The Sun.
London, England, 1858-05-12 00:00:00

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[PRIM 4D. STAMPED. 50.]

MR. LAYARD ON INDI4.

A meeting was held last evening in St. James's-
hall, Piccadilly, to hear an address from Mr. Lay-
ard, who had recently returned from India, on the
present aspect of affairs in that country. Viscount
Bury occupied the chair, and among the vast com-
pany that completely filled the room we noticed the
following members of Parliament :—Messrs. Bright,
M. Gibson, Black, Bruce, Ayrton, HadLld,
Crawford, Sir E. Perry, Sir J. Graham, Sir E.
Ellice, Hodgson, Magu re, Col. Rawlinson, Wes-
tern, Liddell, Pritchard, Stapleton, G. G. Glyn,
Lord J. Hay, E. Ball, Lindsay, Sir A. Elton, Col.
Watkins, Sir J. Logan, J. Wyld, J. B. Smith,
fleadlarn, Cowan, J. Caird, Richardson, Gilpin,
Grant, and Duff. There were also present Messrs.
Phackeray, Doyle, A. Otway, T. Taylor, R. Cob-
den, W. Theob tld, Freeman, Ramsay, C. Lu-h-
-ington, S'. H. Dicken., the Hon. A. Gordon, Sir
A Macn•ab, Sir D, Macdougal, the Bishop of Liao-
daff, Col. French, and Gen. Wilson.
After a few introductory observations by the
chairman, Mr. LAYARD proc.eded to address the
meeting. Ile said that he had been requested by
nany members of Parliament and friends in whose
judgment he had the greatest trust to speak that
-vening on a subject which WAS too portentous and
far too serious to be treated lightly. He should have
hesitated to address himself to such an assembly if
he had not something to say which he believed might
affect Indian affairs. It was his conscientious b:slief
that the people of England did not know the truth
in regard tath6 governnient of India.: It had not
been at any time his fate to make things pleasant,
but, without passing reflection upon any one, he
would confine himself to a plain statement of fact..
Not more than a year ago a wide-spread rebellion
broke out in India, and they heard of their country-
men, countrywomen, and children falling victims to
an indescribable fury on the part of the natives, the
reason assigned being that we had treated the na-

tives with 100 much landuess. Now, he hated figures
and detested averages. He remembered when he re-
turned from the Crimea loud complaints were made
that our countrymen were left without food, but
the truth soon time to be known, and in this case
ilso the truth would by-and-by be known. God
forbid that he should ascribe what had occurred in

India to any party, rtilit4ty or civil ; he ascribed it
solely to a system. Almost the first native gentle-
man he met in India, on being asked the cause of
the reb,-Ilion, said, " W idle the English Govern-
ment was just and honest 61-,4 gavethein prosperity,
but when the G.)veriiment became unjust .mid se-
vere God afflicted them with adversity, which gene-
rated discontent and retielli,,n." He asked the same

question .)f a young native, who said the mutiny
had arisen because the Government hs.d become
immoral. The extent of the rebellion was much
greater that had been represented to the p-ople of
Eogland. The le tTxs of Colonel Mlllman proved
this fact. He was toll, inde-d, that some of the
nitire princes bad beets faithful to us—such
as Holkar and Scindia ; but 11,d their troops
been faithful to us 1 And what were those
troops ? Not, as in England, the id!e poition
of the population, who, by becoming soldiers,
cut themselves off fi oin the community,
but they were men who, after a certain
period of service, looked forward to return to
their homes, their farms, and their villages. The
rise, theref jre, was not from any military cause.
ff the n dives were loyal, as had bfe n asserted,
why did not the Government dare raise a native
regiment to put dawn the mu ins ? He might be
asked what object the Indian Government could
have in deceiving the English public as to the cause
and extent of the rebellion. To the best of his be-
lief the reason was, that when the mutiny first
broke out the civil servants committed themselves
to the assertion that it was merely a military mu-
tiny, and they afterwards would not rtt:act that
assertion ; but there could be no doubt that this
was a far wider movement than that of a military
iny. The greased cart ridges might have afforded
a pretext, but the causes of the outbreak lay much
deeper, and had been opera' ng for years. Teo
causes chiefly were assigned for the rebellion by
persons with whom he had convers(d at Benares

