The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-05 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDA.V, NOV. 5, 1857.

The honours yesterday conferred on the Duke
of CAMBRIDGE by the Corporation of the City of
London, were not the mere common-place compli-
ments so frequently bestowed by municipalities on
men of high rank and station. They had been
well and nobly earned, not only by the gtll"nt
exploits of His Royal Highness ou th 3 tented
field, where he fully participated iu the perils and
dangers of the sanguinary strife, and as freely ex-
posed himself as any private soldier under his
command, but also by the anxious desire to effect
useful reforms in the military department, over
which he now so worthily presides. It was a
tribute of esteem and respect to the Royal Duke, and,
In his person, to the entire army under his control
and direction. He justly regarded it in this point
of view, and felt doubly gratified in consequence ;
and the public will not the less highly estimate
his deserts, because helmodestly professed to hate
only discharged his duty, and to bestow the
honours on those by whom, irrespective of rank
or influence, he was elevated to so high a position
in the hearts of his fellow-citizens that his ap-
pointment to the highest military rank was hailed
with universal satisfaction.

The Civic authorities made a happy selection in
Sir JOHN KEY to act as their orator on the inte
resting occasion. He spoke well and clearly,
while pointing out how nobly the Doke had
earned the gift of a soldier's weapon, and how
pleasing it must be to a man, even of his exalted
rank, to find. his name inscribed on the same roll
with those of CHATHAM and of PITT, of NELSON
and of WELLINGTON. It was hestasved on him
not merely as a Prince of the blood, but
as a valuable public servant, as "the humblest
soldier's friend,!aa one who had shared the dangers
of the campaign in the Crimea, cheering his men
on the victorious heights of Alma, and in the
thick of the murderous fire at Inkerman, with
more than half of his noble Guards lying dead or
wounded around him, and his gallant steed, struck
by the bullet aimed at its rider. There was, in
addition to these claims, the active, vigilant, pains-
taking interest, in other institutions which have
made the British nation as prominent for moral
achievements, as she is unrivalled for the glory o f
her arms. He was honoured alike as the sol-
philanthropist, the defender of our
dier and the
liberties and the benenctor of our homes." His
Royal Flighness responded in a Ei
milar spirit.
He spoke in a straightforward, manly tone, both
-at the meeting, and at the banquet that followed,
and added to the high estimation in which he
had previously been held. He also alluded to the
Indian Rebellion, and repeated the sentiments
which he had previously urged at Snefliel I, and
for which he received such well-merited eulogy.
There was another speaker who did not carry
with him the feeling of his audience. L)rd GRAN-
viax, iu returning thanks L,r the toast of her
MAJESTY'S Ministers, entered on an clabo-

rate vindication of Lord CANNING, a vindication
which was listened to with ill-disguised im-
patience by the assembled party. His text
was "fair play." He demanded that we should
hear before we condemn, and strove to remove
some of the impressions prejudicial to the Go-
vernor-General. This is all very well for a per-
son in a private position, but where the destinies
of India are placed in the hands of an individual,
it is not sufficient that his inefficiency should be
clearly established. He should be beyond sus-
picion—capable of turning passing events to the
best account, and of co-operating with the mili•
tarp authorities, on whom the burden must mainly
rest. But in place of so doing, there is a vexa-
tious system of interference—a strict attention to
routine and red-tapism—the proclamation cast-
ing censure on the military authorities, and
breathing a maudlin philanthropy towards rebels,
could not be explained away. Mr. J. P. GRANT
might have been sent merely as locum tensns for
the Governor of the North-Western Provinces,
who, being confined in the fort of Agra, was
unable to discharge his duties. But this view of
the case has never before been presented to the
public, nor is it borne out by the conduct of
Mr. GRANT. The pardon of 150 rebels at
Cawnpore—the spot desecrated by the murder
and violation of our countrywomen and their
helpless children—stamped a character on the
proceeding which all the eloquence and astuteness
of Earl GRANVILLE cannot get rid of.

