The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-10 00:00:00

SPIRIr OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.— The effect of the Indian. Mutiny has been
to entirely alter the tenure by which we hold our
Oriental dominions. Before that momentous event
the received theory was that India was maintained
in subjection to her foreign masters by the agency
of Indian armies, that our function was to direct
and organise those armies, and to supply just as
many English troops as were required to give tone
and example to their Asiatic comrades. This state
of things had doubtless many advantages. It en-
abled us to assert, with great show of reason, that
though from the peculiar constitution of Asiatic
society we were unable to obtain a plebiscite, or any
other public manifestation of popular assent, we
might fairly boast that we held India with the good
will of her people, since it was by their own hands
that our rule was maintained. Many collateral
advantages flowed from this. It moderated the in-
solence of a conquering race, and made it necessary
for us to respect the feelings and prejudices of the
natives. That state of thing, however, passed
away when the native army on which we relied
rose in mutiny against us. From that time the
basis of our power in India has avowedly been
the English troops whom we maintain there.
Nothing but hard necessity could reconcile us to
such a change of system. The drain upon our own
resources is enormous. In case of a European
war, it is very difficult to see how this country,
hard pressed at home for men, could maintain so
large a force in the remote East to defend an Empire
which, however brilliant and glorious it may be,
neither fills our treasury nor recruits our armies.
There are other evils in the present system. We
rule avowedly as an alien race by alien swords.
Such a confession is mortifying to the pride of many
high-spirited races in India, and affords a peculiar
temptation to that unsympathetic and domineering
spirit which is one of the most prominent defects of
our own. Most gladly would we return to the for-
mer state of things, were it possible, or find the
basis of our power in India anywhere else than in a
given number of English bayonets. It remains to
be seen whether we may not to some extent copy
the policy upon which Austria has subsisted for so
many centuries, and, availing ourselves of the vast
extent of our territory, and the different races of
the people who inhabit it, balance one part of the
Empire against the other, and rule by the equipoise
that we establish. For such a policy, we require,
however, something equivalent to the eight millions
of German subjects which Austria possesses—some-
thing which may serve as a nucleus towards which
the elements of power may have a common conver-
gence. The difficulty is where to establish a firm
footing, where to find a solid resting-place, amid
so much that is treacherous and uncertain. Re-
garded from this point cf view, the Lahore letter
of our Indian correspondent, which we published
on Thursday last, has a very peculiar interest.
We are too apt to have our attention distracted
by the suffering of a particular province—such as
Orissa, for instance—and to forget the vast work
that is steadily and successfully going on over
the whole continent of India. The increased
demand for labour, the rise in the prices of agri-
cultural preduce, the greater facilities of inland
transport, and the growth of wealth and wellbeing
are all advances in the direction of peace and tran-
quillity,
but nothing is so reassuring as the complete
success that we have met with in the latest and most
hardly won of our.conquests. The Punjab, although
it has a very hot climate, is not within the tropics.
Its winters are cool and refreshing as compared with
tropical India, and the races that inhabit it are
braver and more vigorous, and apparently more
capable of culture, than their southern neighbours.
It is the India of Alexander and of Porus, and many
causes combine to show that it is destined, notwith-
standing its inland position, to be the citadel and
centre of English power. Indeed, it has been so
already; for, brief as is the period during which it
has been attached to us, it has already, under the
administration of Sir J. Lawrence, been the means
of saving the Empire. It was by the forces contri-
buted from the Punjab that Delhi was taken, and-
this service was rendered only eight years after the
country had been annexed. Nine years have since
passed away, and we are now presented with a view
of the Punjab such as it is under British rule. It is,
as our correspondent says, as if we had held the
country for a century. The habits and pursuits of
17 years ago have passed away. The military
hordes, the terror of Northern India, have become
thriving husbandmen, or veterans enriched by the
plunder of Indian mutineers and Chinese palaces.
Roads, railways, and canals are doing their work,
and security and justice have raised prices and pro-
duced general content. The goods exported to Hin-
dostan Proper have nearly doubled in value during
the last three years. The income from ferries and
from town and octroi duties has greatly increased
during the last year. The cost of the Government
of the province, including the maintenance of
14,000 English and 25,000 native troops, is four
millions sterling, three millions of which it contri-
, butes from its own resources. The frontier which

