The Sun.
London, England, 1858-05-10 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENFNG, MAY 10, 1858.

disposed of ; and whether any portion was to be subject
to prize money for the army.
Mr. EL BAIL LIE said that at present her Majesty's
Government had net received any information whether
any prize money or plunder bad been found in Luck-
now. Until her Majesty's Government had received
tbat information, it was impossible to answer that
question.
MAIN DRAINAGE OF THE METROPOLIS.
Mr. BUTLER asked the First Commissioner of
Works whether, having regard to the various reports of
the referees and commissioners upon the subject of the
main drainage of the metropolis and the purification of
the Thames, it was his intention, before acceding to
any scheme for carrying out the 135th section of
the act for the better local management of the metropo-
lig, to cause any further investigation to be made
other
a
reference to the committee recently appointed or ot
wise ; and whether it was in contemplation to amend or
modify such act, with a view to the adoption of any
scheme that may not be in accordance therewith.
Lord J. MANNERS said the only power possessed
by the Government in reference to this sunow bbject was
ore
a
power of veto only. No scheme ef
the Government, and all he could now say
was, that should the Metropolitan Board of Works
I submit any further scheme for the purification of the
river Tnames, he should withhold hie sanction to it
until the committee referred to had reported on their
labours. He was not aware that the Board of Works
I wished for the amendment of the act referred to.
ORDNANCE SURVEY.

Viscount DUNCAN asked the Secretary for War
whether the Royal Commissioners, appointed last year
on the subject of the ordnance survey of Great Britain,
had made their report, and, if so, at what period a copy
of it would be presented to this house ?
General PEEL said the report had not yet been pre•
Booted to her Majesty's Government. The Chairman
had informed him it would be ready in a few days. As
soon as it had been laid before her Majesty no time
would be lost to lay a oopy of it on the table of that
house.

CRIMINAL COURT,—(This Day.)

The May sessions of the Central Criminal Court corn•
menced this morning before the Lord Mayor, the
Sheriffs, and Aldermen Salomons and Lawrence.
The Recorder, in charging the Grand Jury, said it I
was a source of gratification that the present calendar,
although it contained the names of upwards of a hundred
prisoners, it did not embrace a single charge of murder,
but there was an unusual number of charges of man-
slaughter. One of these was that of a boy named
Sellers, aged twelve, who was charged with killing
another lad about his own age. The death of the
unfortunate lad arose during a pugilistic com-
bat, and an inspector of the police force was
charged with being accessory to the fact by encouraging
the lad to fight. He need not detain them by explain-
ing the law with respect to manslaughter, but if it was
proved in evidence that death was occasioned by the
blow, then it would be their duty to return a true bill
against both persons. Another case of rather a singular
description was that preferred against a captain, viz.,
for feloniously and wilfully sinking his ship at sea with
intent to defraud the insurance company. The prisoner
was indicted under an act of George 111., and
the only fact they would have to deal with
wag, whether the evidence bore out the charge.
The remaining charges were of the ordinary
description, and required no special observation. If,
however, in the course of their investigation any point
of law or difficulty arose on application, the court would
readily render them every assistance.
The Grand Jury then returned to their room, and in a
short time, true bills having been returned, the trials
proceeded.
_

CONFISCATION OF OUDE.-CENSURP, OF
LORD CANNING'S PROCLAMATION.

On Friday were printed, in compliance with an
order of the House of Commons, a letter from the
_ _

?secretary to the government of India with the Go-
vernor-General, to the secretary to the Chief Com-
missioner of Oude, dated March 3, 1858 ; accom-
panying Lord Canning's proclamation, which we
published on Friday ; together with the letter from
the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of
the East India Company to the Governor-General
of India in Council, dated April 19 last, relating
to that proclamation.
From G. F. Edmonstone, Esq., Secretary to the
Government of India with the Governor-Gene-
ral, to G. Cooper, Esq., Secretary to the Chief
Commissioner of Oude.

