The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-11 00:00:00

INDIA AND CHINA.

We (Times) have received the following letter
from our correspondent at Calcutta :
CALCUTTA, OCT. 8.
There is nothing to send you of the slightest in-
terest. The great native holiday, the Doorjab Poo-
jah, is raging, and business of every description is
at an end. All courts, treasuries, banks, public
offices, and mercantile houses are closed for a fort-
night. All artisans give up working, or work half-
time. Every Hindoo with credit for two rupees
spends one on a feast and one in putting an extra
touch of lacquer on the effigy of his deity. The
actual idol is not exhibited, but hundreds of figures
made of bamboo lath, nand, and a paper composi-
tion, are carried about in procession, and then
thrown into the river. As each figure is preceded
and followed by as many tom-toms as the proprietor
can afford to hire, by a troop of yelling devotees,
and all the priests, lads, ragamuffins, and women
who can be got together on short notice, and as all
alike think it a religious duty to make the utmost
possible amount of clamour, the effect in a thickly
populated native city may be imagined. A Kidder-
minster election is a tranquil scene in comparison.
Not that there is any rioting. Hindoos do not drink,
and Bengalee Hindoos abhor the horseplay and
rough merriment of an English fair. There is con •
sequently very little crime, but no man who has not
heard an Asiatic crowd excited has any idea of the
noise human throats are capable of producing. The
roar of a Norwich mob when a candidate expresses
his determination not to bribe may give some faint
conception of the row, but it is only a faint one.
The inconvenience suffered by all men in business
is extreme, and the loss from the detention of ves-
sels alone has been calculated at £40,000, but
hitherto the custom has resisted all efforts at ame-
lioration. IN bile Government shuts the Treasury
all private efforts must be fruitless.
The Governor-General leaves on the 10th inst.,
and is to hold a grand Durbar at Luckuow on or
about the 20th, to which all the grandees in Oude
have been invited. He then proceeds to Agra and
Delhi, receiving en route native princes of all
grades. The expense of the journey will be very
great, the viceregal escort alone, including 3,000
men. The camp will not lumber less than 20,000
persons, and the majority of them, let the " camp
magistrate" do as he likes, will live at the expense
of the peasantry. The total direct cost to the State
is estimated at 100,000 rs. a month, and the utility
of the journey is very questionable. The native
princes are so sensitive, and Englishmen, however
carefully trained, so neglectful of the minutia of
Oriental etiquette, that the interviews will pro-
bably create more irritation than confidence. Sir
Charles Trevelyan, for example, the other day en-
tertained Azeem Jail, representative of the Nabobs
of the Carnatic. Ile has been refused the musnud,
and Sir Charles, on his entrance, with genuine kind-

liners, advanced almost to the door to meet him.
The prince is only entitled to two steps from the
dais, and he left the room confident that the extra
steps implied his restoration to the family pri-

vileges.
Mr. Wilson is expated in November, and his
precise position seems to have been settled here
pretty definitely. In default of special instructions
he will be left on all questions of pure finance, i.e.,
in all matters of loans, accounts, and banking sys-
tems, quite independent. On matters of revenue he
will be simply a Member of Council, that is, while
Lord Canning is here, nothing at all. It is under-
stood that his first duty is to " combine the systems
of revenue and finance so long dissociated in India."