We are glad to learn, on competent authority,
that the rumours of estrangement and differences
between the Governor-General and the Commander-
in-Chief are without adequate foundation. But
there are other matters that cannot be contra-
dicted. It is palpable that Lord CANNING,
although an amiable man, who might make a re-
spectable Governor on ordinary occasions, is not
qualified to meet the present emergency. The
universal feeling of all the non-official English in-
habitants of Calcutta sufficiently indicates his de-
ficiencies ; and really we cannot afford to wait
until India is lost to the British nation, and
this, one of the brightest gems, is abstracted
from the Imperial diadem, to decide whether Lord
CANNING has merited all the censure which, justly
or unjuetly, has been cast upon him. As a private
individual he would have an unquestionable right
to demand that public opinion should remain
suspended until he had an opportunity of being
heard in his own defence ; but, as Governor-
General, occupying the most arduous and im-
portant position in the gift of the Crown, at the
present moment, the case is very different. We
want the right man .in the right place, and suffi-
cient has transpired to prove beyond the pro-
bability of doubt that Lird CANNING is not
that man. There have been sufficient indiscre-
tions to warrant his recal a dozen times over,
and, if Ministers and Directors neglect to adopt
that obvious course, they will have t) answer for
all his future mistakes and shortcomings. The:e
are matters that must, for the time being, rest
with the Cabinet, but they may be assured that
they w►ll have to render a stringent account for
themselves, as well as for Lord CANNING.

We fully concur in what fell from the noble
Earl in reference to Lards ELGIN and ELPIIIN-
STONEL They have deserved tho thanks ana
gratitude of their country. But surely their
zeal and activity contrasts strongly with the
apathy, indifference, and red-tipism of Lord
CANNING, and places his conduct in the worst
light. Lord GRANVILLE did what be could for
his friend, but we deeply 'egret the palpable bias,
respecting a matter on which he may be called
to pronounce a judgment in a few days. Certain
it is that he did not carry with him his auditors
or the community at large, is the defence which
he put forward on behalf of L)rd CAN.NING.

The Massacre at Vellore in 1808 was but the

faint prototype, fifty years previously, of this
recent and more hideous Massacre at Cawnpore.
During the half century that elapsed between
those two frightful occurrences, however, the posi-
tion of the Bengal Sepoy had been wonderfully
advanced. So that in direct proportion to the
improvement of his social status has been the
height of his atrocity and the depth of his ingra-
titude. In testimony of this, for example, it
should be remembered that tile pay of the infantry
Sepoy, amounting to some seven rupees, otherwise
fourteen shillings per month—surpassing in value
the wages of our agricultural labourers—ensured
to him at the same time a pension after a certain
number of years had elapsed, at a period of life
when he might be considered to be (for military
purposes) sup3rannnated. This apparently mode-
rate pay, moreover, was in truth—taking into
account Vie average rate of wages and the ordinary
price of provisions in Hindostan—ample in itself;
and its receipt, as a matter of course, was marked
by the utmost possible punctuality. Neverthe-
less, with a knowledge that their present income
would cease and their future pension be rendered
impossible when once they should have perversely
thrown off the yoke of our protective Govern-
ment, the Bengal Sepoys—with such a stake in
their allegiance—revolted, as we have seen, from
British rule, and revolted, t )o, beyond the possi-
bility of redemption. Signalising their mutiny
by crimes of such flagrant and heinous atrocity
as to preclude them altogether from the chance of
quarter or from the hope of reconciliation.

Notwithstanding the almost simultaneous out-
break of 100,000 armed aad disciplined soldiers

—scattered over such wide territories—and evi-
dencing something very like concert in the mere
time and manner of their rebellious rising—no
one has yet succeeded anywhere iu discovering
the faintest clue to anything at all bearing the
semblance of a conspiracy. This is at once ono
of the most remarkable and one of the most
undeniable characteristics of the late extraordinary
movement in the Bengal Presidency. Never, per-
haps, was there a more curiously appropriate illustra-
tion of that happy phrase of the First Consul, about

the pear being ripe ! The pear was, in very truth,
ripe all over those ill-fated provinces. The mere

breath of a rumour was enough to shake the fruit
down at once in all directions. It so happened,
moreover, that the rumour in question, though
to all appearance ridiculously frivolous in itselr,
affected, in a peculiar manner, the fiercer preju-
dices of the two great divisions of the Indian
population. The seemingly tzivial report that
the new outritlf.;es were siturated with animal
grease, bore directly upon the veneration with
which one animal (the cow) was regarded by tho
Hindu°, and upon the abhorrence with which
another animal (the pig) was regarded by tLo
Mussulman. It was conceived by the latter that
degradation.heirltution, and by the former that their
was intended through the imputed
lubrication of the cartridge on the one hand with
the fat of swine, and on the other with the fat
of oxen. The preposterous scandal got bruited
abroad ; and, ono alter another, the native regi-
ments revolted.

