The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-08 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, OCT. 8, 1857.

Our governors have humbled themselves, fasted,
and prayed ; for we may surely conclude that
they have practised what they preached. They
have professed their repentance, and now we look
for the fruits meet for repentance. We have been
told in prayer, provided for us by the Govern-
ment itself, to regard the mutiny as a divine
chastisement for our sins ; of course for our sins
in regard to India itself, for no theory of divine
chastisements ever separated the sin and the pun-
ishment entirely. Unless, indeed, wo know the
ground of our punishment, how could we know
what sins to confess and forsake. We will not
suppose then that our Cabinet has deliberately
done anything so hypocritical, we might almost
say blasphemous, as to order a whole nation to
confess the sins of England against India without
believing that there were some distinct and well-
known sins for which we held ourselves answer-
able to the Judge of all the Earth. To be sure
the appointed confessiGn is of that vague and ge-
neral kind in which courtly penitence delights ;
but we are to understand, we presume, that it is
'uite as sincere as if it confessed the sin of having
such a Governor-General and Council, and such a
staff of high officials as now terrify Calcutta by

their incompetency for the crisis ; or such a
minister for India as Mr. V ERNON SMITH.
A delicate topic this no doubt for the Court
Liturgist to touch in constructing the prayers.
The nation was to confess its sins against India ;
but the nation's sins have all been committed
through its Government ; the more we confess,
the more we deplore what our Governors have
done. We acknowledge, indeed, that the nation,
the constituencies we mean, have been guilty of
one great delinquency ; they have let our
governors do almost as they liked with India. Our
foreign policy has been far too much surrendered
to our Germanised Court, and the Premiers who
retained Royal favour by proper regard to cousins
across the water ; and India has, in like manner,
been treated by the electors too much as a foreign
country. It was forgotten that East Indians,
though nominally the subjects of the East India
Company, were really and truly subjects of the
English Crown, as well as ourselves ; and that
had we but spoken out, our vast colony could not
have been governed as it has been, till wretched-
ness characterises the people, and till a whole army
of 100,000 men is guilty of mutiny and murders
of the most atrocious kind. If, however, the
nation has to confess the sin of leaving their rulers
to themselves, and forgetting the national re-
sponsibilityfor the good government of the coun-
try our arms had conquered, what must be the
sins of those who abused the national indulgence
till they have ruined everything !
_ _ _

In all seriousness we look upon this day of
fasting and humiliation, just passed, much as we
did upon the one in reference to the Crimean dis-
asters. If there be anything to coxfess, it is that
we have trusted too much to our rulers, and that
their misgovernment for a long series of years, and
their mismanagement at the present time, have
brought all these evils upon us. Nor do we see
how our rulers themselves can really think other-
wise ; they must know full well that they "have
done the things they ought not to have done, and
not done the things which they ought to have
done." And truly enough we may add, too truly
to incur the censure of profanity—" that there is
no help in them." So true is this, indeed, that
to a great extent a change of Governors for India
is the first thing required of our fasting and pray-
ing Cabinet.

" HEAVEN helps those who help themselves,"
and the first help which Lord PALMERSTON can
render is, beyond question, that of pitching the
wrong men out of the wrong places. Look at India
first. The cholera has already superseded one
Court appointment, that of an incompetent Com-
mander-in-Chief—a commander who was enjoy-
ing himself at Simla when the mutiny broke out
at Meerut, who took that awful affair in very
leisurely style, and of whom we hear nothing in
regard to the earlier mutinies at Barrackpore
and Berhampore. And then the Governor and
his council there is hardly a difference
of opinion as to their utter unfitness for their po-
!..ition. Lord CANNING himself, no one speaks ill
of personally, but no one knows any recommenda-
tion he possesses for his post, except that of being
his father's son. With abundant qualifications
to make a most respectable English Peer, even
the Government papers are obliged to confess that
he would not have been sent out had anything
but a featherbed Governor-Generalship been ex-
pected for him. His only faults have been
those of a second or third rate man, dependent
upon officials in emergencies which neither he nor
his patrons contemplated. As to those officials
themselves, we may refer our readers to an excel-
lent photograph of them all, by " One who has
served under Sir CHAS. NAPIER," and who dedi-
cates his pamphlet—" The Mutiny of the Bengal
Army ; a Historical Narrative"—to Lord ELLEN-
BOROUGH ; everything attests the accuracy of the
likenesses. Let our readers then but look at them,
sad they will cease to be surprised at any of the
deeds of infatuation which have reached our ears.
' The COUNCIL of the Governor ! A sounding title
indeed—we associate the idea of something as rc-
spectable as our own Cabinet, at least ; but it
would be injustice, indeed, to compare our Cabi-
nets, with all their defects, to the Governot's
Council.

