The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-09 00:00:00

N, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 9,

(From the Times.)
Our correspondent " Indophilus" pursues his
addresses to the public this morning on a topic
which will not fail to arrest the attention of our
readers, and which was certainly not likely to
escape our •wn. What is to become of the Indian
Press ? In the reorganization of that marvellous
empire what use is to be made of an agency which,
wherever British dominion extends, has been
found the most powerful of known instruments in
the work of civilization and progress ? Is India to
feel the influence of a Press ? and, if so, under
what conditions or regulations should this profes-
sion be exercised 1 These are obviously questions
of no trifling import. The answer to them, as we
must needs be expected to say, is perfectly clear,
and we concur entirely with "Indophilus" as to
the form it should take.
The inquiry thus brought before us is altogether
independent of the policy which, under the pres-
sure of a revolutionary crisis, the Government of
India lately found itself compelled to adopt. What
could be said in Lord Canning's justification our
readers have already seen. We shag easily be
believed when we express the reluctance which we
felt in assenting to the propriety of any measures
against the freedom of the Pres, and the extreme
perils and moat precarious advantages attending
any such course, even in the severest emergencies,
have been sufficiently evinced by the course of
events. We trust that the security anticipated
from the repression of publications deliberately
seditious to shut our eyes to the embarrassments
and evils which the proceeding has inevitably en-
tailed. The Press of India is now animated with
o vindictive a spirit, and entertains against the
Government such a malignant arid not unnatural
hostility, that we look in vain for any impartial
opinions or unbiassed reports concerning the policy
of tie Administration. Although, moreover, the
new censorship is freely exercised, it is utterly be-
yond the power of any authorities to escape damage
altogether. A direct invective may be stopped, a
particular article may provoke a warning, and
some journal less adroitly managed than others
may incur the penalty of suppression ; but all the
while attacks are covertly conducted through every
paragraph and in every page of the paper, till in
the end the effect produced upon the mind of the
reader is far more injurious to the Government
than the most open and determined opposition.
We do not say that of two evils Lord Canning
may not, at so unexampled a crisis, have chosen
the least, hut the alternative was a very disastrous
one indeed.
We coincide, however, entirely with " Indoph
i-
lus" in thinking that no material difficulty need
attach to the substantial freedom of the Press in
India under ordinary conditions of government.
The embarrassments hitherto experienced have
arisen not so much from the characteristics of In-
dian society as from the impolicy of tho views
adopted by the Administration. European, or, in
other words, English society in India, is divided
into two great elements, separated from each other
by a spacious gulf. First, there are the British
residents in the service of the Company, whether
military or civil ; and, secondly, there are the
British residents occupied in independent pursuits,
and unconnected with public employment. The
former of these classes is by far the more numerous,
and, without any disparagement of the latter, it
may be said by far the more intelligent. It compre-
hends, indeed, all the intellect and ability which are
annually draughted off from thane shores for ser-
vice in the East, and constitutes no inefficient re-
presentation of British character. The latter class
comprises many enterprising, educated, and hon-
ourable men. It admits, in fact, as far as its num-
bers go, of being matched in these respects against
the former, but its position is unfavourable, and
its views exposed to strong and injurious bias. The
servants of the Company not only form a caste,
but a governing caste, and such privileges are natu-
rally irritating in the eyes of men who are English-
men as well as they. The two classes differ even
in the opinions with which they regard India and
its population. The governing class is content with
India as it is. Saving always its own prerogatives,
it is disposed to look with favour upon the claims
and even the prejudices of its subjects, and by no
means inclined to allow any advantages to the inde-
pendent European community. For the sake of
peace and quietness it would leave Hindooisin un-
touched, would adapt its administration to a native
population exclusively, and would prefer, upon the
whole, that the points of contact between England
and India should be through the East India Com-
pany alone. The independent class rebels against
these principles, and thinks that Englishmen should
have equal rights. In claiming, however, India
for the English it does not leave quite so much of
India for the Indians, and its views, perhaps, would
hardly be so immediately favourable to the native
population as those of the class which has got all it
wants, and, having only to exercise government,
and not submit to it, can afford to be serenely
impartial.

Under these circumstances, the Press, like other
British institutions, found an establishment in In-
dia, and fu: a certain period worked very service-
ably. In an evil moment, however, and by an
unhapyy thought, a I,otification was issued of which
the effect was to deb tr from any participation in
public writing the whole of that numerous and able
class through whose iminecli,tte instrumentality the
Government of India was conducted. No person
connected with the Government—in other words,
none of tho many thousand rervauts of the Com-
pany—could carry either his information or his
talents to the work of newspaper discus-lion, and
the consequence was, that except for such evasions
of the rule as were unavoidable, the Indian press
fell entirely into the hands of a class numerically
inferior, inimical to the ruling powers by the very
force of its position, and necessarily, in comparison
with Government officers, but imperfectly informed.
Never could a policy have been more disastrous.
Government was deliberately placing itself and its
acts at the greatest possible disaavantage. It was
proscribing its own advocates and silencing its own
counsel. The proceeding represented a complete
inversion of the policy pursued in some absolute
States. Instead of attempting to inspire or control