There can be very litt'e doubt, by this tane
however, that the plea of the cartridore% const:'
tuted, in reality, only a superficial excuse to
the tilutineee. The eircutualnc:: that as early z.s
the 3d May an infiatual4!ory appeal addressed to

the men of the 48th Regiment by the men of
the 7th Oude Irregular Cavalry, was intercepted,
and thereupon brought to Sir H. LAWRENCE at
Lucknow, was of itself sufficiently significant ;
particularly when, in addition to this fact, it is
remembered that Oude itself was only as recently
as the early part of last year annexed to our
Oriental possessions—thereby absorbing into the
Company's Territories the soh remaining Mahom-
medan State in Upper Hindostan. The poignancy
of this latest blow administered to Asiatic pride
was felt elsewhere than simply in the modern and
ancient capitals of Oude—viz , at Lucknow and
Fyzabad. It affected the whole of the Asiatic
race more or lees acutely ; but it influenced, in a
peculiar degree, the great mass of the army of the
Bengalees. For—it is a very remarkable and
noticeable truth, that Oude alone is under-
derstood to have furnished the Company's forces
with besides many thousands of troopers
—actually no less than three fourths of
the Bengal Infantry. Bearing in mind the sus-
picious manner in which this frightful military
revolt followed hard upon the annexation of Oude,
we regard the curious fact here italicised as (to
say the very least of it) singularly significant.
However this may be, we now know but too
distinctly that the vast military revolt here spoken
of really took place thus suddenly and suspi-
ciously—a gigantic mutiny, in round numbers, of
100,000 disciplined fighting men—the lawless
rising, in point of fact, of the whole regular
native army of Bengal, an army consisting at the
moment of—

Seventy-four Regiments of Infantry.
Ten Regiments of Cavalry.

Nine Battalions of Foot, and

Three Brigades of Horse Artillery.
It was the revolutionary outbreak, in point of
fact, of a hundred thousand skilled veterans—
the Bengal Sepoys—the men, the very men whc,
under the banners of Poiws, contended, now two
thousand years ago, with the warriors of
ALEXANDER. It is M. DE VA LBEZEN who
speaks—" Ce soot les hommes," he exclaims (in
his ingenious work 'Les Anglais et l'lnde,' p. 98),
" les memes hommes, qui sous les drapeaux du
Roi Porus, combattaient it y a deux mile ans, les
guerriers d'Alexacdre." The same men—but
how degenerated How not merely degenerated
how utterly brutalised and degraded. Not in all
the terrible records of crime and barbarity em-
blazoned in the p3.gos of ARRIAN or of CIIRTMS
-can anywhere be detected narratives comparable
in tte smallest degree with the fearful annsli
already inscribed upon the tablets of Anglo-In-
dian History, in bloody, and indelible, and damn-
ing characters. Damning to the perpetrators of
these new and hitherto inconceivable horrors
—the ruffians, above all, of Delhi and Cawnpore.
Well may the Edinburgh declare of Jack St pop,
in spite of all his superficial " tincture of mili-
tary discipline and his disguise of civilisation"—
that his character was still after all " overshaded
by low animal propensities, by the beastial super-
stitions of the worst form of heathenism, and by
the impenetrable cunning of a feeble race !" That
cunning is already transparent. That feeble race
we have now alone to deal with ; we have to crush
out its insurrection, to punish its- atrocities, to
brand its ingratitude, and to systematise, as
speedily as possible, its; permanent re-organisation.

ANOTHER ADVANCE IN THE RATE

OF DISCOUNT.

The directors of the Bank of England, at their
meeting to-day, raised the rate of discount to the
unprecedented point of 9 per cent. ! This proves
that the establishment must be in a very straitened
condition, and it is supposed that the balance-sheet
for the present week will be quite as unfavourat)lo
as any proeented in 1847. It is impossible that
this rate can be maintained, and measures will, no
doubt, be concerted forthwith to relieve the mer-
cantile public ; otherwise they will be unab'e to
pass through the ordeal, already too severe, with-
out serious distress. An impression prevails that
unless some arrangement can be made to prevent
it the rate will soon be advanced to 10 per cent.

THE LIVERPOOL BOROUGH BANK.

(BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.)

LIVERPOOL, THURSDAY MORNING.

TLe Liverpool Borough Bank is partially open
to day for tho payment of deposit)rs under 2001.,
in accordance with tho arrangement mentioned in
Me Sun of yesterday.