The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-28 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOV. 23, 1857.

Some of our contemporaries have been waging
war over the question of the cots of the mutiny.
Sian England or India pay them ? we trust
there is now no doubt whatever that the verdict
of battle will be in favour of England,
but some
seem inclined to deny that the verdict ought to
carry costs. The Examiner boldly pleads not

only that the vanquished party cannot pay, but

that he ought not to pay. That England has
disentitled herself to saddle India with the ex-

pence of putting down the insurrection, by rea-
son of her misgovernment of the governed.

Now, on this latter point we join issue, and
affirm that it is perfectly just that India should
pay for her own rebellions, and that our misgo-
vernment—and in many respects it has been bad
enough—is not of a kind which entitles the culprit
to escape penalty. "It was not India made the
rebellion, but we ourselves," says the Examiner,
" for we gave to it a form of government which
no other people ever gave to a conquered country,
and it was that vicious form of government which
produced the catastrophe." If England gave her
own " glorious constitution "—so adored by Lord
JOHN RUSSELL and our able Whig contemporary
—to a conquered country, it would give that
country a form of government never given before
by any conqueror. That argument we may drop,
therefore, without further notice. The real
question is, whether we gave India a government
which ought to provoke to insurrection ?
Even our contemporary can hardly deny that,
when practicable, the costs of any war ought to
fall on the aggressor. Never was there a greater
instance, perhaps, of ignominious departure from
politicjustice, than when Turkey was left burdened
with the coats of [the Russian aggression—when
she was left financially weaker than the power
which had, by a groundless invasion of her terri-
tories, robbed her treasury enormously. Long
will Europe smart, and Circassia, and all Asia, too,
for the moral cowardice of Lord ParairEustox,
and we fear the worse than cowardice of
Lours NAPOLEON in giving up the war with Russia
before they had taken security for peace by com-
pelling her to reimburse Turkey, and, indeed, all
the Allies. The Russian debt ought to have been
augmented by some 150,000,000 i., and if e CZAR
would then have been quiet enough for a long
time to come. So in India now, we hold that
nothing is more important than that India should
feel that rebellion is a thing which must not occur
again. Sepoys must feel it by hanging, banish-
ment, or slavery ; the mutineers must be swept
for ever from social existence at least, and their
friends and families must long remember that to
have another mutineer belonging to them is to
lose them for life.
But not only that. It may be hard, we freely
own, though not harder than the lot of all inno-
cently connected with convicted criminals, that
those who took no active part in the rebellion
should pay for it. Who should pay if they do
not ? We, in England, certainly took no part in it
whatever. The kinsfolk and countrymen of the
actual rebels are the parties most reasonably im-
plicated in the results of the rebels' conduct. It
must be remembered, too, that the vast majority
of the natives have been, at least passive spec-
tators of the mutiny. The Native Princes, who,
knowing the strongest side and their own interest,
have continued loyal, could in many instances not
even keep their own troops faithful to themselves ;
and while numberless gratifying instances of native
fidelity have occurred, yet it cannot bo doubted
that natives generally sympathised too readily,
hough warily, with the insurgent troops.

As to the provocation arising from our form of
government, however, we cannot concede it for a
moment. There is a sense, no doubt, in which it
is true ; but it is a sense which enormously ag-
gravates the guilt of the mutinesrs. So far as
they were concerned, the only error of our Go-
vernment was trusting them too much—they have
abused that trust by rapine, murder, and worse
than murder. They were favoured, petted, grati-
fied in everything ; they have rewarded their pay-
masters and their over-indulgent rulers, whence
they drew their pay, by "looting" their trea-
suries and plunging their swords into the bosom
of those who could deny them nothing ! The
catastrophe has, therefore, been produced by
causes which surely double the guilt of its imme-
diate authors. We acknowledge the folly of the
Company and its unpardonable policy in regard to
Europeans, but as surely as ABSALO3I and his
abettors deserved to bear the penalty of their
deeds, so do the East India Company's Absaloms
and their abettors. The misgovernment of the
Company in the case of the Sepoys most strongly
resembles DAVID'S mismanagement of his vain
and prodigal son—a mismanagement which gives
a pretty clear conception of what was justice to
ABSALOM, and what is justice to Sepoys.
As to the sufferings of other natives under our
rule, they have little cause also to complain of
the way in which we have exercised our power ;
that we might have done infinitely better for the
country by rescuing it from the monopoly of a
commercial company at an earlier period, is true.
Still we have not taxed the natives more heavily
than our predecessors, while we have given them
such freedom from the miseries of internal war,
as they never enjoyed before. All, moreover, that
we have heard of in respect of tortures to extort
revenue, or to obtain evidence in courts of justice,
have been the malpractices of natives, not of
Englishmen—they are abhorrent from the nature
of the worst of our countrymen, and were put
down by us as soon as known. So far, indeed, as
natives are concerned, all they have had to endure
has been due to the venality and cruelty of na-
tives themselves when employed in our service.
There is not, indeed, any phase of our govern-
mental proceedings in India which does not, so
far as the bulk of the population is concerned,
leave them responsible for the cost of the mutiny.
We acknowledge, indeed, that the practicability
of getting the money is quite another question.
There may be, and will be much difficulty in that.
A property tax, or an increase of taxes, may seem
equally hopeless in the case of a nation taxed to
the uttermost, and with its few rich men of com-
merce, men also of the profoundest commercial
cunning. We need not now enter into the details
of what may be done. Some of them we have
already indicated, and more may yet be indicated,
but we must not lose sight of one all-import Ant
source of revenue " water," exclaimed Sir
CLIARLES NAPIER, 46 is gold in India."—and
NAPIER proved it by his water-works in Scinda,
all thwarted as he was at last. " The mines of
India," said Col. CoTroN, " are water mines, and
worth more than all the mines of Australia." And
Col. COTTON proved his words on a magnificent
scale in the Madras presidency. He proved in
practice what his admirable book proves in argu-
ment, that the revenue cf India might be doubled,
and yet the pressure of taxation be comparatively
less than it now is. He proved, too, that the
works might refund their cost annually sessile in

progress, and that in six years' time the grez.t. eh ang•
might be completed. In any discussion of a loan,
or of a guarantee from this country, a kliarantc'e
that canals and irrigation should have the prece-
dence of everything, if necessary, even of railways,
would be a just stipulation. We should have no
fear of any guarantee falling back on 'England
eventually, if some provision was made at the same
time for working the " water-mines of Indi a."

The decision in the case of BROOK T. BVOOK
will be looked for with intense anxiety by ma:ly
families of unimpeachable morality and a dec p
sense of religion. It is, we believe, the first time