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

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[PRIOR 4D. STAMP7D 51) d It;

of the country, no account whatever kes been rendered,
and most probably none exists. As to the converts to
Christianity, which have been made under the East India
Company's withering rule of a century, we suspect that
the return must be pretty nearly nil, although the
Mahomedans have been tolerably busy during the same
period, and have probably increased their number by
two or three millions.
Now had India, for the 100 years that it has been
under, the excluding system of the company, been subject
to the Government of the Crown, Englishmen would have
had free access to it, with power to hold the fee-simple
of land on a certain and safe tenure, as they have every-
where else under the British sceptre. Under such
auspices they and their descendants, whether creole or
of mixed blood, along with the converts to the Cross
whom they would inevitably have made, would have been
counted not as now, by hundreds, or by thousands, but
by hundreds of thousands, or even by millions. All such
persons would, by their example or by their teaching,
have proved the, most effectual missionaries of their own
faith, and from the mere necessities of theiir position, to
whatever sect of Christians belonging, the cheapest and
the most effectual support of British power. That such
would assuredly have been the result we may learn from
what is passing in the present revolt, since we know that
it is a principle adopted by the Mahornedau and Hindu
conspirators to exterminate every man, women, and child
of whatever sect or colour, passing under the name of
Christians. Englishmen ought long ago to have been
much too numerous in India for any mutiny or rebellion
to have speculated upon their extirpation. With snob a
body of settlers as we ought to have had after a hundred
years of supremacy, it is impossible to conceive that
we should ever be overtaken and surprised by a rebel-
lion raging from the Ganges to the Indus.
It is not often that tient-gain a lesson of political
wisdom from the Spaniards, but the qaestion of settle-
ment and colonisation, in so far as concerns their Eastern
colonies, certainly affords one example. For the 300
years that the Spaniards have been settled in the Phillip-
pines, these fine islands have been accessible to every
Spaniard, and Spaniards in common with the native+ are
there landholders on very favourable tenures. The
Spaniards and their descendants at present amount to
25,000, and these and their forefathers have converted
nearly the whole population, amounting at present to
6,000,000; the native Christians being so strong attached
to the Spanish Crown, that owing to there, the Phillip-
pine Islands may be considered not only secure from
internal insurrection, but impregnable against any
foreign invasion, so that they are likely to continue a
colony of Spain long after Spain has lost the rest of its
foreign dependencies. Even the Government of Spain,
then almost the worst in Europe, has been wiser than that
which we tolerate, but shall not tolerate much longer,
under the name of the East India Company.
The false policy, then, which, to a greater or less de-
gree, we have pursued in our government of India for a
hundred years, may safely be averred to have led to the
results for which the nation is now sorrowing. By says
tematically discouraging the settlement of our country-
men in our conquest, we have virtually set our faces
against the dissemination of European civilisation, and
of the religion of that civilisation. By that false policy
we have been left friendless in the hour of need, unsup-
ported, ignorant, and surprised by a conspiracy of Brah-
mins and Mahomedans which has shaken our dominion
to its basis. By reason of that false policy, pursued for
tbree-quarters of a century, the commerce of the Indies,
instead of an advantage, became a serious detriment to
the nation. It is high time then to repudiate and aban-
don it. Our quarrel, we must add, is not with mistaken
men, but mistaken principles. We do not quarrel with
East India Directors of the present or any other genera.
tion. Blinded by their position, they no doubt believed
thatwhat was profitable to themselves was equally bene
ficial to the publio.