ALLAIIIBAD, March 3.
Sir,—l am directed by the Right Hon. the Go-
vernor-General to enclose to you a copy of a pro-
clamation which is to be issued by the Chief Com-
missioner at Luck now so soon as the British troops,
under his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief,
shall have possession or command of the city.
2. This proclamation is addressed to the chiefs
and inhabitants of Oude only, and not WI the
sepoys.
3. The Governor-General has not considered it
desirable that this proclamation should appear until
the capital is either actually in our hands, or lying
at our mercy. He believes that any proclamation
put forth in Oude in a liberal and forgiving spirit
would be open to misconstruction, and capable of
perversion, if not preceded by a manifestation of
our power ; and that this would be especially the
case at Lueknow, which, although it his recently
been the scene of unparalleled heroism and daring,
and one of the most brilliant and successful feats of
arms which British India has ever witnessed, is still
sedulously represented by the rebels as being
beyond our power to take or to hold.
4. If au exemption almost general, from the
penalties of death, transportation, and imprison-
ment, such as is now ab:iut to be offered to men
who have been in rebellion, bad been publicly pro-
claimed before a heavy blow had been struck, it is
at least as likely that resistance would have been
encouraged by the seeming exhibition of weakness,
as that it would have been disarmed by a generous
forbear ante.
5. Translations of the proclamation into Hindee
and Persian accompany this despatch.
6. It will be for the Chief Commissioner, in com-
munication with his Excellency the Commander-
in-Chief, to determine the moment at which the
proclamation shall be published, and the manner of
disseminating it through the province ; as also the
mode in which those who surrender themselves
under it shall be immediately and for the present
dealt with.

7. This last question, considering that we shall
not be in firm possession of any large portion of the
province when the proclamation begins to take
effect, and that the bulk of our troops, Native
as well as European, will be needed for other pur-
poses than to keep guard through its districts, is one
of some difficulty. It is clear, too, that the same
treatment will not be applicable to all who may
present themselves.
8. Amongst these there may be some who have
been continuously in arms against theGoverument,
and have shown inveterate opposition to the I.st,
but who are free from the suspicion of having put
to death or injured Europeans who fell in their way.
O. Tu these men their lives are guaranteed and
their honour ; that is, in native acceptation, they
will neither be transported across the sea nor placed
in prison.
10. Probably the most easy and effectual way of
disposing of them, in the first instance, will he to
require that they shall reside in Lucknovr under
surveillance and in charge of an officer appointed
for that purpose.
11. Their ultimata condition and place of resi-
dence may remain to be determined hereafter, when
the Chief Commissioner shall be able to report fully
to the Governor-General upon the individual cha-
racter and past conduct of each.
12. There will be others who, although they
have taken up arms against the Government, have
done so less heartily, and upon whom, for other
causes, the Chief Commissioner may not see reason
to put restraint. These, after surrendering their
arms, might be allowed to go to their homes, with
such security for their peaceable conduct as the
Chief Commissioner may think proper to require.
13. One obvious security will be, that of mak-
ing it clearly understood by them, that the amount
of favour which they shall hereafter receive, and
the condition in which they shall be re established,
will be in part dependant upon their conduct after
dismissal.
14. The permission to return to their homes
must not be considered as a reinstatement of them
in the possessions of their lands, for the deliberate
disposal of which the Government will preserve
itself unfettered.
15. There will probably b 3 a third class, less
compromised by acts of past hostility to the Go-
vernmeut, in whom the Chief Commissioner may
see reason to repose enough of confidence to justify
their services being at once enlisted on the side of
order, towards the maintenance of which, in their
respective districts, they might be called upon to
organise a temporary police.
16. The foregoing remarks apply to the talook-
dars and chiefs of the province. As regards their
followers who may make submission with them,
these, from their numbers, must of necessity be
dismissed to their homes. But before this is done,
their names and places of residence should be re-
gistered, and they should receive a warning that
any disturbance of the peace or resistance of autho-
rity which may occur in their neighbourhood, will
be visited, not upon any individual offenders alone
but by heavy fines upon the villages.
17. I am to observe that the Governor-General
wishes the Chief Commissioner to consider what
has been above written as suggestions rather than
instructions, and as indicating generally the spirit
in which his lordship desires that the proclamation
shall be followed up, without tying down the action
of the Chief Commissioner in matters which may
have to b 3 judged under circumstances which can-
not be foreseen.
18. There remains one more point for notice.
19: The proclamation is addressed to the chiefs
and inhabitants of Oude, not to mutineers.
20. To the latter the Governor-General does not
intend that any overtures should be made at present.
21. But it is possible that some may surrender
themselves, or seek terms, and it is necessary that
the Chief Commissioner should be prepared to meet
any advances from them.
22. The sole promise which can be given to any
mutineer is that his life shall be spared ; and this
promise must not be made if the man belongs to a
regiment which has murdered its officers, or if there
be other prima facie reason to suppose that he has
been implicated in any specially atrocious crime.
Beyond the guarantee of life to those who, not
coming within the above stated exception, shall
surrender themselves, the Governor-General cannot
sanction the giving of any specific pledge.
23. Voluntary submission will be counted in
mitigation of punishment, but nothing must be
said to these who so submit themselves which shall
bar the Government from awarding to each such
measure of secondary punishment as in its justice
it may deem fitting.—l have, &c.
(Signed) G. F. EDMONSTONE.

LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S REPLY TO LORD

CANNING'S PROCLAMATION.

The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors
of the Eat India Company to the Governor-
General of India in Council.
April 19, 1858.
Our letter of the 24th of March, 1858, will
have put you in possession of our general views
with respect to the treatment of the people in the
event of the evacuation of Lucknow by the enemy.
2. On the 12th hut. we received from you a
Copy of the letter, dated the 3d March, addressed
by your Secretary to the Secretary to the Chief
Commissioner in Oude, which letter enclosed a
copy
Commissioner as so )n as the British troops should
of the Proclamation to be issued by the Chief
have command of the city of Lucknow, and con-
veyed instructions as to the manner in which he was
to act with respect to different classes of persons.
in execution of the views of the Governor-General.
3. The people of Oude will see only the Pro-
clamation.
4. That authoritative expression of the will
of the Government informs the people that six
persons, who are named as having been steadfast
in their allegiance, ate henceforward the sole here-
ditary proprietors of the lands they held when
Oude cAme under British rule, subject only to such
moderate assessment as may be imposed upon them ;
that others in whose favour like claims may be
established will have conferred upon them a pro-
portionate measure of reward and honour ; and.
that with these exceptions the proprietary right in
the soil of the province is confiscated to the British
Government.
5. We cannot but express to you our apprehen-
sion that this decree, pronouncing the disinberison
of a people, will throw difficulties almost insur-
mountable in the way of the re-establishment
of peice.
6. We are under the impression that the war
in Oude has derived much of its popular character
from the rigorous manner in which, without regard
to what the chief landholders had become accus-
tomed to consider as their rights, the summary
settlement had, in a large portion of the province,
been carried out by your officers.
7. The landholders of India are as much at-

tached to the soil occupied by their ancestors, and
are as sensitive with respect to the rights in the soil
they deem themselves to possess, as the occupiers
of land in any country of which we have a know-
ledge.

8. Whatever may be your ultimate and undis-
closed intentions, your Proclamation will appear
to deprive the great body of the people of all hope
upon the subject most dear to them as individuals,
while the substitution of our rule for that of their
native Sovereign has naturally excited against us
whatever they may have of national feeling.
9. [We cannot but in justice consider that those
who resist our authority in Oude are under very
different circumstances from those who have acted
against us in provinces which have been long under
our government.
10. We dethroned the King of Oude, and took
possession of his kingdom by virtue of a treaty
which had been subsequently modified by another
treaty, under which, had it been held to be in force,
the course we adopted could not have been lawfully
pursued ; but we held that it was not in force, al-
though the fact of its not having been ratified in
England, as regarded the provision on which we
rely for our justification, had not been previously
made known to the King of Oade.
11. That sovereign and his ancestors had been
uniformly faithful to their treaty engagements with
us, however ill they may have governed their
subjects.
12. They had more than once assisted us in our
difficulties, and not a suspicion had ever been en-
tertained of any hostile disposition on their part
towards our Government.

