
lent appetite after having condemned an innocent
youth to the demoralizing influences of compulsory
association with the most depraved and guilty
wretches for a considerable term, during which his
feelings of honesty will be considerably blunted,
until he is prepared to yield to the first temptation
after his discharge. That temptation will not
be long wanting. He has been turned loose on the
world, with tainted character, deprived of the
means of earning an honest livelihood, and unable to
obtain employment in the locality where his incarce-
ration is known, and his guilt assumed as a matter of
course. That magistrate may bear the character of
a man of high honour, of religious and charitable
feelings; but we tell him that if he has so acted,
through carelessness or negligence, he has been guilty
of a deeper and more heinous offence against society
than any one of the miserable wretches who have
tremblingly awaited the doom he was about to pro-
nounce. He has, perhaps, ruined the temporal rand
endangered the eternal happiness of a fellow-creature,
and must be utterly unfit for the arduous and im-
portant duties of the office in which he is placed.
A case has lately been stated, under the head of
"hasty evidence," in a morning contemporary,
which, if well founded, affords a painful proof of the
accuracy of our assertions. It is said that on the last
Lord Mayor's-day a youth mingled with the crowd
in order to see the show ; while thus occupied, he was
taken into custody by a detective policeman, on sus-
picion of being the accomplice of another lad who was
caught picking pockets close by. When brought to
the station be was placed with others charged with
similar offences, to await his examination. Two
handkerchiefs were found lying on the ground
in his neighbourhood, which he was at once
supposed to have dropped, although some of
wereer i o
received
eso h e
it
veadt
his companions were well-known pickpockets,
and four stolen handkerchiefs had been found in the
13:
hadstas 1 °nllotofd reoepep ed of
the
ee
party.
handkerchiefs il
a assertions
by the officials with the greatest derision, he was
bantered in a most unbecoming
obtaining
jeeredrnaun ander,and
finally locked up ' for the night,
~ without being frordeci_
n
communicating . with his friends,ayopportunity
or
the
f
professional P,ttistallce, or "
,evidence as to char
which was so essential. the neat morning he' was
brought before the LORD MAyort.
The Detective
declared that he was ' covering„ the thief.
Ir. is further atated that i, the boyhad
hopes of being heard in his own Defence,