their place with safety and credit among the nations
of the earth, than those natives of India who have
had their minds opened to our civilisation would
be filled with dismayat theprospect of the destruc-
tion of our Government. No class has more uni-
formly stood by us in these troubles than the Angli-
cised Bengalees and other natives ; and well they
might, for they could expect no mercy from a pure
Brahminical or Mahomedan regime. At Delhi
everybody who spoke English was searched out and
put to death. At Cawnpore and elsewhere the
" Baboos" were considered proper subjects of plun-
der and persecution. The safety and success of our
Indian empire will be in proportion to the increase
of this class, and to the degree in which it is lea-
vened by Christian principles. The circumstances
of this outbreak furnish strong presumptive evi-
dence that some progress has been made, and when
our mastery shall have been established as it never
yet has been, by this desperate struggle with our
own army, and by the civil and military reorganis-
ation consequent upon it, and the people of this
country shall have begun to act upon their newly-
awakened sense of duty towards India, the develop-
ment of English civilisation among the natives of
India will proceed in a greatly accelerated ratio.
The Romans made Gaul, and Spain, anti Africa
helpful and powerful members of their body politic,
and shall we be less successful with India, notwith-
standing the advantage of Christianity and of 1800
years' additional experience of human nature ?
The last objection usually urged is that a free
press is incompatible with a native army. Not
only this, but almost every other improvement
was incompatible with a native army like the late
Bengal army; but the case will be altered when
the native army is auxiliary instead of principal—is
recruited from all castes and all parts of the country,
instead of from the high and privileged castes and
from one part of the country only, and when the
other arrangements deccribed in a previous letter
are made by which the native army may be held
safely in hand. A native army so regulated would
be quite compatible with a native press watched,
and checked, and improved, and influenced for
good in the manner I have recommended.
But we must not expect too much. Those who
criticise the newspaper press in this country often
appear to forget that it is a human institution, and
as such entitled to the allowance which ought al-
ways to be made for human infirmity. Everything
has a bad as well as a good side ; and if the good
decidedly preponderates, we ought for its sake to
tolerate the contingent evil. If those who pro-
nounce harsh judgments upon the press bad to pro-
vide every morning four columns of remarks upon
the most exciting topics of the day, and to guide
and influence the men who are capable of writing
such essays as we daily read in the Times and other
newspapers, they would have more sympathy for
occasional errors and inadvertencies. Aud yet we
may well be Frond of our newspaper press, and
earnestly desire that its benefits may be extended
to the glorious Eastern empire which has been in-
trusted to us. The foreearance, the moderation,
the prevailing absence of mere pers-wal and private
imputations on the part of the English press und9r
circumstances of great difficulty and temptation are
deserving of all praise ; and when this line is for
a moment departed from, it can always be set right
by a letter to the Times, or an article in that or
some other paper. Under all the circumstances,
the influence of the English press during the Par-
liamentary recess furnishes as satisfactory a model
as we could expect to have for the operation of the
Indian press. I am Arc.
I ,
Nov. 5. NDOPHILUS.

• the press for its own benefit, the Indian Govern-
ment actually made it over to its opponents for
. their exclusive use ; while men who could have set
the Administration on its legs in a moment, cor-
rected errors, and diffused accurate knowledge,
were restrained by the enactments of their own
caste from taking up a pen.
It is really impossible to exaggerate the propor-
tions of this monstrous blunder. Half the value
and perhaps more than half the influence, of the
English Press is due to that universal practice of
correspondence, which literally brings a vast por-
tion of the British nation into co-operation with
the Times. Our columns are powerful, as express-
ing not merely what we think, but what everbody
thinks. There is not a public question started on
which we do not receive, either for publication or
otherwise,*eit'ner for the instruction of the country
or our own information—communications of the
most varied and authentic character. Our readers
little dream of the very high authority occasionally
attaching, under some unobtrusive signature, to
the correspondence we place before them • and it is
by means oftbese aids—by this remarkable associa-
tion of knowledge and opinions—that truth is
brought to light. In our pages everybody finds a
hearing, and every policy an expression, until at
last the public discovers itself in possession of an
unexceptionable result. This might have been the
case in India even in a more striking degree, for
public writing is there such a propensity, either of
the profession or the place, that every Indian offi-
cer would sit down to an article or a letter as the
most natural employment in the world—indeed the
only difficulty is to get them to stop. If this com-
municative disposition were but judiciously en-
couraged, what chance could any factious or wanton
opponents of the Government preserve in the face
of such able, such well-informed, and such inde-
fatigable
foolishly thinkingwriters t Little,toignore
an irrepressible indeed ; whereas, by
power, the Indian Administration left to the use of
its antagonists an agency which it might have em-
ployed for its own defence and the unquestionable
benefit of the country at large.

'THE INDIAN MUTINIES.

Times since the commencement of the Bengal mu-
tiny has been most lamentable. To serve the pur-
t pose of the moment they have constantly said one
day what they have been compelled to unsay the
next. Till Saturday last we were told that disaf-
fection was confined to the military, and that the
neck of the mutiny was broken ; now we are asked
to believe that all the most wealthy commercialists
aro accessory to the revolt, and that it will require
years to restore law and order. The deranging in-
fluence of the Company's remittances of silver was
ignored till Saturday last ; now an exay.gerated ac-
count of its effects is given to induce the English
public to sanction an act of gross injustice. The lan-
guage of the writers in the Times has almost the
appearance of being intended to create us enemies
in India. The insolent manner in which the confis-
cation of the Baboos is recommended now is quite
in keeping with the proposal made some time ago to
depose Scindiali and Holkar—if they joined the
insurgents, because they were enemies—if they
did not, because their inability to control the con-
tingents, raised, officered, and paid by England,
showed they were too powerless to do us any harm.
Whenever the Times attempts to grapple with In-
dian facts one is tempted to impute to it gross ig-
norance of India. But now, when it propounds
schemes of Indian finance, one is equally tempted
to attribute to it a profound study of the native
financiers. Any person who will take the trouble
to consult Wilks' " History of Mysore" will be
compelled to acknowledge that the Times' plan fer
raising the wind in the present Bengal difficulties is
a servile plagiarism of the method resorted to by
Hyder Ali.