If that account is correct, he has been set to per-
form an impossible task, if only for the simple rea
son that while financial affairs are under the con.
trol of the Government of India, revenue matters
are decided by the five local governments.
The Commander-in-Chief has issued an order
granting the privilege of furlough to non-commis-
sioned Indian officers. The men will be provided
with passages to and fro free of expense.
Some 30 court-martials have been published on
insubordinate Europeans. In all the men have been
sentenced by the officers to frightful periods of im-
prisonment, which have been angrily remitted by
the Commander-in-Chief. I enclose one record :
"GENERAL ORDERS BY TILE RIGHT HON. TIIE COM-
MANDER-IN-CIIIEP, HEAD .QUARTERS, SIMLA, SEP-
TEMBER 21, 1859.
" At a General Court Martial assembled at Morar, Gwa-
lior, on Monday, the Bth day of August, 1859, Private
William Barry, No. 802, of the 3d Bengal European Regi-
ment, was arraigned on the following charges :
" Ist Charge. —For mutinous conduct in having, at Mo-
rar, Gwalior, on or about the 10th day of May, 1859, be-
tween the hours of 5 and 7 o'clock, p.m., when the dressing
bugle sound,)d for evening parade, excited the men of No.
4 company 3d Bengal European Regiment, to which he (the
prisoner) belonged, to shout, saying, ' Come, let us give a
shout,' with intent thereby to induce his comrades to dis-
obey the lawful orders of their commanding officer, and not
turn out for parade at the appointed time.
"2d Chargo.—For having, at the same time and place,
made use of insolent and insubordinate language towards
Lieutenant and Adjutant E. B. Wimberley, his superior
officer, when in the execution of his duty, by saying, ' I
want no opportunity,' on his, the adjutant, telling him
that the commanding officer would give him an opportunity
of speaking in his own defence.
"3d Charge.—For having, at the same place, between
the hours of 10 and 12 o'clock p.m. on the night of the 10th
of May, when a prisoner, confined in the quarter-guard of
the regiment, escaped from such confinement before he was
set at liberty by proper authority.
"The above being in breach of the Articles of War, and
subversive of good order and military discipline.
"Finding.—The Court is of opinion that the prisoner,
No. 802 Private William Barry, of the 3d Bengal European
Regiment, is guilty of tho Ist charge; guilty of the 2d
charge; guilty of the 3d charge.
" Sentence.—The Court sentences the prisoner, No. 802
Private William Barry, of the 3d Bengal European Regi-
ment, to penal servitude for 14 years.
G. W. Rrcri, Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel,
71st H. L. I. President.
"Morar, Gwalior, Aug. 11, 1859.
" Revised sentence.—The Court do now sentence the
prisoner, No. 802 Private William Barry, 3d Bengal Euro-
pean Regiment, to suffer a corporal punishment of fifty (50)
lashes on his bare back, in the usual manner; and, further,
to imprisonment for twenty-one (21) years.
" G. W. Rion, Brevet Lieut.-Colonel,
71st H. L. 1., President.
"Morar, Gwalior, Aug. 31, 1859.
" Confirmed. CLYDE, General,
Commander in-Chief, East Indies,

" Simla, Sept. 7, 1859."
REMARKS BY THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN INDIA.
"The original sentence of penal, servitude not being
legally awardable under the charges, the proceedings were
returned for revision, and the Court have now sentenced
tho prisoner to corporal punishment, and to imprisonment
for 21 years.
" Again, the case of Private J. Lallas, of the same regi-
ment, who was also tried by the general court-martial, o
which Lieut.-Colonel G. 'W. T. Rich, of her Majesty's 71st
Highland Light Infantry, was president, and the result of

whose trial was promulgated in the General Order of the
14th inst., the Commander-in-Chief . egrets to find that the
Court have passed a sentence that it is altogether impossible
to carry out in its integrity. Lord Clyde is quite unable to
comprehend how 12 British officers (for this it appears is
the number Who voted for the revised sentence), could con-
template the incarceration of a fellow-countryman for 21
years in an Indian prison—a sentence entirely without pre-
cedent in the records of English courts martial.
" The Commander-in-Chief has no sympathy for Private
Barry and those of his mutinous comrades who have been
lately brought before a court-martial, and if some of them
had been tried for mutiny, under the orders of the General
Officer commanding the division, and shot, the army at
large might have benefitted by the example, but Lord Clyde
cannot consent to gi‘-e his approval of a sentence that would
consign the prisoner, if he survived its infliction, to a life-
long torture.
"The Commander-in-Chief has confirmed the sentence
to give effect to the legal punishment of the prisoner, but as
he has never been tried before, and is in possession of a
good-conduct badge, his Lordship reduces the period of im-
prisonment to eighteen calendar months, with effect from
the 11th of August, 1859, the date on which the original
sentence was signed by the President, and remits the cor-
poral punishment.
"The Commander-in-Chief was much surprised to ob-
serve that this soldier's general character was described as
' indifferent,' notwithstanding that he has been only twice
before the commanding officer since March, 1856, and not
even before the commanding officer of his company for any
serious offence since October, 1857. Officers giving evi-
dence as to character should be very careful as to the term
they uso, that the soldier may not be able, by cross-exami-
nation, to show that he has been unjustly stigmatised."