There is old Mr. DoRIN, a man who, in a ser-
vice of 33 years, has never been 50 miles out of
Calcutta, and who might as well have been in
England all the time, "sixty years of age, and
in all his habits a very Sybarite," " indolent,
void of energy, deficient in mental culture and
ability, and who certainly in no other country but
India, and in no other service but the Civil Ser-
vice, would have attained any but the most sub-u--
dinate position." Even the contrast of Mr.
GRANT'S activity is unfortunately not a contrast
for good ; for, though in the prime of life, active
and energetic, he is completely ignorant of the
habits and customs of the natives of Upper I edil,
and too vain,' superciliou., and narrow-minded, to
seek information from practical men in his 077t1
service. He is absurdly jJaloua of military me 1,
and his determination to thwart them delay,: I,
till too lite, vigorous measures in the c
of the Santhal rebellion, and also in the
case of the present mutiny. General Low,
the military member of the Council, is too far
advanced in years to carry the military measures
which his judgment approves against the over-
bearing talk of Mr. GRANT—like George STEPHEN-
SON he cannot make a speech, and wants some one
with " that greatest of powers, the gift of the
gab," to enable him to carry his point against
red-tapism, ignorance, and impudence. Mr.
Pmeocs, though an honest legal adviser in the
Council, does the mischief of leaning to the con-
ceited routini,t GRANT, when the latter opposes
the military wisdom of the veteran General. Such is
the board of advisers Lord CANNING found on his
arrival at Calcutta, and by whose aid he had to sup-
press a mutiny amongst an army of soldiers, of
whose peculiarities he knew no more than any of
us on this side of the water.

This alone is enough to account for any vacil-
lation and infirmity of purpose shown by a MAD
of mental powers wholly inadequate to compre-
hend at a glance the position of India, to make
up his mind and to abide by it. But his mili-
tary Secretary, Colonel BIRCH, and his Horne
Secretary, Mr. BEADON, were also equally below
the occasion. Theformerhad been Judge-Advocate
General, and his narrow capacity to this day is
chiefly shown in orders hardly intelligible fur ex-
cessive quibbling.* Lord DALHOUSIE put him
virtually at the head of the Indian army, to spite
Sir CHARLES NAPIER ! Mr. BEADON is a mere
Civil Service man. He hates indigo planters,
Indian merchants, the press, everything that in-
terferes with his dominant idea of " India for the
Civil Service." These, then, are the men with
whom Lord CANNING has to put down an [LUX=
aMpled Mutiny, to. reconquer India, and to re-
form its Administration. Men who, concurring in

* The writer of the " Mutiny of the Bengal Arm "
gives a curious instance of the intolenble red-tapistn
nd
incapacity of Col. Birch. When Lieut. Baugh was at-
tacked by Mungul Pandy—from whom our soldiers have
nick-named the mutineers Pandies—on the 29th of Match,
his life was saved by a Mahommedan orderly. General
Hearsay. who, it wilt be remembered, rode up and quelltd
the mutiny, then and there promoted the orderly, " For
this a seven wigging was administered to the gallant officer
by the Government Military Secretary—Col. Birch ! ! !"
And this is the man who was plocad in the Indian War-
Office over Sir Charles Napier ! ! !