they guard is enormous, and, considering that this
service is rendered not only to the province but the
empire, it may, perhaps, be fairly considered that
the Punjab already fully pays its own expenses.
To have effected such a transformation in so short a

time and with such brilliant results is a feat, we
believe, unexampled in the dealings of civilized
with half-civilized nations. The problem we have
had to solve in the Punjab is something similar to
that which has been attempted by France in Al-
geria, only that, instead of a long sea coast, a
climate substantially the same as that of the South
of Europe, and a harbour only forty-eight hours
distant from our shores, we have achieved these
great changes at the distance of half the globe,
in a remote inland country, with a climate of
oppressive heat, and, towards Peshawur, of the
most dangerous insalubrity. We are repairing
the monuments of other times ; we have built
churches, gaols, penitentiaries, lunatic asylums,
medical colleges, and museums. We have initiated
the Sikhs into the arts of municipal self-government,
and taught them to administer justice to each other,
somewhat after the manner of our unpaid magis-
trates. We are making the boldest innovation in
the habits of the East by the impulse we have given
to female education. There are already in the
Punjab a thousand female schools, either supported
or aided by Government, in which more than 21,000
girls are receiving instruction. We seem to have
found in the hardy and manly race which inhabits
this remote province more docile pupils and more
energetic associates than elsewhere in India ; and
if the stupendous problem of engrafting European
cultivation upon Oriental habits and feelings is to
be solved anywhere, it is probably in the Punjab
that such success will be obtained. There are so
many persons bent at present on exposing the weak-
nesses and exaggerating the faults and shortcomings
of England that it is only right we should every
now and then break through the habits which have
become inveterate in us, and, instead of invariably
displaying our weaknesses and our failures, point
occasionally to feats like the one we have just been
describing, and challenge our censors to point out
the race or country in ancient or modern times that
can show anything comparable to them.
The Daily News, referring to the decision of the
Government to appoint a commission to consider the
present state of international law with regard to
captures at sea, congratulates the Ministry on their
approaching the question of marine capture in any
way, however roundabout or undignified. The
matter is of prodigious importance, it would con-
cern us as belligerents far more than even as neut-
rals, and since it cannot be settled after war has
broken out, the necessity for settling it by some
general agreement in anticipation is the more
urgent. We in this country have as yet had no
occasion to consider the matter practically. Our only
modern war was with Russia, and the configuration of
that country is such that we were able to seal hermeti-
cally all egress to her vessels, with the exception of the
force which for a short time roamed the North Ameri-
can and China seas. Nor had then the idea occurred to
a belligerent that, though without the use of a
single.port of her own, she might purchase a vessel
of war in a neutral territory, arm and commission

it at sea, and send it forth on a plundering mission,
entitled to full honours of war and rights of shelter

in every neutral port. If Russia had only had such
an inspiration she might with an Alabama of her
own, fitted out in Stettin, Trieste, Cadiz, or New
York, have swept our commercial marine from the sea
as effectually as the Confederate Alabama and her
consorts purged that of the Federals from the At-
lantic and Pacific. And, in that case, we should
doubtless have eagerly urged the insertion of a
further declaration in the Treaty of Paris, by which
it would have been solemnly laid down that " arm-
ing and commissioning a belligerent vessel at sea,
or in a neutral port, is and remains abolished." Our
naval supremacy may show itself in pitched battles,
or in blockading long lines of coast, but our mer-
chant navy is a prey to the tiniest gunboat of the
feeblest State. We have more than any nation to
lose by preserving the old rules under the new con-
ditions—more than any nation to gain by accepting
a modification which others have already offered.