13. Suddenly the people saw their King taken
from amongst them, and our Administration sub-
stituted for his, which, however bad, was at least
native, and this sudden change of Government was
immediately followed by a summary settlement of
the revenue, which, in a very considerable portion
of the province, deprived the most influential land-
holders of what they deemed to be their property
of what certainly had long given wealth, and dis-
tinction, and power to their families.]
14. We must admit that, under these circum-
stances, the hostilities which have been carried on
in Oude have rather the character of_legitima,e war
than that of rebellion, and that the people of Oude
should rather be regarded with indulgent conside-
ration than be made the objects of a penalty ex-
ceeding in extent and in severity almost any which
has been recorded in history as inflicted upon a
subdued nation.

15. Other conquerors, when they have suc-
ceeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a
few persons as still de-erving of puillsbuient, but
have, with a generous policy, extended their cle-
mency to the great body of the people.
16. You have acted upon a different principle.
You have reserved a few as deserving of special
favour, and you have struck with what they will
feel as the severest of punishment the mass of the
inhabitants of the country.
17. We cannot but think that the precedents

from which you have departed will appear to have
been conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to
that which appears in the precedent you have made.
18. We desire that you will mitigate in prac-
tice the stringent severity of the decree of confisca-
tion you have issued against the landholders of
Oude.

19.1 We cl-sire to see British authority in India
upon the willing obedience of a contented people.
There cannot be contentment where there is general

confiscation.

2J. Government cannot long be maintained
by any force in a country where the people are
rendered hostile by a sense of wrong ; and if it
were possible to maintain it, it would not be a
consummation to be desired.

LORD CANNING'S PROCLAMATION.

(Prom the Morning _Herald.)