-viz., the annexation policy and the treatment of
the natives. It was his conviction that the system
of annexation had been the great moving c ,use et
the present mutiny in India. He was told that
the Government did not recognise annexation as a
fixed policy, and a por Lin of its system ; but he
deteed that assertion. When Sir Richard Ilamil-
t ni placed Holkar, who was a minor, on the throne
he was reprimanded for doing so, as it prevented
the ludtau Government trout pursuing a course of
annexation which it had laid down to itself. Be-
tween the years 1851 and 1856 Lord Dalhousie
annexed no less a population than 10,558,943, and
an area consis•ing of 146,000 square miles These
figures were according to a return made to Parlia-
ment ; but it was a fallacious return, as it. did not
contain the assigned districts, such as Hyderabad,
Sittara, and others. He could safely state thee,
L .r.l Dalhousie had annexed territories containing
15,000,000 of inhab tents to our dominions in
India. One of the most importan of these annexa-
tions, and one from which they hid mest bitterly
suffered, was that of Ondo. (Cheers.) He need
hardly call the attention of the meeting to the well
kno en despatch of Sir James Outram, in which
an account was given of his interview with the
King of Oude, when that Sovereign, after allud'ng
to the fidelity of his family to the British rule for
many generations, placed his crown ut.on his kn es
and s.dd that he had no nice e h-pe in the jus ice
of England after having been t that a treaty
which had existed for 20 years, and which he con-
sidered to be good, lawful, and binding, was no
longer binding:, because it had be.endisapt roved by
the Celt tof Directors. He would not dwell upon
the fact of dispossessing the landed proprietors of
Oude, but this he would say, that nations never
committed great crimes without ul, imately suffer-
ing from them, and Oude might I.e to India, what
Poland and Hungary had be n and were to Russia.
The hon. gentleman then adverted to the non-ob-
servance of treaties by the Indian Government with
the native Princes, particularly instancing the case
of the Nizlin and of Nagore. A native Prance once
said to hitn—" Is there one way or two ways of
reading a treaty ? You make it only one way, and
' tbat is your own." In regard to the system of an-
nexation, one objection was, our territories would
be so extended by it that we should not be able to
govern them. Prince Metternich once observed
that we had not the material power to do it. How
were they to govern 180 millions of people that
were now under their sway ? Another evil result of
annexe ion was-that they were ob'iged to employ
military men in the civil service, and thus leave
the regiments without officers. Another grievance
of which the natives had to compl tin was the ap-
pointment of the Cemmission of Emans, as it was
called—a sort of inquisition into the titles of men
to their property. If the parties could not show a
title for 100 ye is theproperty was taken from them
altogether. No country in the world would tolerate
such a system. The parties were told they had a
right of appeal, but how could those unhappy men
go to Bimbity to enforce that right ? It was a
mockery. In this case the Indian Government had
gone against tl•e very principle of the law, which
said that no man should be a judge in his own
cause. Why not appoint an Indian commission to
investigate these titles? He remembered hearing
a young man state that he ought to have pro-
motion because he had been the means of get-
ting 80,0001. for the Government by means of these
inquiries into titles. It might be said that it was
only the great barons who suffered, but that was
not true. The peasantry and all those who lived ,
by the expenditute of the owners of these properties
equally suffered. Mr. Layard then pointed out the
greet abuses that existed in the system of police
pursued in India, and read extracts from petitions
presented to Parliament, in which cases of torture
practised to extort evidence were set forth. Al-
though these facts were notorious, yet therewere
persons hard enough to deny them. 111
rearfiamfnt
remem-
bered an hon. gentleman getting up.
and Baying that there was no torture !illnelent.dia.
He
told him
had not met a man in India who d
" within the
that the practice of torture bad increasedthimprfecmList 20 years. After alluding
ner in which evidence is takentineffcieveitlsauodf criminal
cases, cases, and pointing out t.hhe evil lso
rigidly enforced,
tern of centralisation which
that justice is unknown
he arrived at the cencl_us,reo
of selling the laud
to the poor of ..ndia• 11-'t
of the Zemindars fu with systempurpose fo t recovering
Mr. Mackay's
Mackay's
fraught
venue was
hook on that subject was worthy of careful perusal.
The result of the system was to destroy the native
gentry of India. The next great cause of the out.
-break was our treatment of the natives. Taere Wt B
no sympathy—no kindness between the English
and the natives. It was true that in the great
cities the inhabitants were protected, but that was
not the case in the provinces. Everywhere in In-
dia there was a perfect fear and dread of the Euro-
[wan. He did nut believe that the natives were
' ungrateful. He had seen the portraits of Mount-
stuart Elphinstone in the Deccan, of Sir C. Napier
in Scinde, and of Mr. Gubbins in Benares, in many
of the houses of the natives, lie regretted that a