The Star hopes that the effort being made by
some of our railway companies to induce the French
Government to suspend the hateful system of cus-
toms search during the Paris Exhibition season may
be successful. During the period of the Paris
Exhibition of 1855 there was a suspension of the
passport system, and there is therefore good prece-
dent for a relaxation of the customs examination
during the coming year. The Imperial Govern-
ment have made so many sensible concessions to
international good-fellowship that it hardly seems
probable this very reasonable request will be refused.
Where the customs search is rigorously conducted it
is an almost insufferable nuisance ; where it is a

mere formality, as it now generally is, it is a super-
fluous and inexcusable bore. The Emperor of the
French is said to have set his heart upon the success
of the forthcoming Exhibition in Paris. A very

important step towards insuring its success, so far
as the number of foreign visitors go, would be to
suspend, if only for the season, the weary and tor-
menting ceremonial, the expectation of which now
sits like black care behind the traveller as he ap-
proaches his journey's end.

THE AMERICAN PRESS.
THE CONFEDERATION SCHEME.

The delegation from Canada to press upon the'
English Government the necessity of authorising
the scheme of confederation of all the British North
American Provinces sailed from New York in the
steamship Australasian. This project, which seemed
very doubtful of success at one time, acquired new
vigour in consequence of the Fenian invasion. That
unfortunate and wicked expedition furnished the
advocates of confederation with new arguments in
favour of a strong Government, and carried over
many of its former opponents in the general excite-
ment. The Canadian delegates merely represent
the feeling in those provinces, and are not autho-
rised to speak for all British North America. There
is not a hearty acquiescence in the Confederation
plan in the other provinces. In New Brunswick
there was strong opposition, but about the time of
Killian's attempt upo'n the island of Campo Bello,
the excitement in consequence contributed to the
choice of a Confederation Ministry. There is, never-
theless, a very strong anti-Confederation minority
in that province, and the next election, now that
the Fenian excitement is over, it may triumph.
Prince Edward's Island is strongly against Confe-
deration, which the people consider to be a scheme
to consolidate power in the Canadas, and one which
is opposed to the interests of the maritime pro-
vinces. Newfoundland has not decided in favour
of Confederation. Nova Scotia has, by its Legisla-
ture, passed resolutions in favour of some plan of
confederation, but it has not indorsed the plan pro-
posed in Canada. The project proposes that British
North America shall be a Viceroyalty, governed by
a Viceroy nominated in England. The Parliament
is to be composed of a Legislative Council and
House of Commons. The Upper House is to have
seventy-six members, of which the two Canadas
are to have nearly two-thirds and the other pro-
vinces a little over one-third between them. It
is proposed that the House of Commons shall be
composed of one hundred and ninety-four mem-
bers, of which the two Canadas shall have
one hundred and forty-sevea. The plan, in fact,
is intended to make the Canadas overwhelming in
their influence, and to intrust the interests of the
maritime provinces to delegates who, if united, will
be powerless against a heavy insular majority. It
is this fact which renders the maritime provinces
fearful of being oversloughed, and renders them
jealous of their rights. The delegation which goes
to Great Britain may have some effect, but the
cautious language of Lord. Carnarvon to a delega-
tion, urging Confederation, some time ago, may be
indicative of hesitation on the part of the present
Ministry of Great Britain. Confederation was
strongly urged by the Russell Cabinet, it was sup-
posed, because Great Britain desired to escape from
the expense of maintaining her colonies, and in the
hope of making them strong enough, by combina-
tion, to resist the dreaded power of the United
States. But the Derby Ministry is not bound by
the action of its predecessors. As long as some of
the provinces are opposed to the scheme, it would
be doubtful whether it would be judicious to com-
pel them to adopt the plan. If such a policy is re-
solved upon, the new Confederacy will start with
heartburninw, opposition, and jealousies which will
create much trouble hereafter.—Philadelphia In-
quirer.