The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-27 00:00:00

HOW TO ESTABLISH OUR EMPIRE IN INDIA

(From the Examiner.)

The best way to establish our Indian empire on ire.
pregnable foundations will be to act upon principles as
opposite as possible to those on which it has been here-
tofore ruled by that singular corporation the East India
Company. For a whole century our possession of
India has been a mere military occupation, six parts out
of seven of the occupying army being composed of the
conquered races, and the most muticous and inflammable
materials which could be collected together. No wonder
that such a Government should at last have exploded in
mutiny and murder, and with such prodigious havoc of
public and pri►ate property.
The chief means, by which other nations of all races
and of all ages have maintained their authority over
conquered countries, have consisted in the free and nu-
merous settlements of the conquering race among the
conquered. But these are the very means which have
been most pertinaciously and obstinately repudiated by
the East India Company. Colonisation was the mode in
which the 'little country of Greece spread its language,
its artfi, and its religion, over Italy, Egypt, and Asia
Minor. It was thus, far more than by its legions, that
Rome made Italy, France, and Spain, Roman in lan-
guage, laws, manners, sad everything comprehended in
the Roman name. It was the method followed by our
Sagan forefathers when they conquered the Britons, by
the Normans when they conquered the Saxons, and by
the Auglatiormaas when they subdued the Celts of
Wales and Ireland.

All over the world it was this plain course that bas ever
been pursued by conquering states. The Greeks pursued
it in Africa and Asia, as they did in Europe. They
planted a colony on the very verge of India itself, in the
midst of predatory barbarians, unsupported by a mother
country, and same 3,000 miles distant from it, they
established a civilised kingdom which lasted more than
three centuries.

Asiatic coniuerorx have followed the sense track
wherever they have made permanent conquests. In this
manner, the Arabs conquered some of the finest parts
of Spain, and although 3,000 miles distant from their
parent country, held dominion over them for eight cen-
turies. The very Turks, still more remote from their
original seat, and cut off from all commnnicabioa with it,
have held sway over some of the most fruitful provinces
of Europe for four centuries. Even the shepherds of
Tartary, by virtue of the free settlement of their race in
China, have been enabled to establish a dominion, and
in general a peaceful and successful one, over au empire
as populous as India.

But the most pertinent instance of all is to be found in
the Mahomedan conquest of India itself, to which we
have on former occasions alluded. The original adven-
turers were a sort of marauding crusaders, composed
not of one, bat of several nations, distinct in manners
and language, and united by no common tie save that
of religion. They settled freely among the native
inhabitants, intermarried with them, and converted
them to a number which is thought at present nob to
fall short of ten millions. By these means, and with
the help of a little occasional fresh blood from their
parent countries, they were enabled for seven centuries
to maintain their ascendancy over the Hindus, who
always exceeded them iu number in the proportion of at
least twenty to one. An Afghan dynasty displaced a
Turcoman, and a Turcoman an Afghan, and it was not
until we ourselves had lopped off the most fertile and pro•
duotive province of the Empire, that a Hindu nation,
the Mahratta, obtained a temporary superiority over
the Mahomedans.

Let us now glance at the policy which we have oar-
selves pursued in media, and which we are now reaping
the bitter fruits. That policy has been the very antithesis
of all that has succeeded with all other nations. We
have not only discouraged the settlement and colonisa•
tion of our own countrymen, but long visited the very
attempt to settle with pains and penalties. The commer-
cial monopolists, in whose name the conquest was made,
hoodwinked the nation and the Legislature, and made
them believe that India was tale only in their own hands
ani those of their creatures. Here are a fee, particulars
of the legislation made under this pernicious delu,ion.
By the Charter Act of 1793, the simple act of being found
in the East Indies without the leave and licence of the
East India Company, was declared to be " high crime
and misdemeanour." In 1813, or 20 years later, the
" high crime and misdemeanour" of being found in the
East Indies without licence was re-enacted, and It was
punished, for the first offence, by a fine of 200/ , or
two months' imprisonment, and for the second of 4001.,
or four months' imprisonment. Bat besides the fines
and imprisonment, the functionaries of the Company in
India were armed with the power of arresting and eject-
ing forcibly from India any unlicensed Briton, or at
pleasure to revoke licences without assigning a reason ;
and if the arrested party prosecuted the Company, the
proof lay on himself, and failing to prove malice, the
law made him liable to treble costs.

It was not until 1833, or three-quarters of a century
after the ♦ictory of Plassey, that the nation came in
some measure to its senses, and then for the first time
were Englishmen enabled to hold the foe simple or land.
Even then, and the prohibition is to this hour unre-
pealed, Englishmen are excluded from visiting residing
in, or holding land, in all the conquests made by the
nation during the present century, and these embrace
some of the finest and most extensive parts of Bengal,
and nearly the whole territory of Bombay. But this is
not all, in the greater part of the Indian territory, fluc-
tuating, excessive and arbitrary taxation, bad police and
bad laws, make it wholly out of the question for Eng-
lishmen to invest their capital in land, and the result
is, that the number of British landholders sprinkled over
our vast territory is very trifling indeed.
The result of this factitious and unnatural system
pursued by the jealous spirit of monopoly, has come t,)
this, that the total number of British-barn subjects is
India, not in the public service, amounted, accordinT to
the most recent returns made to Parliament, to 10,000
—or, to be correct to a unit, to exactly 10,006, the
India House reporter observing, on the return, that no
accession to this number had taken place for 20 years.
Nearly the whole of this number resided in the three
presidential cities, where they had the protection of
English laws administered by professional judges named
by the Crown. Of the 10,000 only 317 were residing in
the provinces, namely, 275 in those of Bengal, in most
of which there is a permanent settlement of the land-tax,
and only 42 to be divided among those of Madras and
Bombay, where taxation is arbitrary, excessive, and va-
riable—under the first of those Governments, indeed,
often varying from year to year. The little Cown colony
of Ceylon, 1.60 th part of the area of Continental India,
and containing 1-80th part of its population, has at
present as large a number of Englishmen engaged in the
culture of the single article of coffee (a branch of industry
of little more than 30 years' standmg), as continental
India has in the culture of sugar, indigo, and silk. The
colony of Algiers, which has been possessed by France
about one-fourth part of the time that we have possessed
India, bad an European population two years ago of
155,600, or above 15 times as many as all British India,
As to the number of the mixed race in British India
springing from the union of Englishmeh with natives