Lord Granville and his friends allow their antagonism
to the Government to stand forth with too great promi-
nence. They not only object to everything which is done,
but by their conduct show that they are determined to
cavil and oppose. Not many months ago they applauded
Lord Canning for his leniency ; but circumstances have
changed, and they become the advocates of undue seve-
rity. Yet, in this case, the natural order of things has
been entirely reversed. Lord Canning hesitated and con-
nived at the moment that he ought to have been stern
and unbending, and when he might with advantage dis-
play moderation he actually strikes a blow that will
alienate many loyal hearts from our cause. The whole-
sale confiscation of Oude cannot, under any pretence
whatever, be justified. The rebel sepoys, driven from
Delhi and other strongholds, concentrated around Luck-
now, compelling the population, the unwilling as well as
the willing, to embark in the struggle against our rule.
As far as the inhabitants of Oude were concerned it was
not, as Lord D ,rby stated on Friday night, " a mutiny
of those who had eaten our salt, and sworn allegiance to
us, but the revolt of a people who thought—l am not
saying whether rightly or wrongly—that their waive
sovereign had been Utjustly dethroned, and who rose as
an armed nation against those whom they conceived to
be usurpers and oppressors." Lord Canning might have
made cunfisca ion the exceoli,n ; he certainly was not
justified in making it the rule, Had the Governor-Gene•
ral threatened to deprive of their lands and possessions
all thee' who did not at once tender their allegiance,
and throw themselves on the clemency of their Sovereign,
none would have °Nee- el to his policy.
It is rather remarkable that those authorities who from
the first contended that the rebellion in India was purely
a military revolt, confined solely to the sepoys, now urge
the adoption of severe men-tires against the population.
Members of the late Government in both houses of Parlia-
ment gave expression to this view, which was advocated in
the °dumps of their organs. According to their notions the
people, from one extremity of India to the other, are
innocent of anything like part'cipation in the revolt.
Yet upon their heads they would now pour out the vials
of wrath I Ex-ministers and our contemporary the
Times obtained a strange notoriety by the pertinacity
with which, in the teeth of incontrovertible evidence,
they clung to this erroneous view, and, to the general
surprise of all, they rush to the defence of Lord Can-
ning, abandon the cause of the persecuted people of
Oude, and advocate severe measures against those whom
they have over and over again proclaimed as being inno-
cent of any actual offence. The sepoys mutinied, but
the peaceful cultivators of the soil aro to be visited with
condign chastisement, is the doctrine set forth with such
earnestness, and in order to throw a shield over Lord
Canning even the ex-President of the Council seems to
forget all that he has previously stated upon this ques-
tion. We would ask, with due humility and respect,
how these politicians explain this startling contradiction
in their conduct I If, as they have over and over again
stated, this outbreak is nothing more nor less than a
mutiny of the army, if none but the sepoys have plotted
and rebelled against us, why is the great axe of justice
to fall upon other heads ? In the name of humanity let
these politicians stand forth and tell the nation what
they really mean l In spite of evidence the most con-
clusive they have persevered in denying the complicity
of any section of the non-military classes of India in this
foul revolt, yet they now declare that those persons
whose innocence they have over and over again asserted
deserve no better doom than that contained in t he fol-
lowing paragraph from Lord Canning s proclamation :
"The Governor-General further proclaims to the
people of Oude that, with the above-mentioned excep
tions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is
confiscated to the British Government, which will die-
pose of that right in such a manner as to it may seem
fitting.
The effect produced in Oude by this proclamation
cannot be disguised. On this point the evidence of
the corre .pondent of the Times is °inclusive, and it en-
tirely demolishes the arguments put forth tip our con-
temporary. In the last letter from the seat of war Mr.
Russell states :—" The terms of the proclamation are to
be interpreted. by Sir James Outram. The glass will be
lirge and ltheral aed in his rendering the severity of the
text will be mollified so far that the Oude talookdars may
read and run to and not from. us. So it is understood,
and steps will be taken to diffuse the knowledge . f this
great change among the natives." The italics in t e
above extract are our own. There would have I o o
little need fu- modifications, and "this great change" if
the original terms of the proclamation had been suited
to the emergency. In another portion of the game
communication the writer speaks of the "present tem-
per of the people," and adds—" If this temper becomes
permanent and ex ensively prevalent we may be called
upon to solve the tremendous problem whether Eng-
land is strong enough, provided she accepts the ta•k, to
govern by force of military despotism the 150,000,000
• or 160,000,000 of human beings committed to her
charge." Such measures as these to which we have re-
ferred will only increase our difficulties and heighten our
perplexities, nor i an we wonder that the correspondent
at the seat of the war is in favour of a lenient policy.
We find him stating, "No mawkish sentiments of cle-
mency should guide our conduct. ; let us be just and poli•
tic, and if clemency be compatible with justice and p licy
too, let us not be ashamed of being animated by a quality
which is one of the grandest characteristics of heroes,
of conquerors, and of mighty empires, and which pos-
terity admires more than the valour by which oppor-
tunity for its exrcise was won." In such a spirit has
the noble remonstrance sent by Ministers to the Go-
vernor-General been framed, and every true Englishman
will admit with pride and honest emotion that this
patriotic document contains sentiments that-do honour
to our statesmen.
Of Lord Canning we have always spoken with respect.
We censured the vacillation which be displayed at the
commencement of the mutiny, nor have we failed to
render justice to his merits. The Governor-General was
certainly not the kind of legislator required for such a
cri,•is. In fact, Lord Canning has, as we sail before,
reversed the natural order of things. He temporised
when he ought to have acted energetically, and now
that he might be lenient he is needlessly severe. At the
first signs of revolt the Governor-General should have
struck terror into the hearts of the mutineers. By his
unwillingness to make an example he actually favoured
h
the designs of the conspirators, and a movement
might have been crushed in the bud assomedthewcha-
racter of a widely-spread rebellion. At that time severity
would have' deterred the bold, now it will alienate the
loyal. The people of Oude have been oppressed and
tyrannised over•by the sepoys, and a lenient policy on
the part of the British authorities would have won their

hearts. This fact is indisputable. In the despatch to
Lord Canning Ministers have endeavoured to direct the
Governor-General's attention to this matter, and it
would have been impossible far them to have done this
in more temperate, dignified, and patriotic terms.